Dasha Tsapenko

CumLaude

Department: Social Design

Dress_de_code

‘Dress_de_code’ is a re-enactment of the daily routine of dressing in a predesigned, staged environment. Dasha Tsapenko has made a performative case study of how designed space and the objects within it shape our daily movements and thus, without our being aware of it, the way we act.
A collection of scenographic props forms the 3D score of a daily choreography. By introducing new material components and a movement vocabulary to the routine we take for granted, Dasha questions and challenges the ways we move and the body techniques we are accustomed to.
On another level, Dress_de_code also shows how getting dressed embodies the transition from a private body to a social one. The dressing routine is presented as a process of loading the body with information, to be read and interpreted afterward, when the person dressing steps out of the private space and enters a social context.