Returns (2024)

Returns is a durational performance investigating the materials, rhythms and choreographies of the mainstream fashion industry. Over a 30-day period, four performers purchase garments from mass-market retailers, pick them apart, and experiment with the disassembled materials. The textiles are set in constant motion, becoming an evershifting landscape of new clothing constellations, sculptural forms, and the basis of unfolding movement scores. At the end of the 30-day returns window, each piece is meticulously reconstructed back into its original form and returned for a full refund.

Returns repurposes the 30-day retail return window as a found score. It transforms the period during which a commodity is legally suspended between being bought and being kept into a rare stretch of collective research time. Using the tools of the garment maker—cutting, stitching, ironing, unpicking—Returns functions as a Certeaudian tactic, testing the rules that govern social and economic exchange, and finding new ways to move in relation to them. The performance invites audiences to share space with skilled craftspeople at work, staging a process ordinarily hidden in garment and dance production alike. Framed within a dance context, the gestures of cutting, stitching, and dressing become readable as choreography; a trained body's skilled negotiation of material and time.

With its first iteration in 2019, Returns has evolved from a solo inquiry into a dynamic interdisciplinary collaborative practice. Developed with collaborators from the fields of dance, somatics, choreography, costume, sound and sculpture, Returns was most recently co-presented by The Dance Centre and the PuSh Festival (Vancouver) in January 2024.

For this iteration, Gossen worked alongside performance collaborators Tone Puorro, Erika Mitsuhashi and Jaewoo Kang. Holding each commercial garment as a material archive of complex systems, performers used their bodies to unearth the quiet choreographies of garment labour, supply chains, retail systems, and consumer exchange. At the same time, they drew on visual references from across the history of dress and power, using the fast fashion garments to recreate and recontextualize moments of social history.

The Returns 2024 installation performance generated hundreds of new outfits and sculptures, photos of which were presented throughout the building of The Scotiabank Dance Centre for the duration of the show. Photos of the exhibition can be found here.

Concept and Direction: Nellie Gossen / Performers: Nellie Gossen, Erika Mitsuhashi, Jaewoo Kang and Tone Puorro / Choreographic Mentorship: Emmalena Fredriksson / Sound Design: Nancy Tam / Production Manager & Technical Director: Paula Viitanen Aldazosa / Stage Manager: Sierra Megas / Garment Photography: Luciana Freire D'Anunciação / Artistic Support: Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes / Front of House: Ali Bosley & Shamina Senaratne

This work was made with the generous support of The Dance Centre and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Garments purchased on January 6th, 2024

January 7th Historical Reference: Queen Elizabeth I

January 11th Historical Reference: 17th Century Joseon Princess

January 28th
Contemporary Reference: Alexander McQueen

January 16th Free Form Collaborative Outfit

February 1st Free Form Collaborative Outfit

Reconstructed garments, sucessfully returned on February 4th, 2024