SESSIONS # 1-4: Material Agency
- Submitting institution
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Teesside University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 8193670
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Critical Costume 2020: Costume Agency Conference and Exhibition
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
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- Year of first performance
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- SESSIONS # 1-4 explored new approaches to devising costume performance, leading to the creation of three costume pieces used in a video exhibition, video flash talk and video conference paper, as part of the conference Critical Costume 2020: Costume Agency. Innovations in the costume design process were expanded via the use of unconventional manmade materials, leading to a new understanding of the importance of the ‘sculptural essence’ and agency of the material. The devising process was explored through the lens of agency and the working ethos of ‘the material directs’. The concept of shared agency was then used to examine the relationships between the material, wearable art/costume, designer and performer/choreographer, building on previous research into the porousness between the haptic body and costume (Driscoll, 2011; Machon, 2013). Investigation into how costume performances are devised, combined theories on collaboration in dance making (Heddon and Milling, 2006; Tahko, 2016), the concept of ‘emergence’ (Crickmay, 2015) and ‘embodied subject’ (Mitra, 2015), and the ‘mimodynamic’ process of costume making (Lane, 2019).
Smith uses her practical work and specialist skills and awareness as an experiential costume performer and choreographer, to bring a unique analytical perspective to research that invites conversation between performers, performance makers, costume designers and scholars. Combining practical and theoretical research, Smith has developed new knowledge in the devising of costume performance to expand on Barbieri’s costume-based approach to methods of devising performance (2012) and Jacques Lecoq’s creative approaches of the Laboratoire D’Étude du Movement.
This research has led to the re-evaluation of Smith’s original term ‘costumographer’ (Smith, 2018), and the creation of a new costume performance methodology and working terminology: ‘costumographic synergy’ and ‘choreo-costuming’. This work traverses the boundaries of costume, somatic practice and performance, and gained high praise by international scholars and artists at Critical Costume 2020.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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