Leakage Study
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To survive the Borderlands
you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.
-Gloria Anzaldúa
you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.
-Gloria Anzaldúa
A performance installation lasting between 90 minutes to a few hours where performers remain still, naked and let their body fluids leak freely (most likely drool, tears, urine).
The term “Leakage” refers to the body’s loss of fluid matter through holes or pores. The study is a literal exploration of how the body matters by opening the body’s channels/holes/pores, whereby what’s inside can leak to the outside. “Leakage” also refers to the ideas of a container/containment and its malfunction/failure. It’s a durational endeavor where stillness hosts a body’s biological process, the movement and performance of tears, sweat, drool, snot, urine and possibly blood and feces flowing out and subjected to gravity.
Originally conceived in 2010 for Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero’s TOO MUCH: A Queer Performance Marathon in San Francisco, Leakage Study is a response to the question “what is queer art/queer as tactic rather than queer as an identity politic?” The task of the performer (to leak or to allow the fluids to leak) is intended to be simple so that conceivably any body can do it. It relies more on continuous commitment and focused intention than on any sort of virtuosity. Given the strong influences of queer activism/struggle and radical performance art surrounding the marathon, the study tries to reference forms of body-based protest like hunger strikes, no-washing strikes, etc.
The study appropriates Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands theory across the U.S.-Mexico border by blurring the body’s physical border and allowing the free passage of fluids through the zone of the invisible Inside to the visible Outside. It’s an attempt to create an open and undefined space between the performer, the spectators and the material fluids—a potential space for meditation with social, spiritual and architectural implications.
The term “Leakage” refers to the body’s loss of fluid matter through holes or pores. The study is a literal exploration of how the body matters by opening the body’s channels/holes/pores, whereby what’s inside can leak to the outside. “Leakage” also refers to the ideas of a container/containment and its malfunction/failure. It’s a durational endeavor where stillness hosts a body’s biological process, the movement and performance of tears, sweat, drool, snot, urine and possibly blood and feces flowing out and subjected to gravity.
Originally conceived in 2010 for Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero’s TOO MUCH: A Queer Performance Marathon in San Francisco, Leakage Study is a response to the question “what is queer art/queer as tactic rather than queer as an identity politic?” The task of the performer (to leak or to allow the fluids to leak) is intended to be simple so that conceivably any body can do it. It relies more on continuous commitment and focused intention than on any sort of virtuosity. Given the strong influences of queer activism/struggle and radical performance art surrounding the marathon, the study tries to reference forms of body-based protest like hunger strikes, no-washing strikes, etc.
The study appropriates Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands theory across the U.S.-Mexico border by blurring the body’s physical border and allowing the free passage of fluids through the zone of the invisible Inside to the visible Outside. It’s an attempt to create an open and undefined space between the performer, the spectators and the material fluids—a potential space for meditation with social, spiritual and architectural implications.
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Leakage Study ♯1
10 January 2010, Too Much! Queer Performance Marathon at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory in San Francisco Performance: Jorge De Hoyos |
Leakage Study ♯2
1 May 2010, May Day at CounterPULSE in San Francisco Performance: Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Jesse Hewit, Macklin Kowal, Maryanne Brooks |
Leakage Study ♯3
14 October 2010, POW POW POW Action Art Festival at Viracocha in San Francisco Performance: Honey McMoney and Jorge De Hoyos |
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Leakage Study ♯4
27 May 2013 at an Abandoned Apartment in Berlin-Mitte Performance: Anna Lena Lehr, Andre Uerba, Asaf Aharonson |
Leakage Study ♯5
29 June 2013 - 18 September 2013, Dissident Desire | Chapter 0: Introducing Daydreams of Precarious Bodies at DISTRICT Kunst & Kulturförderung Berlin |
Leakage Study ♯6
30 June 2018, Listen to the Image, Look to the Sound (SODA1) at Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT) in Berlin Performance: Jorge De Hoyos |
