Costume

Written By Rachel Hann

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In 2013, I co-founded the biennial conference and exhibition Critical Costume. This international research network has now hosted major events in 5+ countries, spanning 3 continents. My research on costume argues for an interdisciplinary understanding with a focus on the subversive and eventual qualities of costuming: whether professional, amateur, or critical.

Projects

Featured
Critical Costume Network
costume
Critical Costume Network
costume

Critical Costume is an international platform to promote research and practice on the interdisciplinary study of costume. The principal activity of Critical Costume is a biennial conference and exhibition, with the provision for smaller events where appropriate. The purpose of the organization is to support practitioners and researchers to debate the status of costume within contemporary and historical cultures.

costume

Publications

Featured
Costume Scenographics
Articles, Scenographics, Costume
Costume Scenographics
Articles, Scenographics, Costume

What do costumes do? I ask this question with two positions in mind. First, I am interested in how costumes produce a sense of atmosphere, occasion, or event. Second, I propose that costuming as a socio-material technology orientates feelings of world.

Articles, Scenographics, Costume
Gender-Assemblages: The Scenographics of Sin Wai Kin</a>
Articles, Scenographics, transness, Nonbinary, Costume
Gender-Assemblages: The Scenographics of Sin Wai Kin
Articles, Scenographics, transness, Nonbinary, Costume

The concept of gender-assemblage is proposed as a critical framework to identify, critique and negotiate the more-than-human processes of gendering. Sin’s drag draws upon their non-binary identity to speculate renewed discourses, actions and expectations for gendered practices.

Articles, Scenographics, transness, Nonbinary, Costume
Ada M. Patterson – in conversation with Rachel Hann
short form, transness, Open access, Costume, climate crisis, practice research
Ada M. Patterson – in conversation with Rachel Hann
short form, transness, Open access, Costume, climate crisis, practice research

Interview with trans artist Ada M. Patterson (b. 1994, Bridgetown) based between Barbados, London and Rotterdam. She works with masquerade, performance, poetry, textiles and video, looking at the ways storytelling can limit, enable, complicate or abolish identity formation.

short form, transness, Open access, Costume, climate crisis, practice research
Sportswear Performs</a>
Costume, forewords
Sportswear Performs
Costume, forewords

Whether the fit of a hat or the flow of a dress, these costumed relations can alter an individual's performance. Athletes know this same relationship. To perform in a certain way again and again, requires a bodily preparation that is inclusive of the clothes worn.

Costume, forewords
Debating critical costume: negotiating ideologies of appearance, performance and disciplinarity
Articles, Costume
Debating critical costume: negotiating ideologies of appearance, performance and disciplinarity
Articles, Costume

This article investigates a proposed focus of ‘critical costume’. Critical Costume, as a research platform, was founded in 2013 to promote new debate and scholarship on the status of costume in contemporary art and culture.

Articles, Costume
Beyond Scenography
Books, Scenography, Scenographics, Costume
Beyond Scenography
Books, Scenography, Scenographics, Costume

Beyond Scenography offers a manifesto for a renewed theory of scenographic practice for the student and professional theatrical designer. With sections on installation art and gardening as well as marketing and placemaking, this book is an argument for what scenography does: how assemblages of scenographic traits orientate, situate, and shape staged events.

Books, Scenography, Scenographics, Costume
Costume Politics
Articles, Costume
Costume Politics
Articles, Costume

Costume is subversive. It subverts the rules of a fashion system and exposes the theatricality of dress. Accordingly, the politics of costume are arguably a politics of ‘othering’: how the conscious subversion of appearance serves as an act of bodily estrangement. Yet, as evident in the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) tribes in June 2015, this othering is an active process that is undertaken equally by those engaged in the event of costuming and those who witness this act.

Articles, Costume
Editorial: Critical Costume
Articles, Costume, practice research
Editorial: Critical Costume
Articles, Costume, practice research

Costume is critical. It is critical to making performance, critical to spectator- ship, critically overlooked within scholarship, notable when in crisis, and a means of critically interrogating the body. It is therefore critical that we discuss costume. Yet, it is equally imperative for costume to find appropriate methods and frameworks to support new forms of practice. A critical discourse of costume aims to promote new questions and scholarship on the intersections between body, design and performance. This is the concern of critical costume.

Articles, Costume, practice research

Videos

Featured
Enclothed Cognition
Costume, keynotes and seminars
Enclothed Cognition
Costume, keynotes and seminars

Rachel Hann discusses enclothed cognition—the felt relationship between clothing, bodies, and places—including child-specific manifestations such as the 'Batman Effect'. Part of the research network 'Not Only Dressed but Dressing: Clothing, Childhood, Creativity'; visit notonlydressed.com for more detail.

Costume, keynotes and seminars
E5 | Body Assemblages
Scenography Talks, Costume, Beyond Scenography series
E5 | Body Assemblages
Scenography Talks, Costume, Beyond Scenography series

This episode is based on a talk I gave for Innovative Costume of the 21st Century in Moscow, June 2019. It explores the idea of body assemblages as related to costume practices and design. It ends with a manifesto (detailed below) with the episode structured in five parts:

This episode is based on a talk I gave for Innovative Costume of the 21st Century in Moscow, June 2019. It explores the idea of body assemblages as related to costume practices and design. It ends with a manifesto (detailed below) with the episode structured in five parts:

2:14 - 'The Body'

3:25 - Body Assemblages

5:26 - What can costume do?

7:38 - Bodies as intersectional

10:03 - Costume Orientations

11:41 - Kinaesthetic Empathy

15:53 - Manifesto

Manifesto for Body-Assemblages:

Bodies are always in process; an assemblage of parts

Body-assemblages perform differently each and every time (even if only at a cellular level)

Costuming others the normative body-assemblage

Costumes show the labour of appearance through acts of appearance

If bodies are assemblages,then costuming affords a methodology for complicating how bodies fit together.

Costume celebrates the power of non-human materials to affect very human acts of sociality and togetherness.

Costuming exposes the myth of ‘the body’; bodies are always multiple, porous and in process.

Costume investigates bodies caught in the act of appearance.

Scenography Talks, Costume, Beyond Scenography series
Rachel Hann
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