Cyberfeminism emerged in the 1990s as a feminist response to the growing influence of digital technology and the internet. It examines the ways technology both perpetuates and challenges traditional gender roles, and emphasizes the opportunities for empowerment as well as the risks of reinforcing inequalities. The internet and its virtual spaces offer platforms for marginalized voices, enabling women, queer and trans* people to create communities, share knowledge, and challenge dominant narratives. 

Structured as a sound performance-game, Mother*hood Instruction (2021–2025) inherits the ideas of cyberfeminism and how it relates to the automation of reproductive labour; unpaid or undervalued labor that sustains human life and wellbeing. This labor encompasses a diversity of forms of caregiving: child-caring, cooking, cleaning, and emotional support. The sound component of the game consists of personal stories of the performers/participants from the initial version of Mother*hood Instruction that took the form of a performance in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2021. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, all of the project’s performers left the country. This new version of the work features personal stories of the original performers, some of whom were forced to return to Russia due to the country’s patriarchal legal system, which heavily impacted them as mothers.

Mother*hood Instruction introduces a cyber environment for the emergence of a cyber child — an artistic embodiment of the shared response-ability of motherhood. Structured like an interactive game, the sound performance/sound work can only progress when the basic needs of the cyber child are met. In order to perform the actions required to care for the cyber child, the viewer/player has to understand the cyber child’s needs. When the viewer/player hears the call, they have to decide whether to answer it, wait, or ignore it. The viewer/player will soon discover that answering the cyber child’s needs will be challenging; these needs are embedded in the game’s code, so one must understand the underlying logic to satisfy the cyber baby’s needs. Regardless of the answer, making a decision (selecting one of the alternatives offered in the game) moves forward the narrative of the sound performance.

— Marin Shamov

Follow the link below to read her essay Mother*hood Instruction: a monologue