Menstruation Project - Current Affairs

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Bother (2021)

Aliche Sbrb in collaboration with Lucyferass

Video (0:30 min)

We are constantly exposed to violence and hypersexualization, yet it is only recently that ads for tampons have allowed blood to appear in red instead of blue. Ironic, isn't it?

The video shows the archive of images accumulated over the years to record my menstrual process that I often could not publish, because it was banned from social media. This time I did not want to miss the opportunity.

The projection of the images makes them less impactful and this is a limit but also a metaphor to symbolize the extreme modesty in the face of the menstrual cycle.

Bother? They ask us not to show it, not to show it when you go to the bathroom with a tampon, not to say it out loud and not to talk about it. And so, to feed their annoyance, we gave it back to them with sound.

SHAME

The majority of teens surveyed reported feelings of shame, self-consciousness, and/or embarrassment about their periods. The following statistics reflect the negative sentiments that follow teens throughout their lives on what is typically a monthly basis, and are a foundation for increased emotional anxiety with numerous potential effects:

64% believe society teaches people to be ashamed of their periods
66% do not want to be at school when they are on their period.
80% feel there is a negative association with periods, that they are gross or unsanitary.
71% feel self-conscious on their period.
69% feel embarrassed when they have to bring period products to the bathroom.
57% have felt personally affected by the negative association surrounding periods.
the majority (51%) of students feel like their school does not care about them if they do not provide free period products in their bathrooms.

SOURCE:

State of the Period. The widespread impact of period poverty on US students. Commissioned by Thinx & PERIOD

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Dr Carnesky’s Incredible Bleeding Woman (2017)

Marisa Carnesky

Live Art / Theater / Cabaret Show

[ Photo by Sarah Ainslie & Excerpt of Video by Tom Cottey ]

1970s horror meets 2020 feminist activism as Dr Carnesky’s Incredible Bleeding Woman paints the country red…

Putting the magic back into menstruation, show woman and artist Marisa Carnesky reinvents menstrual rituals for a new era, drawing on the hidden power of a forgotten matriarchal past. Referencing representations of women and blood from ancient mythology to classic horror movies, menstruation takes centre stage in a profound exploration of what it means to be ‘female’. Issues around fertility, body shame, taboo and lost ancient herstories are scrutinised, politicised & reclaimed.

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Social Period (2021)

Social Period eV / Niki Pielsticker & Laura Hartmann

Video (0:52 min)

What if you don’t have access to things that make you feel clean and good during your period? Social Period aims to shed a light on marginalized bleeding within our fast paced society.

As the United Nations declared, “Menstruation is not a girls’ or women’s issue — it’s a human rights issue.” Across the world, the stigma around periods manifests in different ways, with Nepali girls in villages subject to staying in huts in a traditional practice known as Chhaupadi to 1 in 5 girls in Britain experiencing abusive behavior in regards to menstruation. In India, religious tenets are used to justify excluding menstruators from temples, and, from a study done by WashAid in 2013, 48% of girls in Iran think menstruation is a disease. This stigma and misinformation directly leads to mismanagement of periods, and this unfortunate reality exists in the US as well.

Period poverty, or the inability to access the products to manage one’s period, is prevalent, barring youth from education or forcing women to choose between food and period products.

SOURCE:

https://www.thefinch.media/post/the-politicization-of-menstrual-justice

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Cheers + Bloody Joint + Red Carpet (2019)

Maayan Sophia Weisstub

Digital Collages

Maayan Sophia Weisstub showcases a new way of looking at the menstrual cycle, an integral part of the female experience. Shedding light on what is so often hidden, she creates a connection between the repressed and forbidden pubic blood to positive, sensual experiences; a glass of wine, a sought-after red carpet event.

Thus the outcast becomes a visible and positive experience, something one doesn't need to be ashamed of – something to accept with love.

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Feel the Flow (2019)

Iva Samina & Frau Rabe

Photography

In art and visual communication blood is mostly replaced by something else – may it be red paint, fabric, woolen threads, petals or other materials. That's exactly what the artists explicitly didn't want with this project: no metaphor, stylization or aestheticization, as they believe that menstruation as the prerequisite for giving life is aesthetic enough.

Feel the Flow aims to break the taboo around actual depiction of menstrual blood in order to deconstruct its associations tainted with shame.

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Krwawie - I bleed (2020)

Angelika Marciszewska

Photography (35mm)

[ Model: Klaudia Lewandowska @lewaluk ]

Polish photographer Angelika Marciszewska dedicates her works to body positivity in relation to the female body. This image is from the #krwawie (bleed) series which was created for the initiative Akcja Menstruacja (Menstruation Action), the first foundation in Poland to combat menstrual poverty and actively dismantles the period taboo. Her raw images destigmatize and call for self-love, in which body shapes and sizes are represented in the context of the period, far from the heteronormative view.

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OH SH*T! (2020)

Elsa Van Damke

Short Film (7:41 mins)

OH SH*T! is a short film that wants to unfuck the taboo around menstruation.

The viewer follows 27 year old Maggie on a date at her crush’s apartment. When she suddenly gets her period, she rushes to the bathroom — where she finds herself confronted with a monster that’s been living in her head for far too long.