Mother's Milk [video]

Working with the hospital archive protocole, Marie Ilse Bourlanges investigates the missing story of Ilse, her German grandmother who was alienated in the psychiatric hospital of La Timone in Marseille from 1950 until she died in 1983. Knowing almost nothing about her, except being labelled as schizophrenic, Marie Ilse recomposes collected fragments as a narrative patchwork, voiced to rehabilitate the silent presence of Ilse. The project starts with learning that Ilse's medical file cannot be recovered from the hospital archive, as such information is regularly pounded to avoid unnecessary archival storage.

– Filmed performance, 30min HD video loop 
– Video diptych, 22 min (preview 2min); in-situ projection in former psychiatric hospital isolation cell for women.  

Drawing on her research at the intersection of psychogenealogy versus the right to be forgotten, and physiological versus institutional memory, Bourlanges’ video work explores the interplay between the care and destruction of medical files, as well as the intensely visceral process of uncovering a missing family history. During her residency at the 3bisF art center, the artist closely observed two companies: one, commissioned by the National Archives, tasked with cleaning dust from protected documents; the other, hired by Montperrin Psychiatric Hospital to regularly destroy patient files no longer required to be retained. The destruction protocol of the latter follows strict guidelines for the protection of private data.

Image: Marie Ilse Bourlanges, Juliette Larochette, Roman Tkachenko
Sound (voice recording): Cécile Tafanelli 
Editing: Marie Ilse Bourlanges
Production: Centre d’art 3 bis f, Région Sud – Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur
With the support of: Mondriaan Fonds, Stichting Stokroos, société Beaver, A2C entreprises, Centre Hospitalier Montperrin

Displace, Centre d’art 3 bis f, Aix-en-Provence, France 
Manifesta 13, Les Parallèles du Sud 

Special thanks to ♥
Laurent Delbes, Ivan Pion Goureau, Elena Khurtova,
Diane Pigeau, Fatiha Allagui, Simon Argowla, Cécile Tafanelli,
Patricia Bourlanges, Juliette Larochette, Roman Tkachenko,
Béatrice Kordon, Alban Karsten, Sam de Groot