Costume Agency Artistic Research Project

This book presents findings and reflections from the Costume Agency artistic research project that took place from 2018 – 2023 in Oslo, Helsinki and Prague. The focus of the project was exploring “how costume performs”, how costume can form a starting point for a performance and the specifics of the agency of costume within performance. How does costume design generate a performance? How do these specific costumes perform? What might the agency of costume be? What are the creative tools of the costume designer as the artistic leader? What are the characteristics of a performance that originates from costume design? How to describe the result? Our approach to the research was through doing. An important aspect was also sharing – including 21 costume designers, as well as many students, lighting designers, performers, and theorists  – a  total of more than 80 participants from 15 countries. This book shows that the approaches to the costume as the element generating performance are abundant. As far as we can see the research on “how costume performs” can never be brought to a full stop, because in each project costume works in a different way, performs in a different scale. Many of the performances generated during the project not only expands how we perceive costume as an agent within the performance, but also challenges traditional categories of form and genres and contributes to expanding our ideas of performance. The Costume Agency artistic research project was financed by the Norwe-gian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (DIKU) and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and in collaboration with The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) and Aalto University, School of Arts, Design & Architecture. www.costumeagency.khio.no