Uncovered – performing everyday clothes

Abstract

Uncovered is an interactive installation based on a simple yet complex performance system that uses the participants’ clothes as a springboard for devising material for the show ad hoc. Everyday clothes are performing in Uncovered and consist the material for the show. They are the objects that tranverse from a ‘silent existence’ to an ‘oral state’ open to appropriation (Barthes [1957] 2009: 131). Gaston Bachelard would argue that ‘immensity is an intimate dimension’ (Bachelard [1958] 1994: 194) and also that ‘immensity is a philosophical category of a daydream’ ([1958] 1994: 183). During an interview session the audience/participant encounters the projected image of one of his or her clothes and re-thinks, rejects, remembers, reflects, resists with this image. The artist makes a rough copy of the garment using white fabric while the sound designer picks up sound from the clothes and composes a short sound piece. The team of three (performer, sound designer and the artist) with the use of projection, live camera feed, sound, the body of the performer and the piece of clothing itself, present a two-minute improvisation to each one of the audience/participants. The audience are invited in an intimate space to daydream and reflect by looking at the image of one of their clothes. In this visual essay I will use the metaphor of zooming in the network-like-texture of a fabric in an attempt to communicate the experience of Uncovered: the layers and immense weaving of thoughts, emotions, memories that was triggered by the delimiting image of the participants’ clothes.