Drawing Maternal Machines and other Fantasies of Care

Ideations of artificial wombs, robotic nannies, cots with facial recognition and self-driving prams are part of a long history of motivations to use technologies to support, alter or even replace humans in situations of gestation, reproduction and care. Reflecting society's entangled fantasies about care and often reinforcing cultural tropes about gendered roles, the imagined possibilities about technologies in such sensitive and emotionally charged topics are worth examining. In this paper I present ways in which I have critically explored imaginaries and ideations in spaces related to maternal and infant care, accompanied by a practice of drawing that was fluid, creative, speculative, suggestive and communicative, and enabled an engagement with the complexity of machines and quantifying approaches that exist in a realm abundant with non-numerical and ancestral forms of bodily knowledge. Drawing was also useful in activities with participants, where we collectively discussed and imagined scenarios with technologies for care.