UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

Master of Arts in Media Studies- Film

MEL ROSE AGUILAR- MAESTRO

A 3- Channel Public Video Installation on Public Breastfeeding
as a Gendered Transgressive Act and Maternal Practice

Thesis Adviser:
Prof. Rob Rownd, MFA
College of Mass Communication
University of the Philippines

Date of Submission:

November 28, 2017

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ABSTRACT

Aguilar- Maestro, M.R. (2017). 3- Channel Public Video Installation on Public Breastfeeding as a
Gendered Transgressive Act and Maternal Practice,Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of the
Philippines College of Mass Communication.

“Call of Nurture” is a public video installation that con-textualizes Public Breastfeeding as a

Gendered Transgressive Act and Maternal Practice. It locates maternal performativity in public

female toilets, as a site of repression, oppression, and “cultural repository”1 for gendered

transgressive acts, specifically public breastfeeding. This project stems from the collective

experience and diurnal dealings of the proponent as a breastfeeding mother and other breastfeeding

mothers. Feelings of anxiousness and panic to keep public breastfeeding "discreet" which is caused

by the repressive- oppressive public- private space translates to the anxiousness and panic caused by

the conscious recognition of a panoptic entity. The project is executed following an approach that

simulates surveillance systems in public spaces. The public video installation is installed in an open

public space that hosts discussions and public interactions such as the CMC Dap- Ay, and/ or at the

CMC Plaridel Hall lobby. An experimental video featuring footages of mothers breastfeeding an

infant within public toilets filmed and edited in the style of a surveillance footage will be shown in

a 3- channel set of monitors mounted on a triad of wooden panel boards at the centre of the

exhibition site. Surveillance cameras are installed within the vicinity to include spectators as

participants which serves as critique and protest to break the repressive- oppressive norms on public

performance.

1Gershenson, O., & Penner, B. (2009). Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
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Private spaces in public spheres, even those that are assigned as ‘female spheres’ are hinged

on patriarchy since the public gaze is male-oriented2. The project aims to simulate a vacuum where

public breastfeeding as a gendered transgressive act is performed while it represses and oppresses

the maternal as it intends to elicit the viewers’ voyeuristic fantasies.”

With supporting theories on the Male Gaze by Laura Mulvey, the Panopticon by Michel

Focault, and other relevant concepts on examining repressive- oppressive maternal and gender

performativity, the proponent is able to equate the act of public breastfeeding as a rite of defilement

while locating spaces of abjection, zones of repression and transgression under the lens of the

repressive- oppressive male-oriented public gaze.

2K., Day. (n.d.). Being feared: Masculinity and race in public space. Environment and Planning, 38, 569-586.
Retrieved October 10, 2016, from https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/a37221.pdf.