Enabling (e)motion

Authors

  • Linnea Bågander University of Borås
  • Karolin Kent

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5324/da.v6i1.3637

Keywords:

Wearing, material choreography, somatic garments, somaesthetics

Abstract

This article discusses a practical exploration of the ability of a textile to meet with and affect bodies. It builds
on the inherent ability of textiles, particularly in the form of a garment, to evoke movements and emotions. This paper suggests a shift in focus of the design of bodily materiality, towards an expression emerging from interactions connecting materiality and performativity. The findings are the result of 2.5 years of exploration,
during which four performances, ten workshops, and four exhibitions were performed. The entwined parameters of expressing and informing are applied as a material choreographic thinking, which in this case results in a material choreography of openness, where expressing and informing are essential as entwined design parameters in the design of body-material interactions. The material choreography is developed as a method for addressing somatic experience, with improvements in terms of wellbeing and presence as aesthetic goals, focusing on reducing movements and emotions relating to stress for people suffering from chronic fatigue
syndrome.

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Author Biographies

Linnea Bågander, University of Borås

Linnea Bågander is PhD student in Artistic Research, Fashion Design at Swedish School of Textiles at Borås
University. Through collaborations within the field of dance she is exploring dress as performative element. She works with movement, materials and bodies, how they co-exist and together create expressions and experiences. Her work ranges from how material interprets and expresses the body’s movements to how materials give impressions, inspiration and movements to the body and how this enables new bodies entwined with materials. Before staring her PhD program, she was working with dance, performative art and film as costume and set designer.

Karolin Kent

Karolin Kent is a choreographer, dancer, educator, somatic movement practitioner and Laban movement analyst. Kent has her base in several adjacent disciplines, with an emphasis on movement-based and visual arts. Since 2011, Kent has been professionally active in interdisciplinary performing arts, performance and visual
arts nationally and internationally. Kent has an interest in contexts outside the artistic institutions and in related fields such as pedagogy, rehabilitation, therapy and activism. Her artistic methods are improvisational, experimental, interdisciplinary and somatic. Artistic interests often concern existential questions though a contemporary context. Kent is educated at Trinity Laban and LSSI.

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Published

2020-06-24