Thinking with costume and material: a critical approach to (new) costume ecologies

Abstract

This article intends to shift current discourse on material thinking and agency from thinking of and through materials to thinking with materials; we therefore argue that re-locating the affects and agency of costume materiality in the changing material environment at this current moment is essential. Responding to the global environmental crisis and based on the emergent philosophical concepts of extramaterialism and costume thinking, examined through the prism of ecosomatics, we propose a critical approach to think and (co)create in contemporary costume praxis informed by ecological sensibility. Through acknowledging that the material, the natural and the cultural are not separate but co-constitutive, our aim is to provoke new insights into more-than-human material agency. This is explored by addressing the relationship between living and nonliving things and the systems created through the inter- and intraactions between these elements via the medium of costume. By analysing the use of biobased materials as costume matter in two case study productions, the article positions costume design as a critical tool for new performance narratives and cultural landscapes to be considered and created. It pushes the boundaries of wider philosophical understandings and innovations in costume with the potential to influence broader, environmentally aware cultural and societal contexts.