The Leaky Bodies Archives is an interactive installation which documents practices of leaking bodies. Contrary to the conventional understanding of the body as a closed, autonomous system, this project invites us to consider the body as porous, fluid, and inextricably intertwined with its surroundings. We (BLOB) adhere to breaking the one-body-one-person rule (Boll & Müller 2020) that has already been challenged by feminist scholars who present bodies and boundaries as leaky, permeable or dissolving (Shildrick 1997, Mol 2002, Hildyard 2017). The aim of the archives is to contribute to a radical rethinking of bodies and their boundaries and to undo the certainty of the body as unchanging, whole and one. Rather than a mere conceptual intervention, we aim to articulate how such an embodiment is practiced. We ask: how do leaky bodies feel? 

We invite visitors to actively contribute to the archive by engaging their leaky bodies and documenting this experience in detail. Likening the process of documenting to a process of tasting – in which (e.g., tea) tasters learn to taste nuances through finding nuances in language (finding specific words for what they taste), we develop a language for specific forms of leaking. The process of documenting and archiving is a continues method-in-the-making. By experimenting with different categorizations, storing, and note-taking, the archive itself becomes a playground for radical forms of merging and leaking. 

References: 

Boll, T., Müller, S.M. Body Boundary Work: Praxeological Thoughts on Personal Corporality. Hum Stud 43, 585–602 (2020). 

Hildyard, D. (2017). The second body. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple. Ontology in medical practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Scholtes, U. (2022), ‘Feeling techniques: Making methods to articulate bodily practices’, Ph.D. thesis, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.

Scholtes, U. (2023). Finding Words for Feeling Bodies: Exploring Drawing Techniques in Dutch Care Practices. Medical Anthropology, 42(8), 828-844.

Scholtes, U. (2024) ‘Working Words: Words as tools to visualize embodied labour’, Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Special Issue 2: ‘Ways of Writing (WoW)’.

Shildrick, M. (1997). Leaky bodies and boundaries: Feminism, postmodernism and (bio)ethics. London: Routledge.