Spillovers 2022-3

 The desire to bring the real body violently to life in the words of the book (everything that is written exists).

Monique Wittig

In 2020, a book was found in a well. This well, as many other of life’s cavities, was contaminated by superficial practices of intensive monoculture. Its water, having turned unsanitary, had then dried up for quite a long time. It was inside this hole, then, dried up yet viscerally imprinted by the memory of water, that a translation of “Lesbian peoples: material for a dictionary” written in 1976 by Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig, was found. The glossary presented here proposes a continuity with Wittig and Zeig’s clairvoyance, by elaborating further on the rings and fiction bags that Spillovers must touch and weave in order to
tangle the times and produce water.

Ritó Natálio

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The basis for Spillovers is the book Lesbian peoples: material for a dictionary. Written in 1976 by Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig, this is a dictionary for lovers, outlining the contours of an emotional, sensorial and political lexicon. Ritó Natálio builds a fabled re-reading of this iconic work of lesbian feminism, in the form of a multi-voice conference where a current transfeminist glossary is addressed in dialogue with the memory of this book. Spillovers are lovers or perhaps transitive states of identity, they summon the body, eroticism and somatic experience to create alternatives to current ecological problems and, eventually, to the production of water.

This film-performance, co-produced by Batalha, was developed, collectively and cumulatively, with collaborations from different spillovers: Amador Alina Folini, with whom Ritó started the project and developed the choreographic scores; Josefa Pereira and Teresa Ves Liberta in performance and text; Liz Rosenfeld with filmic contribution; Aline Belfort in the audiovisual dimension; Odete in music and singing; testimonials by dancer Eríc Santos, nonbinary multi-artist Lui L’Abbate and indigenous activist and psychologist Geni Núñez; a Kaibô piece by Amanda Silva and Margot Silva; in addition to a whole network of iconographies and textualities that overflow the cosmovisions of this invented community.

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The process of developing Spillovers was supported by two European projects.

In 2020, Create to Impact Network/ supported the process of re-writing the book Lesbian peoples: material for a dictionary, in dialogue with other contemporary references as Astrida Neimamis, Audre Lorde, Dionne Brand, Kathryn Yusoff, Isabelle Stengers, Malcom Ferdinand, Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Ursula K. Le Guin, among others.

In 2021, Pass the Mic! Decolonizing education through arts connected Ritó Natálio to an artistic residency in a secondary school in Amadora, in the periphery of Lisbon, working with a group of students weekly over a period of three months between the fields of contemporary dance and performance, moving questions that connect ecology, gender identity and sexuality, but also movement, performance and revolt.

In 2022, the process culminated in a solo performative reading of the work that was presented in different contexts, as Portugal Arts Encounters in Coimbra and Short Theater Festival in Rome. In parallel, different teaching experiences connecting fictional and performative protocols, were developed in dialogue with Spillovers: two editions of a 4-month Fabulatory in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation coordinated with Amador Alina Folini, and a semestral Performance Laboratory in the Performance and Gender Studies Master offered by the University of Venice.

In 2023, the renovated Batalha Cinema commissioned an expanded and final version of the work, with 5 performers on stage and collaboration of several artists off-stage, which is now ready to tour.

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Spillovers intertwines performance and writing, imagination and somatic experience, transfeminism and ecology. In addition to the collective film-performance, the project unfolds into a publication and an autonomous film installation, which can be presented in exhibition, film screening and educational contexts. The workshops are also valued as complementary actions that follow the presentation of Spillovers.

Premiere in Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto. © Paulo Cunha Martins

Still © Aline Belfort

Premiere in Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto. © Paulo Cunha Martins

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