No Need to Confess, 2025
Presentation at PAKT Foundation and W139, Amsterdam

No Need to Confess is an installation initiated by Aimée Phillips and Nina Linde Läuger; in a multidisciplinary manner it aims to interweave different perspectives (historical, intimate and socio-political) on abortion and confession. In doing so, it aspires to offer a platform for practices that expose the taboos relating to abortion - being a practice that has been present throughout times.
The installation combines and reworks (self-)fabricated archival material from different eras that have normalized and lived out misogynistic structures or rep- resent empowering practises by people with wombs. As examples: the use of the peacock flower and penny royale as abortifacients, the Angkor Wat bas relief (A.D. 1150) from Cambodia representing a massage abortion and the aesthetics of the confession booth. Part of the installation is a sound work, leaking out of the confession booth, that encloses reworked fragments of interviews conducted by Femke Stasse with people who, directly or indirectly, experienced an abortion.
The installation is an invitation to enter the layered narratives and complex relation- ships between image and imagination, the lived experiences of people with wombs, the hidden and the unfurled, and how abortion is submerged in taboo and censorship.


Performances by Ann Rodriguez, Bel Mc Laughlin, Clara Saito


Link to sound: NO NEED TO CONFESS