Palm State Champs

Palm State Champs

Palm State Champs is both, grows and expands between venues, across media and disciplines, remaining in a state of evolution and production. Components of Palm State Champs have been exhibited, screened, and/or performed at the following venues:

Palm State Champs was performed for both Outside the Box and the Miami Performance International Festival. Most recently the costumes from Palm State Champs will be published in Dressed to be Seen, a Charo Oquet/Edge Zones publication to be distributed for MiamiArt Week/Art Basel Miami December 2022.

Costume Statement for Dressed to be Seen:

At House Pencil Green, performers interact with built environments that are the costumes they inhabit. That interaction, between performer and dress, or object-ensemble, is the embodiment of the character. In that sense, costume is half the character, look is half the persona, dress is half the role.

Performers inhabit the costume as an entity would an environment, bringing themselves to bear on the character-incarnation just as much as the costume expands and contracts, or limits and gives space to, the performers’ behaviors – in relation to their role. At House Pencil Green, performer and costume interaction is character evolution and development. Any future events, narratives, and/or relationships with other characters therefore evolve from that point – the point of interaction between performer and costume, between wearer and dress, the point of character formation.

The first performer is of course the dressmaker, the costume creator, interpreting the character concept, defining the species physically. That creator, in visualizing the role in physical form, is sculpting that character’s story too – with physical limits and potentials, with a visual voice.

Performers interact with this built costume-as-environment to become character, and, through this sculpture-performer amalgam we define as character, interact with pre-recorded and live-produced video elements; built and modified objects and environments; and other characters.

As a performance/event unfolds, costumes expand. Concentric events further the evolution of the space that contains them. The expansion of the imaginary spaces the costumes inhabit overlap, and all interaction becomes Venn-diagramatic. Costume touches costume, and characters influence action.