Emotion and Memory: Clothing the Body as Performance

Abstract

This chapter focuses on clothing as performance and scenography it explores through my practice as a designer, the clothed body as a site for production of meaning, narrative, performance and communication in an interdisciplinary setting. It exposes the role of costume and clothing design as a generator of performance and meaning through design. My current work explores the potential for using embodied experience, memory, emotional and physical triggers in garment design as a generator of embodied communication. The design draws on oral histories of dress and seeks to engage viewers and wearers on an emotional level. This work builds upon aspects of my completed doctoral research which identified that the intersections of subject disciplines are increasingly complex and new interdisciplinary ways of working have emerged that focus on the body and clothing, challenging preconceptions, traditional approaches and rigid definitions. This chapter discusses a range of current preoccupations within my research and focuses on clothing the body as a visual and physical communication strategy and in relation to research in the fields of performance, costume, fashion design and fashion communication. I argue that as performance and experimental fashion practice both increasingly move into new and site-specific contexts and as focus is extended around audience reception, conceptual and experimental approaches, the divisions between clothing designed as conceptual fashion and clothing designed as costume for performance have become less defined. I suggest that it is the use of the body as catalyst for creation and communication of meaning through the performing body that has enabled a hybrid practice to emerge at this intersection. It focuses on the clothed body as a site for production of meaning, performance and communication, exposing the potential of clothing design to be not only present in the production of performance but for it to be a generator of performance and communication through design. By focusing on costume and clothing as a form of narrative and scenography, I have been able to 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 fashion, clothing and performance practice within a contemporary context.