Scene - Volume 2, Issue 1-2, 2014

Uncovered is an interactive installation based on a simple yet complex performance system that uses the participants’ clothes as a springboard for devising material for the show ad hoc. Everyday clothes are performing in Uncovered and consist the material for the show. They are the objects that tranverse from a ‘silent existence’ to an ‘oral state’ open to appropriation (Barthes [1957] 2009: 131). Gaston Bachelard would argue that ‘immensity is an intimate dimension’ (Bachelard [1958] 1994: 194) and also that ‘immensity is a philosophical category of a daydream’ ([1958] 1994: 183). During an interview session the audience/participant encounters the projected image of one of his or her clothes and re-thinks, rejects, remembers, reflects, resists with this image. The artist makes a rough copy of the garment using white fabric while the sound designer picks up sound from the clothes and composes a short sound piece. The team of three (performer, sound designer and the artist) with the use of projection, live camera feed, sound, the body of the performer and the piece of clothing itself, present a two-minute improvisation to each one of the audience/participants. The audience are invited in an intimate space to daydream and reflect by looking at the image of one of their clothes. In this visual essay I will use the metaphor of zooming in the network-like-texture of a fabric in an attempt to communicate the experience of Uncovered: the layers and immense weaving of thoughts, emotions, memories that was triggered by the delimiting image of the participants’ clothes.

The word ‘costume’, like ‘design’, connotes both artefact (noun) and action (verb), highlighting costume design as an active practice and activating object, capable of dynamically intervening between the body and space. This article looks to the affective and effective impact elicited by highly performative quotidian garments outside the theatre and how, linked to ancient mythology, human history and current sociopolitical events, they have been critically adopted for live performance. Focusing on the universally beguiling red dress, referred to by Anaïs Nin as capable of ‘alarming the heart with the violent gong of catastrophe’, the costume is discussed as a spatial body-object, disrupting and charging social environments to reveal their ‘evental’ nature: calling up monumental moments, productive aesthetic encounters and multiple daily experiences. This reiterates the complexity of our contemporary condition, in which we cannot separate the theatrical from the sociopolitical: something Jon McKenzie maintains could be understood through the critical tool of ‘performance design’ – a constructive means of drawing upon and critiquing the proliferation of manifold events played out in the new century. Referencing my own research-informed practice (created and often articulated in collaboration with choreographer/dancer, Carol Brown), this article will theorize costumes as spatial body-objects as well as active and activating agents that are integral to complex spatiotemporal webs, particularly in relation to our highly mediated reality.

Figures e Fantasmas propose the creation of costumes during two hours. This performance explores the concepts of performance, non-performance, repetition and performance installation.

This article considers how costumes contribute to choreographic aesthetics through their capacity to be repeated. I develop different conceptions of repetition – replication (copying); representation (appearance within a frame that represents an image); and reproduction (as construction or manufacture) of costume objects and ideas over time. Being interested in the material process of making and wearing costumes, it also investigates how repetition leads to the possibility of invention. Using Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image to discuss costumes as objects within a dance archive and within live choreography, it examines an early modern dance form called Natural Movement (NM) as well as seminal postmodern works from the 1970s. It elaborates on the iconic functions of costume in contemporary choreography in relation to Roland Barthes’ writings on the ‘fashion system’, and considers how the costume becomes a sign of its own history. Part of this project to understand repetition requires recognition that the movement quality of texture in a garment, actualizes the experience of affective work taking place in choreography. The experience of repetition in the costume-object therefore leads to a more critical response towards the role of costume in dance and performance.

Map 01 (Vale Tudo) integrates Erika Schwarz’s currently research about costume as performance and appropriation of objects, in relation to the main supplier of scenographic materials from Rio de Janeiro: the S.A.A.R.A. – Society of Friends Adjacent to Alfandega Street commercial shopping district. Articulating personal experiences, cultural traditions and questions about Brazilian artistic productions in contemporaneity, this four hours performance uses the performativity and the theatricality of the real to problematize not only the relationship between production and creation within a project of costume or scenery, but its own use of materials, ready-made pieces and everyday objects as a metalinguistic issue. The performatic action begins with the performer/designer arriving at S.A.A.R.A. equipped with a large map of the region. In this map, a route has been traced out, the fruit of prior research, which it is permeated by, leading the performer to find different shapes and colours. Along this path, multiple purchases are made, initiating the accumulation process of materials and the composition of costumes in situ. It culminates in the creation of a theatrical figure/body and also in the radical (and surrealistic) transformation of objects – at first banal – in the eyes of another (attentive observer or mere passer-by).

Clothing design for dance is an area that has been little documented, particularly in relation to the experience and perception of the dancer. Contemporary dance and clothing can both be understood as fundamentally phenomenological and as such there is further potential to investigate the lived experience of wearing clothing in dance. This article approaches dress in the context of the moving and dancing body, and it aims to develop an understanding of the role of dress in dance by focusing on the sensory, embodied experience and perception of the performer. It addresses questions of how clothing is perceived in movement by the performer, how and if clothing’s design intention, materiality and form motivate physical response, and what conscious or unconscious cognitive processes may be at play in this interaction between the active body and clothing. The intention is to propose developed methods for designers across clothing disciplines to contribute in a meaningful way to the overall dance work. The article draws on an analysis of my practice-led research that employs embodied experience of dress to inform the design and development of clothing as communication and performance. The research has involved close collaboration with a dancer, analysis of recorded interviews, and visual documentation of design and movement. The research has produced data on the dancer’s experience and perception of garments in performance and this is discussed here in relation to writings on perception, performance, the body and cognition. The research is approached through theory and practice and draws on interviews, observation and lived experience. This article is developed from an earlier conference paper that investigated the role and developed potential of clothing in contemporary dance that was presented at the 4th Global Conference: Performance: Visual Aspects of Performance Practice, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, held in Oxford on 17–19 September 2013.

This article introduces Sally E. Dean’s ‘Somatic Movement & Costume Project’ by presenting examples of the ‘somatic costumes’ created and the costume design, choreographic and pedagogic methodologies applied. ‘Somatic costumes’ aim to facilitate multi-sensorial experiences that change our relationships to ourselves, others and the environment. Although costume has been incorporated in performance for centuries, this project argues for a critical social–cultural paradigm shift: the aesthetic and movement of the performance work comes from the somatic experiences (kinaesthetic and sensorial) of the costume, rather than the costumes being designed to enhance an aesthetic already established in advance. This is also inherent in the costume design process itself: we start with what somatic experiences we would like to enhance or generate as opposed to the visual aesthetic. This approach has the potential to not only instigate new ways of moving, being, perceiving, creating, teaching and performing, but to also foster social–cultural understanding. This project aims to create bridges between somatic practices, costume design, culture and performance.

This article focuses on the aesthetic implications innate to the introduction of tight-fitting rehearsal-style costume, a leotard, to the dance studio and stage. In ballet, the pared-down and subtle design of such costumes is found in many dance works from the twentieth century until today, including the ‘black and white ballets’ by George Balanchine, or ‘ballet-ballets’ by William Forsythe. These works are also considered plotless and seem to deter the viewer from the theatrical conventions of plot lines, characters and narratives. This article is concerned with that which is highlighted in such works: the dancer’s moving body and the leotard as a costume that particularly refers to the performer at work and in own cultural setting. The look into the relationship between the dancers and leotard as a costume type communicates important information about the performer’s work and their development of roles in such repertoire. The closer consideration of this relationship in reference to the aesthetic of practice-clothes ballet also discloses plenty about the artistic potentials in such choreography and performance, revealing how the use of leotard as a stage costume has both furthered and challenged some of ballet’s traditions and cultural conventions.

When we meet a character in a performance, the implicit understanding is that they have existed until the point where we join their journey and will continue existing after we leave them. Their clothing tells a hi/story to the audience before we hear them speak and before any action takes place. As a Costume Designer and Lecturer, my awareness of costuming as an anthropological practice has led me to explore these principles using myself as the subject of scrutiny. For one year I am logging every clothing combination I go through along with memories, prices, locations and dates, etc. in order to explore the sub/conscious clothing decisions I make and the stories, embedded in my clothes, that I am surrounded by every day. What does my wardrobe mean to me inwardly and reveal to my audience outwardly, and how does this ‘me-search’ extend my artistic practice?

This article explores the subculture of cosplay, short for ‘costume play’. In this particular practice, fans create and wear costumes that allow them to re-enact existing fictional characters from popular culture. These outfits and subsequent performances are a physical manifestation of their immersion into the fictional realms of television, games and movies, among others. Cosplay can be understood as the culture of costuming that occurs beyond the institutional remit of the theatre. Especially in western countries, cosplay is intimately connected to the carnivalesque space of the fan convention, where fans gather and re-enact their favourite characters. I argue that embodiment plays a unique role in cosplay that should be interrogated closely. The fan performer relies on multiple bodies and repertoires that are intimately connected to the fan’s identity and the performed character.

This visual essay presents a body of work that uses a ‘language of flesh’ and fabric to make explicit the relationship between the body, image and our increasingly material world. Recognizing that our skin is a site of inscription for social and cultural ideals, it considers how these images have been internalized and appropriated onto the body. As the temptation to sculpt our body through clothing and cosmetic surgery becomes increasingly pressing, it is important to pose questions as to how and why we are fashioned. Weaving together feminist concerns, and touching upon (syn)aesthetic discourses to frame and embellish these samples of practice, it is hoped that certain assumptions about the female body are ruptured. Using the site/sight of the body to try and expose these fabrications, I have created these ‘articulate’ costumes to unpick them.

These costumes are critical as they deny their conventional function, instead opening up and celebrating the visceral, living body. These subversions, in undermining typical narratives of fashion and flesh, create a space to (re)present this body; allowing it to speak for itself. (Ad)dressing the female body here refers to material and physical strategies to un/dress; in order to readdress our corporeal and conceptual understanding of the body.

Yoko Ono’s performance Cut Piece (1964) is anchored by the instructions Cut Piece that the artist had produced in 1962 and in 1966, where the concept of the work lies. The clothing the performer wears is equally an important component of the work, and its cutting is what activates it. These aspects will be examined under the theoretical framework built on Kant’s and Derrida’s concept of the parergon, Heidegger’s ‘Gelassenheit’ (releasement), destruction and retrieval, Agamben’s clothing/nudity apparatus and Mauss’ notion of the gift-giving exchange. Cut Piece’s concern with the power relation between author and reader will also be examined throughout the article, with recurrent reference to Yoko Ono’s earlier work, Audience Piece (1962), and through Sartre’s and Levinas’ theories on Being for the Other and the limits of freedom. In search of the fons et origo of Cut Piece, the investigation will use Derrida’s method of deconstruction and further on discuss its displacement and recontextualization. Seamlessly, it will decipher the many layers of meanings it conceals and unveils, and will bring forth a number of viewpoints, reminding us that since the artist’s attempt is to realize her ideas in the actions of Others, it inevitably means that the work projects a range of ongoing interpretations.

Council House Movie Star (2012) originally started as a film enquiry exploring what happens when drag queens age, both off stage and onstage. The research expanded to include two further practice projects: an immersive gallery installation of a life-size council house and a fine art exhibition of the naked and costumed drag body. This article examines the quotidian experiences of a white working-class drag hero/ine and the costumed genderqueered skin. It discusses the queer costume of drag queens, including make-up and wigs. The article also explores the position of memory within the formation of costume for performance as a major theme within the creative processes and design of this project. This visual essay narrates the positioning of drag queens within the social realities of working-class life, thus producing an interesting contrast between the costume of chavs, B-boys and contemporary youth, against the queer and camp drag costume.

This article examines the destabilizing efficacy of costuming in contemporary theatre in relation to naturalized genders. It focuses on selected portions of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, In the Blood and Topdog/Underdog that are noteworthy within the context of costuming, illuminated by Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity. The article places at the centre of its investigation subversive images that Parks’ dramaturgy promotes for the stage, and argues for the important role that directors and designers play in executing the dramatist’s interrogation of abiding genders. I argue that, in the work of this playwright, intersecting gendered, racial and social categorizations can all be shown to encompass layers of cultural meaning that fossilize over time to give the appearance of fixity. Parks’ plays have the potential, through costuming opportunities, to make these layers visible, revealing their cultural and historical materialization and showing that they are, in fact, divisible.

The interdisciplinary practice-based research project, ‘The apotheosis of man, the forgotten peacock; from deconstruction to reconstruction to re-proposal of the male suit’, through a series of workshops and an interactive performance installation, aims to challenge the persisting conventional tradition of designing and wearing the male suit, proposing alternative perspectives by researcher – performance designer. The investigation focuses on the tools and means of processing the male suit in practice. It explores how to overcome conventions, generate artistic ideas, and how to apply this to something wearable. This visual essay demonstrates how the outcomes of three workshops fed on the creation of the experimental research driven suits. In all the workshops the participants were set the task to create a series of male garments by questioning and reinterpreting the notion of the masculinity and by using concepts and methods representative of deconstruction. Every participant designed and made a male garment by recycling a male suit jacket. The first presented workshop took place in May 2007, at the University of the Arts Bucharest, Romania and the participants were the second-year fashion design students. The second took place in September 2013 at the ‘World Stage Design Exhibition’, as part of the ‘Costume in Action series – Upcycling Costume: DeReconstructing Masculinity’. The participants were a mixture of student and professional international performance designers. The final two pages demonstrate the Plus Series suits, based on the addition of design elements to the suit.

The use of smart materials and wearable electronics has rapidly expanded in the field of fashion, introducing new interactive qualities of surfaces, materials and garments. In fashion garments, the performative environment functions as an abstract site for experimentation, expression and communication of the wearer through the intelligent garment. However, there is still limited use of embodied technologies in the field of performance costume for text-based and music-based performance, with the exception of integrated lighting technologies, currently broadly used in musical performance. This article provides a critical review of specific examples of technology-led garments in live performance, and uses a specific fragment from the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony as a case study to highlight how technologies embedded in costume can create interactive interfaces between the body of the performer and the environment – the space, the other performers, the audience – becoming a transmitter and receiver of emotions, experiences and meanings in innovative ways. By analysing this case, as well as by posing questions, this article aims at generating a discourse on the expressive and narrative potential of the use of intelligent materials and embodied technologies within the creative practice of costume design.

This article explores the role of ‘sounding costumes’ and body-worn technologies for choreographic composition, with real-time interactional elements (such as microphones, speakers, sensors) potentially integrated into movement and expressive behaviour. Sounding garments explore the interactions between dancer/performer, the costume and the environment in the generation and manipulation of sonic textures. Briefly discussing historical precedents of integrated composition, the article will mainly refer to sounding prototypes in DAP-Lab’s latest production, For the time being [Victory over the Sun] (2012–2014), for which I designed the wearables, highlighting new methods for building sensual wearable electro-acoustic costumes to create kinaesonic choreographies. The article analyses the multi-perspectival potentials of such conceptual garments/wearable artefacts to play a significant part in the creation process of a performance, focusing on how wearable design can influence and shape movement vocabularies through the impact of its physical material presence on the body, distinctive design aesthetics and sound-generating capabilities. Choreographically, garments and body-worn technologies act as amplifying instruments as well as sculptural constraints or conversely enablers of new movement and ways of sounding/listening that affect different kinetic and acoustic awareness (both in the performers and in the audience).

The rationale that governs motion of the organic in the cubical leans towards a transformation of the body in space, emphasizes its mathematical properties and highlights the potential to measure and plot movement – this is the work of a Motion Capture (MoCap) system. The translation in the MoCap studio from physical to virtual is facilitated by the MoCap suit, a device that determines the abstract cubical representation that drives first the neutral, and then the characterized avatar in screen space. The enabling nature of the suit, as apparatus, is a spatial phenomenon informed by Schlemmer’s abstract ‘native’ costume and his vision of the Tanzermensch as the most appropriate form to occupy cubical space. The MoCap suit is similarly native. It bridges the physical and virtual, provides a Victor Turner like threshold and connection between environments, enacting a spatial discourse facilitated by costume. This collision of Velcro, Avatar and Oskar Schlemmer allows a performance of space, binding historical modernity to contemporary practice. This performance of activated space is captured by a costume that endures, in Dorita Hannah’s words, despite the human form.

The subject of this practical research involves two personal enquiries around scenography and the body: the performative role of scenographic elements combined with an investigation on the limits of human morphology. Aiming to blur the borders between scenography and the body, I experimented with the idea of a performing costume. My theoretical research on body modification in history and cross-culturally mainly focuses on the human figure as an object of visual interest, while my practical work explores the sculptural possibilities and the limits of the body’s morphology, at the point where it can become ‘monstrous’. I experiment with the diversity of these figures and the transformation that the body is subjected to, in order to fit into the ‘beauty’ standards that different cultures have established in a specific time frame. This project suggests a shift from the conventional role of the costume as a ‘decorative’ element on a performer’s body to a costume that is itself performative and moves to a state where scenography can perform without the body.