Emotion and memory; clothing the body as performance

Abstract

This paper focuses on costume/ clothing as scenography and explores through practice in a new body of practice lead work the clothed body as a site for production of meaning, performance and communication. It exposes the role of costume design as a generator of performance through design. By placing costume/ clothing at the centre of this debate I will take into account how the emotional and physical factors as well as the site of the body itself contributes to the making, intention and reading of work in the context of hybrid performance practice within a contemporary context.

This new design work builds upon aspects of my completed doctoral research 1 and focuses on a range of current preoccupations within my own research and in relation to wider research in the fields of both performance, costume, fashion design and fashion communication. As performance and experimental fashion practice both increasingly move into new and site-specific contexts and as focus is extended around conceptual and experimental approaches, the divisions between clothing designed as conceptual fashion and clothing designed as costume for performance have become less clear. What is notable in both disciplines is the use of the body as a catalyst and space for creation and communication of meaning through the performing body.

Joanne Entwistle in her book ‘The Fashioned Body’ importantly identified that although there was writing on discourses of the body it had not been related to embodiment. She identified fashion as a ‘situated bodily practice’ which needs to take into account the lived and experienced elements of wearing fashion and dress. She goes on to say ‘Dress in everyday life is about experience of living in and acting on the body’ 2.

My current work explores the potential for using embodied experience, emotional and physical triggers in garment design and embodied communication. The project seeks to develop a more multi layered, embodied and experiential communication through clothing design. The project draws on psychology, oral histories and seeks to engage viewers and wearers on an emotional level.