Peer Learning Session: Queering Somatics, facilitated by Louise Croff Blake

This session explores the language of fashion, and how wearable aesthetic codes shape our movement through the world. In particular, we’ll look into legacies of semiotic dress in marginalized identities and in activist movements, ‘decoding’ our forebearers’s wardrobes. We will also focus on how semiotic dress might be wielded as a current-day tool for speculation, covert communication, and self-exploration in late-stage capitalism. This combi-lecture/workshop synthesises roughly four years of research I’ve been background-tasking on this topic, built upon my Masters’ thesis on queer alternative fashion ecosystems. After a gentle info-dump (with interactive moments), we’ll transition to reflecting on our own semiotics, in a wardrobe diary and visioning exercise. We collectively ask, “what can we communicate on our bodies, and for whose attention?”

Structure (what can people expect):

1.75 hours total

Welcome & intro (15min)

Warmup exercise: somaesthetic scan (5min)

Input: Semiotic dress histories & speculative fashion futures (40min)

Workshop: Your personal semiotic codes

https://loucroffblake.xyz/

Resources:

CHIMERA: https://schoolofcommons.org/program/labs/chimera

A Queer Fashion Autoethnography (Blake, 2024): https://apria.artez.nl/a-queer-fashion-autoethnography?&category=series&year=2024&title=a-queer-fashion-autoethnography&tag=collection&authors=lou-croff-blake

Flagging Chimera (Blake, 2024): https://www.justfemmeanddandy.com/06-lou-croff-blake-essay