3DFB215 - 01 - Performing Cloth

This course examines two related questions: How might the processes involved in making and altering cloth shape performative practices? When, and in what ways, can cloth itself be seen as performing? Students are exposed to the work of contemporary artists and designers whose work takes up these questions and to relevant critical writing and theory. The course deliberately confuses the creative and the critical, structure and outcome. Assignments will address issues of labor, hand craft, spectacle, community, and narrative, and will move back and forth between making (objects, surfaces, images, performances) and research (looking, reading, writing.) Class instruction will include introductions to basic fiber processes; no prior experience in fiber or performance is expected.