Video Library

Call for Contributions

Critical Costume 2020: COSTUME AGENCY

Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO), Norway

Workshops: 10-21 August 2020

Conference and Exhibition: 21 – 23 August 2020

We invite artists, researchers, scholars, designers to submit their proposals for workshop-, conference- and exhibition participation

Applications deadline: January 5th, 2020

“The veil is music because it is the artifice through which a body extends itself to engender forms into which it disappears.” 

Jacques Rancière

In his essay the Dance of Light (2011)about Loie Fuller’s innovative dance practice, and poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s infatuation with it, Jacques Rancière gives special focus to the role of dress in a redefinition of avant-garde art. Following Mallarmé, Rancière calls the dress a veil, in order to uncover its potential and says that “(t)he veil is not only an artifice that enables one to imitate all sorts of forms. It also displays the potential of a body by hiding it. It is the supplement that the body gives itself to change its form and its function.” Here the dress of the dancer enables her to disappear, it enables the body to be dislocated and to change. This is why the ‘veil’ is the ‘music’. It is an agent that provides new realities of the body to emerge; it performs.

A garment in contemporary performance goes even beyond an agent activating abstract abilities of presence of the body on stage. Costume interacts with the other performance elements in extremely complex ways. It is a carrier of stories, executor of political activism, it becomes an embodiment of conceptual thinking, a critical questioning. Costume does not only perform via the body; it extends to space, landscape, and audience. It is an actor in itself. Costume is communication and communicated, it is a tool for research, it dances phenomenologically, it affects us kinesthetically. It is an agent. It is a force field. Costume performs. It does things. And the costume designer becomes director, thinker, researcher and shaman – constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing realities, different ways of being, into the ‘unthinkable’.

Critical Costume 2020 will focus on the agency of costume in performance, costume as the main performer and the costume designer as the initiator of performance. Following Costume Agency, a three-year artistic research project by Christina Lindgren (KHIO, Oslo) and Sodja Lotker (DAMU, Prague), Critical Costume 2020 will explore different ways in which costume performs, different genres and formats it initiates, but also specific dramaturgical strategies that are ingrained in costume, and are probably yet to be used to their full potential.

Critical Costume 2020 (CC 2020) at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO) consists of workshops, a conference, and an art exhibition:

We invite costume designers, researchers, and other artists working with costume design as performance, as performative installation, as performative sculpture, as community gathering, as research, as a way of thinking, as a way to communicate, as music, as the bridge into the ‘unthinkable’ to submit their proposals.

CC2020 WORKSHOPS: August 10 – 21, 2020. Within four parallel workshops over the course of two weeks, designers and artists will have an opportunity to develop a performance from their already existing costumes and objects with local performers provided by the organizers. Each workshop will include rehearsals, dramaturgical consultations and group feedback sessions. The last day will offer a public presentation of workshop findings for the participants at Critical Costume 2020 Conference and Exhibition.

To apply for a workshop, please submit:

• Presenter’s short bio up to 300 words.
• Photo or drawings of your garments
• Description of project up to 300 words: describe your visions for a performance embedded in the garments or/ and ideas for what to try out in the workshop.
• 4 images, video links, links to your website.

CC2020 CONFERENCE: August 21 – 23, 2020. CC2020 CONFERENCE will comprise  scholarly and artistic presentations on current projects and/ or research. Presentations can have a multiplicity of formats:  academic papers, artistic presentations, short interactive workshops, Flash Talks, video essays and other formats will be accepted. Presentations will vary from 5-20 minutes. The exact length of your presentation will be decided after the confirmation of your participation (based on the final program).

To apply for the CC 2020 conference, please submit:

• Presenter’s short bio up to 300 words
• An abstract of your research/project up to 300 words
• 2 images (for project-based presentations), video links, links to your website.

CC2020 EXHIBITION: August 21 – 23, 2020. CC2020 EXHIBITION will present artworks that focus on how costume shapes performance, where the costume initiates or is one of the main initiators of the performance. Please describe how a costume performs in your project, or how your proposed performance should be made accessible to the exhibition visitors (via text, video or other tools).

The exhibition may include (but is not restricted to): costume, sculpture, performative sculpture, (wearable) object, installation, performative installation, live performance; digital video, digital imagery, animation; research websites, web portals, web radio, blogs, vlogs, podcasts; interactive design for performance and new forms of interactive artworks.

To apply for the CC 2020 exhibition, please submit:

Artist’s short bio up to 300 words

Project proposal up to 300 words, max. 3 images/sketches of the proposed idea

Max.3 images, video links of your existing artworks, and links to your website

Technical specifications for the submission of materials for the exhibition:

• Your video should be uploaded to Vimeo, and should not exceed 2 MINUTES in length (trailer).
• 3 images of the proposed artwork for the exhibition. Please include title, materials, dimensions, year of production.
• Images should be saved in JPG or PDF. Maximum data size of your entire application is 10 MB.
• Do not send the original works.
• CC2020 is not responsible for the production/shipment fees and insurance in case of damage and loss.

CONVENORS

Prof. Christina Lindgren, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and

Dr. Sodja Lotker, Prague Academy of the Arts

EXHIBITION CURATOR

Prof. Yuka Oyama PhD, Academy of Design & Craft University of Gothenburg

CONFERENCE MANAGER

Camila Svingen, Oslo National Academy of the Arts

HOW TO APPLY

All proposals must be submitted via email to: criticalcostume2020@gmail.com

All proposals will be peer reviewed. We welcome you to submit your applications in more than one format.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS

January 5th 2020

ANTICIPATED SCHEDULE 

Notification of acceptance: February 15th, 2020

Applicants to confirm participation: March 15th, 2020

Preliminary program: April 2020

For conference – deadline for uploading the presentations: August 19^th, 2020

For the exhibition – last date for the arrival of your artwork: August 19^th, 2020

FEES

All delegates attending this 3-day event will need to a pay a registration fee, which will include catering. Significant discounts will be available for postgraduate researchers and independent artists. There will also be a 1-day registration option available. Each participant is responsible for their travel and boarding expenses.

The event language is English.

The Call for Contributions was published on the webpage of Critical Costume and Costume Agency Artistic Research Project.

PEER REVIEWERS FOR CRITICAL COSTUME 2020 CONFERENCE WERE:

Donatella Barbieri, Emily Brayshaw, Jessica Bugg, Christin Essin, Sarah Gilligan, Veronica Isaac, Christina Lindgren, Drake Stutesman, Siobhan O’Gorman, Sue Osmond, Sofia Pantouvaki, Natalie Rewa, Marlis Schweitzer, Fausto Viana, Astrid von Rosen, Sodja Zupanc Lotker

In this panel we will talk about different ways the costume performs, how it sparks imagination, triggers references, but also how it moves the performers and initiates action. From cultural-identity reference to functional potential of the garment and to sensual experience of the material costume is part of the complex relationships on stage. Some of the relationships are semiotic, some compositional, some phenomenological but most of them are so entangled with each other that it’s hard to pin them down.

Together with the invited speakers – a choreographer, a designer, and a theorist, Sally Dean, Linnea Bagander, and Donatella Barbieri, – we will look at these relationships and explore specific ways costume performs.

This panel will discuss the role of costume in investigating (re)newed bodily materialities in an era of climate crisis, bio-technologies and theories of new materialism. In particular, the panel will share examples from their practice that explore the role of material in thinking though ideas of ‘body’ and the changing perspective on what costume offers as a field of study to interdisciplinary questions of appearance, embodiment, and human-technology interfaces.

Together with our invited speakers –   Charlotte Østergaard and Tanja Beer – we will share provocations on the future interrelationship between body, material and costume practice.

This panel discussion will focus on costume as a starting point for a creative process towards a performance. The starting point is crucial for the development of any performance, as it sets the premises and the focus for the collaborative work. Costume is an untraditional initial material for a performance. If costume is present as the main element from the start, how does that set the premises for creative process? What are the approaches, methods, and tools to unpack the potential embedded in the garments? How to compose with all expressions as light, sound, spoken words, movement, and space when costume is the first element?  

Together with the invited speakers – three designers generating various forms of performative art, Fruszina Nagy, Fredrik Floen and Signe Becker, – we will explore and discuss approaches to the process taking costume as starting point.