Lucy A. Sames

WET REST: Excess as Creative Practice

For this presentation I will introduce my formulation of ‘excess’ as a feminist posthuman, fluid mode of creative practice that prioritises contingency, ambiguity, disruption and the making of kin and community.

Excess is a counterhegemonic and antinaturalist interpretation of what are conventionally described as ‘altered states of consciousness’. In contrast to the existing cultural representations of altered states that perpetuate colonial narratives of exploration and expropriation, reinforce hierarchical binaries and centre individual transformation, my theorisation of excess instead foregrounds collective bodily protocols of desire and abundance.

Excess here resists the patriarchal inscription of othered bodies (of women, queer and disabled 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 universal human subject - 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.

Through case studies of art and curatorial practice, I show how excess, deployed as creative strategy in a variety of ways, is characterised by five affirmative and polyvalent modalities: as embodied knowledge; as queer; as liquid; as disruptive; as collectivity. Each of these operates as a disruption to habitual ways of working that opens up new, optimistic and unexpected realities.

Biography

I am a curator, writer, activist and researcher based in rural South Wales (UK). I earned my PhD ‘Wet Rest: excess as liquid praxis in art and curating’ from the Art Department at Northumbria University, Newcastle (2022). 

I am a Lecturer on MA Fine Art (online) at Falmouth University, UK. I write regularly for artists, journals, conferences and organisations and am on the editorial board of the Journal of Art & Writing (JAWS).