Abstract
Cloth-Bodies: writing-enabling-moving
By Katve Kaisa Kontturi, University of Melbourne, Australia & Vappu Jalonen, Aalto University, Finland
This co-authored paper is a critical collection of textual and visual fragments that in their various ways touch upon entanglements of the cloth and the body. In our view, (affective) relation and movement that happen between the cloth and the body are essential for understanding what clothing is and how it works. Hence we speak about cloth-bodies – compositions that are necessarily more-than-human. We will address ”what cloth-bodies can do” by offering tangible fragments that range from everyday situations to the work of theory. These are composed in the creative practice of writing and accompanied with various images. We will address, for instance, how clothing participates in the movement of the body both in enabling and restricting manner, for example supporting a writing process, but also sizing the body, molding it according standardised cuts and sizes. New Materialism and its theories of entanglement, relational materialities and (co)becoming give us tools to approach clothing and its agencies beyond the anthropocentricism of fashion system.
Author keywords
cloth, fashion, more-than human, entanglement, becoming, creative practice