Overflow
Throughout our lives in society, we are conditioned to different types of behavior and conduct that constitute us as social individuals. Such conditioning, which entails a series of ideological, political, economic and social clashes, establishes expectations for the conduct of life in society. Molds or models of behavior inhabit different layers of the body, whether consciously or unconsciously.
In the stages of human development, the ability to control physiological needs is one of the first signs of the body's self-control. In a child's development, the ability to control the body's sphincters establishes one of the first traits of independence in relation to parents, involving their own awareness of models of conduct in social life. Along with physiological self-control and the identification of the appropriate place for such needs (bathroom), the social distinction between public and private is also established.
Everyone who acquires this ability in adult life carries bodily memories of this transition period in which the boundaries between public and private are still blurred. Overflow accesses such transitional memories of the individual's first autonomy, expressed in the ability to discern what is appropriate or inappropriate in a given context.
Since the adult body is already conditioned to control the appropriate time to urinate, Overflow proposes an inversion: deautomating the body's trained processes as a possibility of “controlling lack of control”. This displacement inevitably accesses a considerable range of internal conflicts, which, starting from the intentional act of urinating one's pants in public, expands to an entire complex network of conditioning incorporated throughout life, such as the dichotomous notions that underlie the concept of adequacy. or inadequacy.
The lack of physiological control of the body takes us back to situations of fragility present both in childhood, in which we are acquiring self-control skills, and also in old age, in which such acquired controls begin to fail. Facing lack of control puts us in direct contact with the body's heightened vulnerability in extreme phases of life.
Contemporary macro society with its excessive media and control mechanisms, so far from the human dimension in its means of action and production, has as its counterpoint a growing need to turn to the body as a resumption of micropolitics necessary for life. The needs for reconnection with one's own body, and with the body of others, end up driving the interests that unite women willing to overflow as a collective.
The action, when proposed, begins to exist from the moment the public call is announced, with the attitude of registration by interested parties, in which each one connects directly with the proposition, and continues in the preparation meetings. On the day of the action, concentration is structured around connection and grounding exercises, exploring the ability to delve deeper into pulsating issues in the intimate, individual and collective spheres in each body. In addition to these three spheres and many others, reactions and negotiations with all the bodies that perform in direct relationship with the public are present, in addition to all the incalculable unpredictability during the action.
Transbordação expands into several layers, accesses micropolitical levels and expands into a wall of bodies self-proclaimed as feminine, crossed by the complexities of the present.
June 2017
SMÉK, Dora. “Transbordação”. eRevista Performatus, Inhumas, ano 5, n. 18, jul. 2017. ISSN: 2316-8102.