PhD Oral Exam - Valérie Lamontagne, Individualized Program

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to argue that wearables are inextricably performative. By this I mean that performance—human and nonhuman performance such as those encountered both on and off stage, as well as social performance and the performance of fashion and technology—contribute to the creation and meaning of wearables. With this aim in view, the thesis explores performance from four research angles: a framing of the birth of wearables in a performative context; a theoretical analysis of wearables as somatically, aesthetically, and technologically constituted via the performative; a historical back-­‐dating of pre-­‐computational wearables stemming from Modernist performative :ields; and the in-­‐situ case studies of contemporary wearables creations. It is my goal to demonstrate that wearables are performative across transversal time lines, materials, styles, fabrication processes, and body expressions.

With this goal in mind, I ask the central question: How can concepts of performance elucidate wearables? I look towards performance as a key thread that follows wearables’ beginnings to current contemporary technological culture. Why? Because wearables are more than the sum of their technologies, they are the result and admixture of fashion, of bodies, of display, of movement (in both human and technological form). In short, wearables are active, (a)live, and hence both the objects themselves and the individuals wearing them participate in the co-­‐creation of their performance. Performance is complex—striding as it does across disciplines from the technological and engineering; to the human and unscripted—and for this reason it is richly suited to the challenges encountered when describing wearables. Performance is the key pathway, in my opinion, through which we can gain stronger insight into to the stakes, the meaning, the messiness, the desires, and the technological innovations that are being developed in wearables, past, present and future.