Founders/Lead Artists/Curators of Project AfterBirth write:
This week marks the release of PASSAGE; a ground-breaking new contemporary music album by British artist and curator duo Mila Oshin and Kris Jager (aka Drunk With Joy) about their two extremely opposed experiences of birth and new parenthood, the first of which left Oshin with permanent physical trauma.
PASSAGE is available as a music download, but is also published as a beautiful limited edition poetry collection, which includes the music album as a CD insert.
Raw, intimate and at times brutally honest, the PASSAGE poems on which the music album is based mark Oshin’s inner journey as she dealt with her first hospitalised birth and its repercussions, her experience of new parenthood and, eventually, her remarkable second home birth without a midwife present.
Each of the songs on the PASSAGE album were written, performed and produced by Oshin in collaboration with her long-term artistic partner and the father of her children, Kris Jager, with whom she has worked as artist duo Drunk With Joy for more than ten years. To date, Drunk With Joy’s work has been broadcast, performed and sold in more than fourteen countries over five continents.
The publication/release of PASSAGE will be accompanied by two short films, available to watch on Drunk With Joy’s YouTube Channel from mid-February.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Mila Oshin is an Exeter based lyric poet, vocalist, composer, filmmaker and curator. In 2014, Mila Oshin and Kris Jager duo founded Project AfterBirth, an independent interdisciplinary art and research project aimed at shedding light on current Western pregnancy & birth practices, investigating their impact on early parenthood experiences, and informing their future. As a starting point, in 2015 Project AfterBirth produced the first ever international art exhibition in the world on the subject of early parenthood. Spanning the visual, performance, literary, film and digital arts, the exhibition launched in the UK in October 2015, featuring 39 autobiographical works by established international contemporary male and female artists from across five continents about their personal 21st century pregnancy, birth or new parenthood experiences. Project AfterBirth‘s exhibition was supported by the Museum of Motherhood (New York), the Birth Rites Collection (Manchester), the Photographer’s Gallery (London), White Moose (Devon), and Arts Council England.