MA Fossheim Ingvill

Developing my artistic practice towards a regenerative bio-based costume design practice

| Yksivuotinen

This Home Residency project explores how I can orientate my practice as costume designer towards a more regenerative biobased materiality and develop a deeper understanding of biobased colourants in costume. Material knowledge is a fundamental part of a costume designer´s practice, yet artistic practice that incorporates systems knowledge and interrogates biobased materials as part of the performance-making is rare in this field at the moment. Biobased materialties offer valuable access to critical discourses and conversations through the costume thinking and praxis. It challenges established practices where fast, reliable, and familiar materials are employed to realise a design idea onstage, proving that slower processes and lateral material thinking can offer unique qualities to the artistic work. However, it demands resources: time, material 'ingredients' and facilities dedicated specifically to this purpose - requirements that are rarely, if ever, fully available within the conventional frames of a contemporary dance production. I propose to expand my current understanding of biobased colours in costume design by exploring the whole life cycle of the materials I use in my work: from cultivation to costume material - and beyond. This means learning and developing my skills and material knowledge through open-ended material research, and through practical and theoretical speculations/dreamings for future applications and practice. As an inspiration and driving force is my hypothesis that biobased costume praxis enables the emergence of new aesthetics and methods; through that, new modes of artistic expression and stage narratives emerge.