PhD Research

Wet Rest: excess as liquid praxis in art and curating

Lucy A. Sames, December 2021

Abstract

Through academic discourse and art and curatorial practice, this thesis proposes a feminist posthuman theorisation of “excess” as a counterhegemonic and antinaturalist interpretation of what are conventionally described as “altered states of consciousness”. The existing cultural representations perpetuate colonial narratives of exploration and expropriation; they reinforce hierarchical binaries; and they centre the individual transformation of the universal human subject.

My theorisation of excess resists the patriarchal inscription of othered bodies (of women, queer folk and Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) as always already in a state that is altered from, and excessive to, the norm of the white, cis-gendered male. Drawing on, in order to counter, the characterisation of women in particular as “excessive” (too many emotions, too many body fluids, too much exuberance, not enough control), this novel formulation of excess operates as a disruptive force to the humanist model and to hegemonic power. Excess is characterised here by seven affirmative and polyvalent modalities: as a state of knowledge; as a revolution at the level of the molecular; as immanent and embodied; as queer; as liquid; as disruptive; as collectivity. Enabling these seven modalities to flow together, I take a methodological and theoretical approach through the liquid and through my research project Wet Rest (2017-19) in particular. Both the material and metaphorical conditions of the liquid emphasise the contingency and interconnectivity of excess and the creative and cooperative opportunities it offers to artists and curators.

Through case studies of my art and curatorial practice, I show how these modalities of excess are deployed as creative strategies in a variety of ways: in collaborative working, in intoxication; in the use of folk magic; and in improvisation or the aleatory. Each of these operates as a disruption to habitual ways of working that opens up new, optimistic and unexpected realities.

Keywords: excess; feminisms; posthumanism; disruption; control; drugs; psychedelics; altered states of consciousness; sensory deprivation; art; curating; counterculture; diagram; practice.