Listening to a costume

In the artistic research project Costume Agency (2018-2022) we have researched costume as an starting point for performance.

As costume design is one of the performing arts disciplines that work with ‘things’, a theoretical framework on ‘things’ and their connections to humans, can offer fruitful entries into understanding the creative process of creating a staged performance. It is thus unsurprising that an increasing number of researchers within the field of costume design and scenography have used the framework of new materialism.

Aligning with the emphasis on the dynamic and multiple interconnectedness of human and non-human actors, new materialism has been crucial also for the artistic research of Costume Agency. We research how costumecreates meaning by what it ‘does’, as an ongoing process of ‘becoming’, referring to the possibility of change and its connectedness to the other elements of a performance. The creation of a performance, with all its components, is a process in a constant mode of change, an intra-action in its becoming, to evoke Karen Barad’s words (Barad 2007).

Since 2018, we have researched how costume have agency in a performance and how a garment can act as a starting point for creating a performance. So how does do that? How does it trigger, reassemble, and generate?

I this session the project leaders, Sodja Lotker and Christina Lindgren, will have a conversation with three dancers that have participated in workshops held within the frame of Costume Agency. Their perspectives can open new insight to the question of how ‘things’, as garments, can trigger the very first associations, sensations, movements in a chain of meaning making processes of a performative setting.  

The talk will center around questions as:

• How does the dancer respond to the impulses, associations and sensations triggered by ‘things’, as garments?
• What does it mean to “listen” to the costume?
• What happens when we “listen” to the costume?
• How can a body embody a garment?