Queers, Crips, and Mermaids: Disruptive Bodies as Performative Objects
(2021)
author(s): Kamran Behrouz
published in: Research Catalogue
This chapter attempts to analyze and unfold interlinked layers of a research-performance, in two interconnected site-specific Acts. First Act (Collision) happened in St. Moritz 2020 and the second Act was performed a year later in Bern 2021 . By adopting the notion of “cosmopolitics” as a method, this Performance attempts to speculate inter-relativity of human and non-human bodies within the capitalist matrix of species hierarchy. Through comparative analysis of different psycho-cultural/political narratives, this text attempts to map out interconnected traumas of transspecies; wounds and scars that are older than our bodies, older than ourselves. This text uses diffractive reading of these two Acts through the histories of the figure of the mermaid and the witch, In order to queer the hegemonic interpretations of both figures.
BODY FRAGMENTED - temporal expressions
(2020)
author(s): Linnea Bågander
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
In response to digital technology, new methods, thinking and aesthetics have emerged that challenge the way we design. In particular, the extraction of movement introduced by motion-capture technology propose a design process wherein the motion rather than the form is used as a material in a design process. In such a process the motion is extracted form a defined set of points that creates a digital representation. In this exposition, the strategies utilized when capturing a motion is translated into the process of garment making with the purpose to challenge bodily aesthetics through dress.
Practically, this exposition builds on two independent studies with the shared aim to define parameters for transformations of the moving body’s expression applied to a garment making process. Yet, the transformation is approached from two perspectives; the first study is non-material and borrows theory and references from the field of dance and motion capturing technology. It maps the body as a point-based system based on the body as a moving form and pin-points body functions that affect these points. This part serves as a foundation for the second study that adds material aspects, in particular, it maps material parameters that relate to how the material is arranged in relation to these points.
In conclusion, strategies of extraction of movement as attachments and the scale of fragmentation of materials are considered the main contribution to the garment making process. As it proposes a new usage of movement, the work has implications for fashion design, costume design but also other body movement-based mediums as it is about the expression of body movement and not just the body as a form.
