Rita Natálio: Water Carriers and Spillovers
Water Carriers and SpilloversFormat: Haptical text
English Translation: Miguel Cardoso
Text: Rita Natálio
Collaboration: Alina Ruiz Folini
Photo: Rita Natálio. Museu Marítimo de Ílhavo’s Collection
In 2020, a book was found in a well. This well was, like most cavities in life are, contaminated by the superficial endeavours of an intensive monoculture. Its water had turned unsanitary and then dried up indefinitely. It was inside this hole, 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 to forge a sense of continuity with Wittig and Zeig’s divination, by further elaborating on the rings and fiction bags that Spillovers must touch and weave so as to tangle the times and produce water.
Spillovers’ mesh: Astrida Neimamis, Etel Adan, Dionne Brand, Karrabing Film Collective, Kathryn Yusoff, Isabelle Stengers and Philippe Pignarre, Malcom Ferdinand, Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig, Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Ursula K. Le Guin.
Re-reading “Lesbian peoples: material for a dictionary” (1976) by Monique Wittig & Sande Zeig.
Rita Natálio is a performance artist, writer and researcher. She is presently working on a series of lecture-performances (“Anthroposcenes”, 2017; “Geophagy”, 2018; “Fossil”, 2020) that are directly linked to her research on climate change and art practices.
