by Atabey Mamasita

The Plenitude Slut – a vindictive practice

preliminary notes: why, what, for whom

The Plenitude Slut is a practice that takes as its starting point the fact that joy, pleasure, and “non-reproductive” sexuality are, and have historically been, instrumentalized to other, exploit, control, demonize, violate, scapegoat and gaslight women, femme, non-binary, queer and LGBTAI+ people. The violence implicit in that instrumentalization has been experienced most harshly by racialized, “non-european” and non judeo-christian people during the process of establishing colonial subjugation as a societal norm.

The Plenitude Slut is a politically conscious practice. It asks you to create a moment of revenge against this still very present situation in which self care, healing, knowledge/awareness and agency can be exercised. It is queer and intersectional in its conception and approach, and is thus open, permisive and mindful of its own limitations. It begins by asking what moving/dancing can achieve in political terms for both the collective and for individuals who have suffered from hegemonic violence and its effects in their bodies, their psyche and their spirit.

As this is a practice which happens through you, it is  important that the space is held primarily for you. However, the practice is also one which is connected with your ancestry, i.e those who have come before, and also with those who are yet to come. It is addressed to a collective/circular/global matrix where your actions link you to the past and to the future, to others, other species, the soil, the oceans, the planet and beyond. It means that you are understood as a mobilizer and an enabler; as one important part of something bigger.

This practice aims to create something for/through you with the intention of making more space for us to live in ways that are joyful, fulfilling and embodied. Through this, we will add to the understanding the structures and conditions which inhibit us from living in this way, and contribute to transforming them.

The Plenitude Slut aims to carve a vindictive moment for you and others through doing something pleasurable in the first place. It emanates from the fact that the freedoms we have are the product of the struggles of many, and are also linked to a larger network of support in which other species and the planet contribute a huge, unacknowledged part. Through this practice, we will try to create forms of abundance, pleasure and joy that expand to others, that honor the pain of our ancestors and celebrate their accomplishments, creating more space for us and our siblings, for others in similar historical situations and for new generations. It’s a performative, humble and symbolic act, but it is also grounded in fact, as you will experience it directly. As its intention goes beyond you, it will mobilize our witchy power, affecting the past and future by affecting you first and also others around/perceiving you.



preparation

Find a place where you can move comfortably without being interrupted or feeling observed and where you can focus in a relaxed way. You may want to begin on a soft surface like a bed or a mattress and have pillows and a blanket nearby. Choose a place and an environment where you feel “safe” and sensual.

Wear something that permits/amplifies the sensations generated by your touch, something soft (maybe) or a stimulating material that you can easily remove if you wish.

This practice is for you to focus on your body, depart from it, from its capacities, needs, desires and knowledge.

You will need a sound system and music; 1 song for each section of the practice, 8 in total. I suggest songs that activate you but do not overtake you. Perhaps songs that mean something for you in terms of your own process of liberation and consciousness-building around gender and sexuality, and which are politically charged in some way. Your chosen songs will also set the timing for this practice, guiding you rhythmically to allow you to remain fully conscious of your body throughout. You can spend more time in each section if you need to by leaving some time in between the songs or adding more songs, or you can use your own time frame structure according to your own needs, intentions and ambitions.

Here is a playlist that I made for this practice if you need. Try to not concentrate on the lyrics, but on listening to your own body and thoughts.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2yG8TQrCSg7nnNPbnZrtKl?si=0b5c9f2091084b1b

1 - Tirzah: Make it Up
2 - DJYoung$avage: Who You Foolin
3 - Karol G: Bichota
4 - Celso Piña, Control Machete, Blanquito Man: Cumbia Sobre el Rio
5 - Quay Dash, Sega Bodega: U.A.F.W.M. 
6 - Mr Fingers: The Juice - Mixed
7 - Daphni: Cos-Ber-Zom Ne Noya - Daphni Mix
8 - Faka: Isifundo Sokuqala

The Plenitude Slut is divided into  8 parts; the first 7 are aimed at activating and opening your body, mobilizing sexual energy from your lower chakras upwards to the rest of your body. Based on tantric practice, the 7 initial parts aim to anchor bodily actions (breathing, sound, touch and movement) and connect them with embodied feelings, sensations, intentions, ideas and ideals. The final part is an expression of the momentum built in the initial 7 and is fully dedicated to acting out rage, in whatever form it manifests, and transforming it into performative revenge. This revenge is acted out with the intention of healing aspects of the past, present and future. Maybe you let some of the most powerful or subtle moments that you found come back, connecting them with the pain, struggles, resistance, joy and support from the past, present and future, as well as the ever supportive and inspiring energy of the universe (and what is more queer than that).

Before you start, please be mindful of your boundaries and needs, and don’t harm yourself physically or mentally. You can always tailor what you are doing to fit yourself, your body, setting, culture and history. There is no right or wrong, whatever you do should feel empowering and good. If you begin to feel overwhelmed at any moment, you can stop; and/or reach out later to your support network, and reward yourself with some self care and pampering activity.

Once you have finished the practice, you may also want to do some journaling: make notes to put down thoughts, experiences and reflections.

600


inverted triangle turning 4 dimensional spiral



legs

Let’s start by sitting on the floor, on a chair or lying down. Breathe calmly and then deeply in and out focusing on each breath, becoming conscious of your whole body. Closing your eyes might help. 

Our legs are what connect us to the earth and ground us. Place your hands on your thighs and start touching them, collecting some of the energy of your inner thighs and legs and moving it to your hips, ass and genitals. Use both hands, stroking, grabbing, massaging, caressing. 

Connect the sensations of your legs to all of those people that today, due to persecution, are forced to escape, migrate, or abandon the places where they have grown up. Consider yourself in relation to their stories, maybe you share a lot with them. Connect for a moment with their stories and situations, anchor your body to the land, the soil and the territory you are in, experiencing your body as an extension of that territory. Let it support you, grow into you, and think of all the effort made by those who came before you that have allowed you to be here in the humble form of today’s possibilities. Think of all the effort you have also made; honour that effort by touching your body, and where life force is stored. 

Wake up that energy/sensations and keep it flowing during all the practice. You can also rock gently, ondulate, sway and activate your whole body by the touch that its surroundings provide: the floor, the cushions, the blankets; letting it touch those surfaces activating every part your body touches. 



anus and genitals

Now, with one hand start touching your anus and with the other one your genitals, you can press them, squeeze them, pull them, or rub them. Do whatever works for you. You can activate them with your hands, your inner muscles (your pelvic floor, your sphincter and ass muscles, your bladder and different hip tensors), your breathing and your voice. You can also amplify this activation through movement; alternating being on all fours, sitting, lying face down and up; sometimes using your hands, and other times using the floor/mattress and/or the pillows and blankets. What is important is that the attention is on your lower chakras. 

Do that for a moment and connect with all of those whom in previous decades where not allowed to have and be the sex they are, the sex they wanted and needed to have, and/or that would have made them more fullfilled or fully them. Think of their lives in relation to yours, maybe you share some of their struggles. Connect also with their resilience, creativity and expression, and honor the recurrent, sexy, powerful and wholesome ways of living and the practices and ways they invented and that we are still practicing today. Connect with their moments of joy, and with their resistance, their fear, their pain, their anger and their unstoppable fierceness.



belly

Touch your belly with both hands, trace a spiral pattern clockwise starting at, and always passing by, your lower energetic centers (the root and sexual chakras). Expand the circle, reaching and connecting into your pelvis, your upper thighs and belly; bring your hands to rest with one hand covering your genitals and anus and the other on your belly button. Leave them there for a moment activating that connection. If you feel the sensation fading, you can manipulate your lower chakras to keep generating a rooting and a sexual activation. Hold yourself tightly for another moment, and activate your breathing. You can make some sounds too.

Feel the power that emanates from your umbilical center, a connection to a fire that has been passed to you and that you will be passing on. Harness the deep emotions of your ancestors for all the unfairness and violence they experienced, and how they mobilized and resisted. Feel held by their strength and their anger, feel held by your own strength and anger and the strength and anger of others in similar situations. 



heart

Using the hands, making deep and/or gentle upward strokes, carry some of the sensations of your activated lower centers into your torso and chest, making sure you touch your breast and nipples, and activate your lungs and the heart area. You can do this lying or sitting, or alternating, and include your arms, stroking them, hugging yourself at times, and opening the arms letting that energy flow outwards. Feel the beautiful sensation of connecting to the world, to yourself and others from your heart area. 

Allow yourself to connect to all of those who in the past weren’t able, or allowed to, love themselves, others and others like them. Link to their lives and the things that they might have gone through, and praise their struggles and the ways they found to overcome, survive, compromise and live with that harshness, and the expansive ways they expressed their genders, their love and the way they formed families, alliances and supportive networks. You might share some or a lot with them, and there is a big chance that such harshness might not change for others after you. Allow yourself to emanate love in all directions, and connect with the power of heartfulness, gratitude, compassion and love.



throat

Keep the previous sensation as embodied ones, and bring them to your body, to your limbs, your torso, your back and include your neck, back of your head, mouth and nose, and your jaw. Don’t forget to always include the lower parts of your body (your genitals, butt and anus) and your erogenous zones, creating a flow between all of them and a wholeness of erotic sensations that include deep and lighter feelings. Use your breathing and making deep sounds to open your throat and vocal cords. 

Bring to mind and feel connected to those who needed to scream, shout and create words to defend themselves and others. Those who fought for the right to have a better life than was permitted to them. Connect with their speech and voice, how they used these to creatively express how they felt  including their fury, their sharpness and their capacity to invoke, summon, and mobilize change. Maybe you have been in similar settings and with similar needs. They also use their voices to express how they felt and the ways they lived. Honor these ancestors by carrying their anger, their power and their beauty in your throat and mouth. A mouth and a throat that serve also for kissing, sucking, swallowing, licking, savouring, biting, chewing and consuming the world and others. 

Stick your tongue out and open the mouth cavity imagining also how you swallow and regurgitate your own genitals, anus and body, creating a multi directional charge and circular flow. Let the sound and sensuality of that action carry you for a moment. 



third eye

Allow what you have created and felt so far to envelope and travel through the whole body including your head. Become aware of what your ears can hear and your eyes can see, allow the energy to leave and return to your body. Focus also on your touch, the sensations in the parts of your body that are in contact with the things in your environment. Keep passing/moving that erotic energy flow in, through and out of your body without letting it fade away completely, becoming ever more present of your surroundings and how you perceive them through all of your senses. 

While you are moving, think of the creative ways in which your queer, non-binary and femme ancestors perceived and manifested the world through art, beliefs and ideas. Consider how these were celebrated and deeply valued by their communities, but in other cases invisibilized, marginalized and violated by colonizers with their religious, “civilizatory”, extractivist and exploitatives approaches. Connect with their vision, their wit and ability to fight for and inspire what came after them. See how your actions relate to theirs and how you are also carving space with your thoughts, actions and ideas for those who are coming after you. See beyond the current limitations placed on you and others like you, and permit yourself to imagine ways to undermine and dismantle them. Let that embodied witchy magic manifest!



crown

Feel the circuit of erotic energy flowing in and out of your body, your mind and your surroundings, connecting in an exchange between the past and the future. Feel yourself as one part of a much larger network of support, one that includes other living beings, bodies of water, mountains, open spaces and vital energy; allow yourself to be at one with its immensity.

Feel how your ancestors felt when they were immersed and in awe of these living, im/material systems. Feel also how they felt when those systems were put at risk, how they had to hide in order to protect their wisdom and each other. Channel the extreme confidence and wholesomeness they, and maybe you, feel when aware of being a creative manifestation of life interconnected with everything that exists, existed and will exist after you. Let your whole body react to this somatic richness, let the mind-awakening movement keep feeding this confidence/openness/lucidity.



listen - enact - listen

What this next and final moment encourages you to do is to take on what you have built up so far and let it manifest freely but consciously in movement, action, breath, sound or speech. Ask yourself: what can you do with your body in this moment to honor, enact and manifest the rage, the anger, the struggles, resistance, resilience, creativity, joy and beauty of your ancestral lineage, and how can you, with this performative offering, feed/transmit/open space for you and those  who are yet to come? 

Focus firstly and attentively to what is resonating from the previous stage of the practice and what is appearing now. Enact upon it; conversing with it and letting it manifest through you. Add your contribution too; and listen again to what your actions are channeling and saying. 

Once the last song is coming to an end, bring yourself to a moment of closure. Slowly reach a stillness and feel an appreciation for yourself for having completed this practice. Be appreciative too to all those before you who have made this moment possible. Use this moment of humility to feel appreciation and care for yourself, for others like you and for others coming after you.

These words are reminiscent of the work of activists from our current and previous decades. Let us use them as a final say, as an “Amen” or a “Namaste”: We have always existed, we have been valued and we were and are important members of our communities. We don’t need to do anything to be worth respect, love and protection, we simply deserve that by existing. We are strong, beautiful, creative, magical and critically different; we are of equal worth and should be treated with fairness and dignity. We will not continue to receive violence. We will not let anyone oppress us, kill us or persecute us without resisting. We will keep affirming ourselves and keep telling about our stories and struggles. We will not be silenced, we want and deserve to live fully and in bloom. We are here to be cheered and to cheer others like us. Our lives are the gift and manifestation of the divine in all of its power, and we hold that power. We  transcend the violence we have been subjected to, and we are able to transform our rage into actions, like this one, that create pleasure and celebrate, affirm and attach us strongly to this world.

Bio

Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita is a Colombian Caribbean artist based in London. Their multidisciplinary work takes form through moving image, performance, movement practices, community and pedagogical projects, curation and interventions to protect and enhance cultural heritage practices and sites relevant to minorities and social cohesion.
Producing predominantly embodied, edifying, caring, communal, pleasurable technologies and strategies of reclamation and resistance to hegemonic and historical violence and dereliction; they often work in collaboration with charities, architects and several international artists collectives, including SPIT! - Sodomites, Perverts, Inverts Together!; Vividero Colectivo, and Dance at the crossroads (as we walk), who unveil and confront coloniality and racism in international dance networks; constituting a mutual aid sociality of re-membrance where love and beauty is cultivated.
Their most recent works and co-creations have been presented at Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Verbo/Galleria Vermehlo (Sao Paulo), Volksbühne (Berlin), Kunsthalle Vienna, Montréal Arts Interculturels, Skopje Pride Week, Antwerp Queer Arts Festival, Migration Matters Festival (Sheffield), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge), Jupiter Artland (Edinburg), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, and in London at Thomas Dane Gallery, Auto Italia South East, Cell Projects Space, London Contemporary Music Festival, and Royal Academy of Arts.
Maria Romero has also collaborated with and/or performed for Amanda Piña, Meg Stuart, Anthea Hamilton, JW Anderson, Trajal Harrell, Isabel Schad, Carlos Motta, George Henry Lonely, Pedro Gomez Egaña, Boris Charmatz, Pina Bausch among others. 

carlosmariaromero.com
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Credits

Copyright: Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita (2021). The Score was commissioned within the frame of the project Scores for Pleasure by Przemek Kamiński. The Score can be accessed and used only through the website http://www.scoresforpleasure.com. Copying and redistributing the Score in any medium or format is not permitted. Only non-commercial uses of the Score are permitted. No derivatives or adaptations of the Score are permitted.