The international workshop Transition Dress, which will take place in May 2023, consists on a three mornings workshop, intertwining theory into practice, and the festival closure event. Under the premise “doing in movement”, this workshop-adventure will involve a performative journey through physical spaces in Barcelona and its periphery, under a very personal logic. Transition dress intends to be a reflective exercise interested in how migratiory processes affect the embodied memory. This research will adopt a multimedia format yet using basic and available tools. The aim will be to experience a sensorial and inner journey through the clothed body while wandering along the city of Barcelona, with a sharp eye on the dress as an essential object for survival. The vulnerability of bodies appears fiercely during migration, causing people on the move to carry strictly what is understood as indispensable, establishing a provisional and pragmatic set of values for transit. Learning from them we will consciously limit our baggage as a means to transit towards self-limitation as a performative practice. For it, we will leave the security of the workspaces to feel what it is like to make and create in movement. In this specific context, clothing can acquire unexpected uses and meanings, breaking the established role of clothing in the closed framework of fashion. The city’s transportation and public space in spring will become unexpected environments where we will seek to shape collective images and express complex issues such as the need for intimacy or the desire for freedom. The workshop is conceived as a collective adventure with specific tailor-made rules that demand creativity, attention, and commitment from all participants.

Supervisor: Fiona Capdevila