Unfolding a vision embedded in a garment: Three tools from a toolbox for generating performance from costume design

Abstract

Reflection and discussion on ‘how’ costume performs seems to be at the centre of inquiry of the research within the field of costume design, as presented at the Critical Costume conferences and the journal Studies in Costume and Performance. In various ways, costumes play an important role in most performances, a costume ‘does’ things, it performs and has agency. In recent years, we have experienced an increasing number of performances where costume acts as the starting element for a performance and, more often, we hear of costume designers instigating and leading creative processes in making performances. Costume-generated performances are about to be considered an established genre. This research report aims to share some ‘tools’ that form a methodological framework – a toolbox – for generating performance with costume design as a starting point. The examples are drawn from my professional practice, informed by work undertaken in workshops held in the frame of the artistic research project ‘Costume Agency’ (2018–21), which I have been leading in collaboration with dramaturg and curator Sodja Lotker. I have found useful concepts in new materialism, as a critical framework that has opened up a new understanding of how humans and non-human actors interact and have adapted them for my use as a costume designer, director and researcher. The tools I focus on here are the following three: notions of ‘agency’ in the context of costume design; the concept of ‘situated knowledges’; and ‘visual dramaturgy' from the performing arts theory. These tools have proven to be useful in the processes of generating performance from the costume in my own practice and are offered in this research report to the wider community of costume researchers for further debate and development.