'In my room ~ we'll make a costume together'
Costume design is framed as participatory performance. The drama – of struggling to make – is built into the work as I fight against pressures to perform, while performing. Fabric offcuts and failed attempts, the residues of a creative process, accumulate as scenes of possibility (and personality).
The project culminated in a series of online performances. Building off a previous work, Sewing Subjectivities, I experimented with adapting my interactive fabric performances for an online audience using video conferencing, live streaming and virtual reality.
'In my room ~ live stream', streamed on Twitch
'In my room ~ VR'
This work is an improvisation with myself and others. During my Zoom performances, I inserted multiples of myself into the same video call as an extension of this concept. Trust – in/from a person and in my work (as intuition) – was important throughout the process.
There is equally an impulse to hide or distort the silhouette in my work. I hide the body to free the body, but with the choice to cut the fabric and adapt to the outfit whenever and however the wearer sees fit. There is a freedom through both formlessness and form.
A freeing and celebratory costume made during my second Zoom performance in collaboration with the participatory audience.
Check out this online whiteboard for additional debri from this project. I have deposited the bits and pieces that didn't quite make it into the final performances, as well as extra material accumulated during the final exhibition week.
Patterns of Failure