38C3

Ania Poullain-Majchrzak

Journalist, filmmaker, and quasi-popstar.


Session

12-29
21:10
40min
Postpartum Punk: make space for unhinged creativity
Ania Poullain-Majchrzak, Florence Devereux

After years as a journalist and filmmaker covering topics like crypto, holocaust and showbiz, everything changed for me 3 years ago after the birth of my daughter.

While I haven't planned to be a mother, I decided to keep this pregnancy at 41, however this grass turn out to be too high for lawn mower – I was ready to go for a rave, not to be locked in a baby dark room for 3 years.

I felt like my brain had been reprogrammed overnight. The analytical mindset I once relied on—quick to analyse, explore, and understand complex topics—seemed to vanish, replaced by a simpler, instinct-driven state that prioritized pure survival and nurturing yet mixed with unhinged chaos, aux naturelle psychedelic downloads plus no sense of inhibition or fear of being seen.

Hand cuffed to a rainbow I was gazing at the black clouds.

Despite the shock at this involuntarily IQ transplant, I quickly realised this new mind-tool-set was all in all fulfilling and liberating.

I became my own fire brigade with an alternative emergency strap-on.

Without the pressure to think analytically, I began channelling this raw energy into my joke band, creating what I now call postpartum punk movement.

The idea caught on – this summer we have been featured in the Guardian and The New Yorker.

This fuels my missionarism towards another level: how can we embrace this wild, intuitive mindset, not only as parents but as people? And could new technologies help us experience or even learn from this state?

Art & Beauty
Saal 1