Baroque Travesty

Abstract

The archival-artistic practice of fashion designer and performer Gwen van den Eijnde attends to the bodily feelings prompted by physical engagement with historic costumes and textiles as a source of emotional discovery. Touching and wearing old fabrics of which we have no previous direct sensory knowledge can activate unexpected imaginings of ourselves that would otherwise be foreclosed: by dressing up in baroque costumes we can phenomenologically feel the past. This interview-based article examines the work of van den Eijnde through the lens of “queer anachronism,” arguing that his performances enable a queer way of “feeling history” and establish transgenerational affective relationships with figures whose queer haunting has the potential to erotically instigate new collective desires and attachments.