Your work intersects dance, fashion, performance, and installation art. How do you navigate and integrate these diverse disciplines within your practice?

Oh, that's a great question. So I think the biggest aha moment is that the division between these practices is somewhat artificial, Right? So somehow I discovered that I was most centered when I could collapse these distinctions and not feel like, oh, today I'm wearing my fashion hat, or today I'm wearing my costume hat. There was always a sense that I was leaving a big part of myself behind, stepping into one space or the other. And it wasn't quite clear to me when I was younger why that was or what that was. 

And part of it was also feedback by some maybe well-intentioned, maybe not saying, oh, you can't use your dance work for fashion. And it's actually not true at all. I mean, it's done what I've done my entire life. So for me to mature enough to go, maybe that was just bad advice. And what is this to me at the end of the day is really about space, how we feel ourselves in space, most broadly spoken, most abstracted.

But even when I abstracted, I always feel it's very concrete. I think about, I feel a very specific moment where I'm like, oh my God, I'm feeling the space. It's not just the small space between you and a layer of a garment, but also just your entire sensory capacity that often the garment expands in surprising ways. You put something on and you feel different. And part of it is just how, well, I cannot say this in one sentence, that's a bigger question to unpack, but I've always been curious about that. I've always been curious about what you put something on. 

It does so much like what's going on. But when you think about fashion, how we reach fashion, there's always, there's also an element of space and distance. And when you see someone enter a room, when someone wants attention, the whole geal, the silhouette, the vibe that comes off of them and all of that is because in that moment there is a synergistic moment between the wearer and the piece or the look that they are able to walk in space. And I think that's the fascination of the fashion show or the performative event. So the performance is right there,

The space is right there. And you could say the installation may be as sort of the static piece to me has always been part of it because you pick a location or you pick the space or you said it, you said it in motion in a certain way, and sometimes the space activates sort of that moment too. So at the end of the day, it was like installation is part of what I naturally do and want to do with these things that I'm doing. 

Performance is maybe the birthing place of it. I was a dancer first, but as a dancer was always, it was very important what you wear, it affects the quality of your day. It affects the quality of how you move, how you, not just how it feels. And this is something I would've said as a fashion designer often is this participatory moment between the viewer and the wearer.

So there is something crackling, crisping in between. And to me, where I am right now, I think of these garments and I think of my installations, I think of all of that as membranes. And so those are these, and not so much that the membrane divides the space, but articulates it into a foreground and into a background or an interior and exterior or in a conscious subconscious or in a inner outer latent manifest. 

And I can get so giddy about all these sort of, not just dualities, but sort of setups that happen in that moment where we're like, wow, there is this situation you can set up through an installation, through a garment, through a performance. And at the end of the day, they also all come together. So it becomes, there is a layered complexity to all of these setups that does everything that I've ever been excited about in one place. And so even working alone in the studio and setting up maybe the shapes or the layers is informed by the experience of thinking about something, a subconscious pull that might pull me in a certain direction or the other. And some information I might gather from it later,

But I said it in motion, but I don't know where the call starts. I don't know if it is where the inspiration starts. Is it starting from a color? And then you said that, but somewhere in there, the activation also builds itself. And so at this point, I just trust it and go like, okay, it's worked my entire life. It doesn't work when I doubt it works better when I trust it. So I'm just like, I'm going to trust this and it's going to take me somewhere where once I am done and I step away and I look at it, I'm like, oh, that's what it does. 

And it's not done, then it's still, there's an itness that itness to working creatively, making something that then becomes something that others can enjoy, experience, wear, anything. I feel like my openness to that is not, how can I say this? It's not artificial in any way. I really am. I want to see what happens next. So it's like what else could happen with it? So while I might have a few ideas, I also love it when someone surprises me with something, how they wear the piece or how they engage it, or if they want to lay on the floor and look up at it, or all these moments to me are, because I watch a discovery, I watch someone discover something. And it's priceless. Sorry, long-winded answer.

How has your background as a trained dancer influenced your approach to fashion design and your installations?

Yeah, that's another great question.

So yeah, I think dancing is just something, you call it a hobby or amateurish, something I've just been into for as long as I can think. So I was in a children's dance group when we were kids with my sister and some friends. And then when that got a little sort of embarrassing when you get a teen age or something, I stopped for not very long, maybe a year or two, and then was drawn back in and I started going a dance studio in my hometown. And I very quickly, I don't remember how that happened, I just quickly became the young owner studio's owner, like right hand side. I became her rehearsal assistant. I made costumes, I started teaching classes. So Wednesdays after school I would teach five classes, five-year-old girls in ballet to teenagers to I think a jazz class and a tap class at some point. And later when I started studying, I maintained that gig and offered my own modern dance classes. So it was just really a great way to, it was really my identity growing up was very tied up with being in this dance studio in a role where I was enabling others to

Participate in their journey through dance. So in some ways it's similar in many ways. You can say there's a similarity there. I was invited to by a choreographer who I met in Frankfurt to join her downtown dances pickup project in New York. And I was like, well, if I have a reason to go to New York, then I will go to New York. So one of the first things that happened in New York, so I was really into dancing and just there was so much to learn there. It was so much more open, so much, I dunno, 400 dance companies, so many ways to be a dancer. So many ways to, and a lot of competition of course too. And just like you look at the universe and the stars, you're like, oh my god, this is so big. 

There's just so much and I'm so tiny and so whatever and significant. But I was into it. I was like, this is great. And I got into the costume designer left, and I just said how I would always say, oh, I'll do the costumes. So I ended up getting costume design title in the first New York Times review, four months into being in New York. And more people came and asked me, can you do costume? I mean, I wasn't making money. This is not a moneymaker. It was more like word got out and I was eager to, and what I learned in that time is just incredibly priceless. Learning how to deliver something on a short timeline, small budget that is exciting to everyone involved

And comes out of how does it happen? And I will say I had this interesting experience where if I could see it, I could make it so it wasn't on paper, it I would speak to someone and all of a sudden bling, they was like, oh, okay, I'm feeling it. And it's not that seeing it looks like an illustration in your head. It was more like it takes on a gestalt, it takes on, you see the movement, you see the particular shapes and lines the dancers are making, how are they moving, what the space is going to be. And I always see the space around the dancers. It's not that I just look at the dance or I just look at the, it's hard to describe. It came so natural that for the longest time I didn't have language for it.

So you see, it's always all been there together. It is really interesting. When you step outside of dance, you can actually see some things clearer. And there's the duality that I talked about earlier, the interiority and the exteriority. When I'm dancing, I can't see all these things. You can't see the space around yourself. No, not in the same way, but stepping out, but knowing what it's like to dance. I have already set up this. I know what the inside feels like, but I also kind of see that extended sort of

Spatial and visual sonic setup. And so then you kind of paint in between. So in some ways it's a form of painting, but without paint and paintbrushes just, and it's dynamic, it's kinetic and the things are moving. So you then have to scale it back. You might have a big idea and then you go like, okay, they're rolling over their back, so they're doing handstands or whatever. There's certain things you might want to not do. So there's a lot of scaling back involved too, but what's left over is something very essential. It needs to be there. So it starts as a big bold spatial idea and it shrinks into what's ultimately feasible or Possible. And I just love that process and I didn't know I had that process. It was so natural and I was waiting, I was hovering and waiting for it to go, and I was like, okay, I got it. Usually it would also be a matter of you have two weeks time or three weeks time. It was like the deadline didn't give you a lot of time. I was like, I got whatever idea I have tomorrow. 

That's what I'm going to fly by because I want to deliver this. The goal was not so much being super engaged with the idea, but really they need this. If I say yes to this the day before, the performance at the latest, maybe a few days before, that needs to be there in place and working. And so I realize right now what a blessing that was to come to this experience without anyone telling me how to do this without being told, oh, you have to do it this way. You have to do it this way. I just kind of figured it out. 

And then the other big blessing is that I work with so many different body types that, especially in modern dance, I mean really, it's just true that all shapes and sizes, all genders, everything has always been very present in contemporary dance. And so I got to try a lot of my test pieces on many bodies, and you learn so much from seeing something you made. That's another great feeling by the way, to make something and see someone in it. It's just an amazing feeling.

And so then see it on the shorter stockier dancer, and it looks great in that way. If I make that tweak or I'm the tall, skinny person, and you wouldn't think it would fit them, but it looks interesting too because it does this thing and if you make this tweak. So it was kind of this very quick and spontaneous, again, sketching on bodies with quick ideas, a little nib, little tuck, a little. And then that one idea could work seamlessly on five different bodies. And with the little changes, this one idea would give you five different variations and nobody would know it's the same idea. And it always struck me as like, wow, that's incredible. Maybe. Maybe yes. And so then fashion design found me because I wasn't really into eighties fashion. I was like, oh my god, sorry, I'm probably going way over time.

One of my gigs was actually and being an illustration model for fashion design schools. I had no money, but I knew how to make clothes and I made all my own clothes because I couldn't afford to buy things.

So I would kind of go to Parsons or Pratt or FIT, because the teachers, they're all teaching in the same schools. So once I subbed for a friend of mine who was a Brazilian samba dancer, she said, oh, I have a gig. Can you sub for me? And my phone rang hot after because there's this tall German and she has all these great clothes. So I would basically be an illustration model for all these fashion design classes. I mean, I may have given them more ideas than I should have, but I really didn't think about it. I wasn't thinking about that. I was just glad that I got paid and they said, bring stuff. And then you look down there and you're like, what? They're drawing and you're like, oh, number one observation is everybody draws down ethnicity. It's really interesting. It's really interesting. It's like hardwired, we're kind of hardwired to do. They don't really listen to the teacher and surprise, I just think, why am I not shocked? I know I'm not. And it took the fear out of this. I was like, oh my God. I was so, I don't know, terrified is not the right word, but I never would think I would fit into that kind of environment or what something. But it was like I was thinking, oh, I could do that. I didn't really particularly ever think of myself as having a particular talent in

I just have strong drive. I have a lot of energy when I see it and I want to experiment. That's my superpowers is I love to experiment and I have a lot of energy and I'm like, if I can see it, I want to make it. It's not just that I can make it, I want to do it. And I think the rest is, I do think I have some talent, but I didn't think about it in that way as talent.

I didn't know what that was. It was more like you had to be a certain way to apply to the school and do this thing. And then I looked at it like, oh, I could do that. It's not. And I took notes how to draw hands and how to draw heads because you have nothing else to do. You just stand there. And I got to peek inside fashion schools and I loved seeing these dress forms and didn't have a dress form until then. I just drew things on the floor on newspaper sharpie and stuff like that. And so I was really into the schools. I was like, this is great. And so I ended up going back to school, not thinking, not pursuing a degree. I just wanted to take classes. And literally the next thing I knew is I had graduated. I mean, it was that intense. It was just like boom.

I had a pretty good idea what should happen. And then I got the information how to correct it and how to make it and smooth. And I loved it. I had a great time. I mean, I think if anything, it went too fast. But then I was done. I was like, I don't really want to do this. I mean, if this is what fashion is, I didn't go there to be a fashion designer. I went there because it was the closest thing to what I was doing. 

So now we have dance, now we have fashion. And in some ways I practiced for almost a decade in New York, mostly freelance. I did some illustration gigs. So who knew? I also know how to draw, but it wasn't is one of those things. I love it. It takes a completely different part of my brain completely. It's just so different from anything else that something I would like to spend more time with. But it is a different pace that I often don't tell on myself. And I worked with many amazing, I collaborate with many amazing artists in terms of mostly dance and performance artists. But often, of course there is always this, can the costume be a set? Can the set be a costume? And those are always prickly questions for me. I love that.

It when an object or something is there and then suddenly transforms or it extends the body's reach. It extends the body's energy because the body engages it. There's this whole attention economy that is, so it's the two of us right now, we speak, but the moment we introduce sort of another piece, suddenly the space between us becomes sort of, because our attention is also guided into. So that's always been something of great interest. I had a couple of opportunities to show work while I was in school. One of my teachers, I did some art track within the fashion program and in knitwear track because I needed to learn a lot of things.

I know, but I mean New York is very transactional. It's very the city of a good elbow. I had a great time as long as I lived there. And then you step out, you're like, oh, things could be different

Places. People do things different. And I was invited to come here and teach. It was really here pretty much within the first three years. It was like I'm really more interested in installation and not, it's not that I don't want to do what I'm doing, but I want to expand into that. And there was really for many years the sense that I needed to, I keep things sort of in their frameworks and part of it was myself thinking, oh, I can't do this. I have to do this. I can't do that. But I was kind of doing that. It was like, and yeah, so it's a really interesting process, how every step needed to happen before the next step. So I don't want to miss any part of it.

But it's also not that I feel like you need to give up one thing in order to do the next thing. You roll it into it. And I think Nick Cave was a really important mentor in that sense that he was like, you folded in. And I'm like, what do you mean you just folded in? And then I was practicing just fold it in and I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, I guess it's just another side of this. You just maybe enlarge it or kind of what I love to see another viewer is kind of what I invite myself to as well and go like, why not? Who says, you can't do this? Right?

Yeah. I love that the folding it in because who says how it has to look?

Who says you can't fold it 54 times and see what happens?

And it's something amazing each time, or maybe it's only amazing four times, but you still tried it. You got to do it,

You mentioned creating, you had mentioned before creating proto structures or blueprints that can be manipulated to produce different iterations of a garment or be investigated apart from the body. Could you elaborate on this and why it's so significant in your work?

I love this question. Thank you. Thank you. It's a great question. Well, you come back to certain shapes or motifs, sort of, for me, a big one has always been like sight seam is artificial, right? You don't really need a sight seam, but you need some place where you join things together. And so there are sort of organic lines on the body that I love to come back to because they also make sense sort of k kinetically in terms of what they allow in terms of movement. So for example, sort of a slit banal example is a slit on the side of the body is not so helpful, but put it on the front of the leg or the back of the leg, it is much more helpful because it allows both legs to move. If you have a sight seam slit, you still crack that seam, right?

So things like that where I just naturally go, I don't want it there, I just want it there. So I have to shift the seam around. And I've always had these impulse to do that, to change certain. So I've developed some bodies or some shapes that still hold interest for me. And so that's sort of the foundation of it. The proto garments is kind of when sort of a new idea or shape takes hold. And that could include one that is sort of a sibling or generation down from one of the shapes that I already have. So it could be, there's some, some aspect that makes it new, maybe sizing it up or extending a certain part of it, and so it knows where to sit, but it does something else in space. This proto garment is sort of, that's where all the discovery is. That's kind of where, whether I put it on the way initially intended, or I put it sight way. So I put it upside down and draped some pieces that now fall instead of stretch. For example, I have a coat on the form over there if you want to look at that. It's completely not how it's supposed to be worn, but that just happened yesterday. I'm like, ah, that's interesting. So basically exploring with that piece, that is becoming something.

So in its becoming to not go, it can only be this, but go like, well, and then having worked with many different projects and many different needs that like a garment or an installation or whatever needs, needs to be, needs to be, every material introduces their own character to you through a space, through a type. So if I have a prototype, and let's say I cut one in a particular cotton or one in a wool or one in a knit fabric, they all want to be something particular, but it has nothing to do with the others. It's almost like putting that piece on different dancers now.

I'm doing it with different materials. And so in that proto stage, whether I call it pro stage, it would be before you decide is it going to be, what style is it going to be if it is a garment or if it's an installation. And in fact, it is that juicy spot where I don't know what it's going to be. You don't know if it's going to end up a piece of clothing or it's going to end up in art piece? It doesn't want to be. Oh, amazing. Okay. Right. So it's totally proto, but it already has DNA. It's already about to tell you. It already knows what it's going to be.

It takes me by the hand. It literally takes me by the hand. So it's this kind of like, so I'm just like, you trust it, it's going to take you somewhere and fold it all in. What do I have to decide what this is going to be? Why do I have to make these? I miss the best part if I do that. So I've discovered for myself at this produce stage is in many ways the most important one, the juiciest one, not the end result. That's important too. In a different way.

 In a very different way. It's like you land it, but this other one is kind of milking that processes. And also it could be that some ideas you park and you return to later because the seed is there. So now, not that there are bad studio days, but on a day where you're like, you could return back and go like, wait, what was it I wanted to do with this thing? Yeah. So I think that answered that.

How do you envision the interaction between viewers and your installation?

So in some ways, I dunno, I hope there'll be some surprises in many ways. I know a little, I know that when I had pieces up in the studio or previously that I would say there is a familiarity and a surprise. There is something that is not too unfamiliar. I think particularly the colors and the fact that it's mostly made with fabric. So something soft, soft to the touch, we understand what that is, is welcoming.

And then the next piece is a bit of a, but wait, but what's that? It's not a garment. It's stretched over a frame or it's not hanging on a hanger. It's actually installed through the meandering, through the space and doing so there is an unfamiliar element. And then what does that discovery set off and what is, so that is sort of the offering in the piece. And there's a lot of interactions sort of embedded just by the materials, color, shapes, lines, meeting themselves in the piece. So there is through this dimensional way of working always, not always, but often a four in the background layer that are activating each other. 

So to Me, It's just very magical because you start to feel yourself thinking in two planes and see how even your thought process is sort of like a dialogue in some ways and having sort of through mostly visual your eyes, but also other sensory capacities that you have that you may not necessarily think about all the time or not necessarily give yourself permission to feel all the time. They might just pick up and go and just surprise You

With, oh, I really enjoyed that, or they made me think about this, that, or the other. I don't think it's important for me that the viewer thinks about what I think about, but that these sort of amplifications of experiences are set up.

How do you see your practice continuing to evolve in the space between fashion and sort of object making?

Right. Another great question. So I think movement is a really, really big part of my practice. Not that I step in front of an audience and move, but that the movement is always implied. The movement is always there. So the objects therefore also need to somehow be part of any movement or moving, moving pieces. One object I always return to is the circle and the circle moving itself and then tied in with everything else or the circle as a spiral, the circle as a line that meets itself as seams, for example. A lot of my pieces have, there is at some point an angle where it's a circle, but it might come across as something completely different. But trust me, somewhere I think about lines in space. 

There's almost, everything is sort of a spatial line, but as we experience it twists and it moves and it turns, even though when you're on it, you may not know that it's doing all of that. So I really imagine going forward to create commissions for certain entrances, like spaces of wellbeing or healing or spaces for experiential movement-based arts. I don't think it's limited to any art space, but I think it's definitely discovery spaces, schools, places of learning, places of just as an activating reminder or activator, amplifier, activator. It's just something where, because that's a bit that has emerged. It's not that I started out with that goal, but an underlying concern since before the pandemic

Has been sort of our senses, our, and not just the five big senses that have a sense organ, but all the senses that we have that we don't know or don't train because I'm not sure some other, when we look at other species or animals, there's telepathic sense, there is echo, there is an electric sense, electromagnetic sense. There's all kinds of things where dogs, possibly that's true, maybe I don't know. But when they find their way, they always run in certain circles up and down sort of a north south axis. And I think that's an electromagnetic sense to reground the orientation before they go somewhere. And so there is sharks eat metal, there's all kinds of interesting things to observe. We're like, I'm sure we have this sense too. And so I've been collecting senses for a while, and then I've been looking at the relationship of what we call intuition in the context of our senses. Then I've been looking at, nature is sort of obviously a big, my relationship between what I consider my mathematical thinking and intuition. That there is an interesting relationship between what I think of as the fielding side. And I would use my left hand to go, it's fielding, and then the cardinal side. This is right, the right side's, up and down.

The law's proper. How the two brain halves, even in our body sort of exemplify another binary. Another thing we have to negotiate within ourselves. And as a gift, this is not one side is right or the other one, but they, the heart is on the left side. Let's not forget that. So the right side has to work harder to make the left, keep the left side soft. So I think we are built like that. I'm not saying it is just discoveries to go, well, of course, whether you draw, whether you dance, whether all these things you do, your left and your right sides are not simply symmetries, like mirror symmetries. They have very different functions.

In mathematics, we look at mirror symmetries and pivot symmetries. So I love all these visualizations, but also in nature, how things actually do grow and evolve and how you have principles of five principles of three principles of sevens, and the beautiful fractals, the beautiful, how nature just plays With its Own with itself If you stop to notice. 

Right, right. So part of me is I discover something, I get totally excited and I look it up, I study it, I'm like, oh wow. And then I see it everywhere. Then I put it in the work and I'm asking everyone, do you see this? Do you see this? What do you see? What comes? And so it's so interesting how even these aspects that you kind of hide or bury or whatever, they're there and they work through what I think must be our sort of innate senses or subconscious senses or unconscious senses entirely possible. 

But I, I'm quite, so the title of my next show is called Qualia. And Qualia is a word that is fairly new in philosophy in other places, but in its simplest form, it is to notice, to feel what it is, to feel, to feel that you feel. So in some way, that's a way of you becoming, but it's also called a moment of subjective consciousness. So when you have a certain taste, you're like, right. So that's a, it's a qua, a subjectiveness of it, but that you conscious of a sensation. 

So I, this is a word I could flip out over. It's like, oh my god, that's everything. And then you read up on it, you're like, the philosophers are fighting with, it even exists, and it's like the right brain and the left brain going at each other. I was going to say, that seems like something that someone would have a completely opposite opinion about.

And so however, I know for a fact that this aha moment that's been guiding me, that's the quality. That's your whole body. With your body. You have no words for it. It is like there's this moment where you put it on if it's a garment or go through the exhibition or which something happens. And that's kind of what I'm after.

Katrin Schnabl's work defies categorization, seamlessly blending dance, fashion, performance, and installation art. She explores the interconnectedness of these disciplines, focusing on how space and movement influence our experience of garments and environments. Schnabl's process is intuitive and experimental, driven by a curiosity about the sensory and subconscious aspects of creation. We talked to Katrin about her process, her motivations, and how she thinks about her art.