Julia Kotziamani

Administrations 2024 MFA Degree Show

Installation of magnolia paint, carpet tiles, the full bundle and notes taken during a maternity discrimination tribunal, documents requested by defendant including 3 years of redacted bank statements and full medical records, waiting room furniture, audio (on hold music) in a Bisley storage locker, film.

Since the show in August a significant part of the court ephemera and film element have become illegal to share, what follows are re-edited and redacted transcripts of the audio and some of the less controversial film footage.

Administrations 2022

Hand-cut unpaid utility bills

Series of 32

-----------Break ------------

Her cracks and creases

The birth comes and goes, a suitably psychedelic experience.

I meet her at 9.45 and am home by midday, then on to the school run.

I resent Maggie Nelson, who managed to turn having a baby into an epic. Imagine having time to have a baby. Imagine having even more time to write a book about it.

I struggle to breastfeed as the implants have filleted half of my milk ducts out of order.

Sharp blades,

Clack-clack-clack,

skipping across plains of ribs and carving through gristle and tendon and fat.

Clack, clack, clack,

cutting each little pearl from the beard of tissue which holds them,

a flick and a flounce and a bounce-lung-bounce.

I pump and pump and we feed and feed,

and there is never quite enough,

and there is almost enough

and my vanity hasn’t made me completely useless.

And the baby is a perfect peach, and we are all blissfully happy, and so very, very tired.

And then it happens. The call. The police.

 At first I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal.

We have been round this dance before.

In fact have been more than 25 court appearances and orders, and so many applications, which should mean something, and are live and there to protect us.

This time the call comes when we are having a dinner party, I am half-cut and flirting and eating strawberries in dark chocolate.

It always comes in times of rest, pleasure

there  might even have been sex.

One of those nights where everyone is testing if they want more

juice and eye-contact

and laughing and innuendo.

We lit candles and drank heady red wine.

This is a cold shower, sure, but not much more.

 He has done this before; I explain this to the officer.

 she is a wall.

I am unnerved, but it will get sorted out tomorrow.

We drink more wine,

we kiss.

But it is important.

This time it has played out as planned.

Two sets of social workers, two police forces.

This is his magnum opus and I am still bleeding postpartum.

I looked away for a second and I rested.

 I dared to be blissfully happy, just for a few weeks.

This dance is different.

I have to work across jurisdictions, across agencies, outside of court, and all in a post-covid catchup and everything systemic is stretched to it’s limits, and it’s stretched beyond it’s limits, and there have been budgets cut and phones left unmanned and structures fully removed.

We are in the swamp now.

We long for the walls of an institution that we may be held at all.

Our bones ache for the clarity of a pamphlet,

the walls of a waiting room

that we may know we are officially waiting at all. For once, we are desperate to be on the list.

This is a new kind of horror. A false accusation and 8 weeks of nightmare commence.

I no longer care about the maternity discrimination case, but have to file the paperwork regardless.

The children are gone. I can’t speak to them. I can’t see them.

I float round and round and round a sea of phone calls. I grasp for lifelines, a full-moon circle cries with me, we build a fire on the beach. I am liquid. I howl and flail, there is no pain like this. I want to say I have no words for it, but the truth is there are words, but I can’t speak them, even now without crying. Even years later. I need to direct so many agencies towards one another, so many people need to hear the story from the beginning and I am on hold, and hold and hold…

I think about committing acts of unspeakable violence.

But instead I make complaints and file to the courts for emergency hearings.

I cry to police, I tell the social worker to come and see us. I call them.

The system has been set into play against me and now I need to turn around a moving train. I nearly die from the force,

but I have to stand here, I have to drop everything else.

My miserable milk supply dries up and the social worker suggests I see the GP.

I cannot, as I cannot take on any more institutions and I know too much. If I go mad he wins, and it will open up all the old wounds and orders there to protect them in the first place.

I must simply wait. And you must wait here too.

Sit down!

I imagine another mother, a better one, with abundant milk for her baby.

One who is attentive and does not chain-smoke and sit all afternoon on hold and all night scream-crying herself to sleep.

We move to bottle feeding. And I zoom out of my body, rise far above the shore and I see her, fag in hand on the balcony, tear after tear rolling down her dying face. A rock in her chest where her heart ought to be and a frozen centre that will never quite thaw no matter how hot the summer sun.

----break black----