Crafting Material Bodies – exploring co-creative costume processes

Charlotte Østergaard

This exposition is the submitted PhD thesis for the doctoral degree in artistic research in Perfroming Art at Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University December 2024. This artistic research was carried out between 2020 and 2024 and financially supported by Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University, Sweden. Main supervisor: Sofia Pantouvaki Secondsupervisor: Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk The exposition is in three parts: FRAMEWORKS – contextualization the artistic research including description of the artistic method in the research. PROJECTS – containing descriptions and analysis of the three artistic projects "AweAre – a movement quintet", "Community Walk" and "Conversation Costume". CONCLUSION Abstract: At the heart of this research are relational encounters between people and textile materials. As the title, Crafting Material Bodies, indicates, the research explores how human bodies are crafted by material bodies (costume) and vice versa. In the research textile materials and people are my co-creators and as co-creators they are invited to relate to, affect and become affected by other human bodies and more-than-human materials. As the subtitle, exploring co-creative costume processes, indicate the main quest is to explore how we (humans) co-create with textile and costume materials and to explore how textile and costume materials become equal co-creating partners. In the artistic projects I invite fellow artists like performers and designers to explore specific connecting costumes (that connect two or more people) with me. As co-creators I invite them to engage, respond, inform, influence and/or interrupt our costume explorations in ways that matter to them and to critically reflect on our explorations. In the projects I study how listening become instances of relational acts between humans and more-than humans that evoke curious embodied and conversational dialogues Such dialogues are invitations to listen with the textile and costume materials, with (human) bodies, to share embodied experiences, to co-create and to elaborate on the various creative perspectives. During the artistic projects I act as more than an observing designer/researcher. I am the host that have crafted the connecting costumes in collaboration with the textile materials and as host I also actively take part in exploring what the costumes evoke and provoke. The goal is to explore how being a participating host affects the explorative costume situations. The research has four focal themes – crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating – which are explored though three artistic projects. The artistic project AweAre, a movement quintet, explores the act of listening, Community Walk explores the act of hosting and Conversation Costume explores the act of co-creating, while all three projects explore different aspects of crafting. As the themes are entangled, all three projects contain aspects of the four themes. With this research I suggest that it is critical that in co-creative situations we cultivate our listening abilities with human and more-than-human others, and I argue that textile and costume materials is a medium that enable us to do so. With this research my ambition is to formulate ideas on co-creative methods that value material-discursive listening and where the hosting attitude is orientated towards communal doings. The aim is that listenings and communal hostings become tools for designers to gain a deeper understanding of how costume affects performers, and the boarder scope is that the research contributes to discussions on how teams can collaborate with humans and more-than-humans in more generous and inclusive manners. One example is that we acknowledge that our different disciplinary perspectives are creative possibilities in our common doing and that we recognise that how we share and exchange our differences has an impact on how we flourish co-creatively with our human and more-than-human co-creators. ISBN: 978-91-88409-39-3

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This exposition is the submitted PhD thesis for the doctoral degree in artistic research in Perfroming Art at Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University December 2024. This artistic research was carried out between 2020 and 2024 and financially supported by Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University, Sweden. Main supervisor: Sofia Pantouvaki Secondsupervisor: Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk The exposition is in three parts: FRAMEWORKS – contextualization the artistic research including description of the artistic method in the research. PROJECTS – containing descriptions and analysis of the three artistic projects "AweAre – a movement quintet", "Community Walk" and "Conversation Costume". CONCLUSION Abstract: At the heart of this research are relational encounters between people and textile materials. As the title, Crafting Material Bodies, indicates, the research explores how human bodies are crafted by material bodies (costume) and vice versa. In the research textile materials and people are my co-creators and as co-creators they are invited to relate to, affect and become affected by other human bodies and more-than-human materials. As the subtitle, exploring co-creative costume processes, indicate the main quest is to explore how we (humans) co-create with textile and costume materials and to explore how textile and costume materials become equal co-creating partners. In the artistic projects I invite fellow artists like performers and designers to explore specific connecting costumes (that connect two or more people) with me. As co-creators I invite them to engage, respond, inform, influence and/or interrupt our costume explorations in ways that matter to them and to critically reflect on our explorations. In the projects I study how listening become instances of relational acts between humans and more-than humans that evoke curious embodied and conversational dialogues Such dialogues are invitations to listen with the textile and costume materials, with (human) bodies, to share embodied experiences, to co-create and to elaborate on the various creative perspectives. During the artistic projects I act as more than an observing designer/researcher. I am the host that have crafted the connecting costumes in collaboration with the textile materials and as host I also actively take part in exploring what the costumes evoke and provoke. The goal is to explore how being a participating host affects the explorative costume situations. The research has four focal themes – crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating – which are explored though three artistic projects. The artistic project AweAre, a movement quintet, explores the act of listening, Community Walk explores the act of hosting and Conversation Costume explores the act of co-creating, while all three projects explore different aspects of crafting. As the themes are entangled, all three projects contain aspects of the four themes. With this research I suggest that it is critical that in co-creative situations we cultivate our listening abilities with human and more-than-human others, and I argue that textile and costume materials is a medium that enable us to do so. With this research my ambition is to formulate ideas on co-creative methods that value material-discursive listening and where the hosting attitude is orientated towards communal doings. The aim is that listenings and communal hostings become tools for designers to gain a deeper understanding of how costume affects performers, and the boarder scope is that the research contributes to discussions on how teams can collaborate with humans and more-than-humans in more generous and inclusive manners. One example is that we acknowledge that our different disciplinary perspectives are creative possibilities in our common doing and that we recognise that how we share and exchange our differences has an impact on how we flourish co-creatively with our human and more-than-human co-creators. ISBN: 978-91-88409-39-3
Charlotte Østergaard - Crafting Material Bodies – exploring co-creative costume processes - 2024
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Artistic research by Charlotte Østergaard.

Main supervisor: Dr Sofie Pantouvaki.

Second supervisor: Dr Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk.

Malmö Theatre Academy. Artistic Research in Performing Arts.

Director of Studies Professor Sven Bjerstedt.

Head of Subject Senoir Lecture Sofie Lebech.

Welcome to the artistic research PhD thesis by Charlotte Østergaard.

At the centre of this research lie three artistic projects. In AweAre – a movement quintet we listened to the AweAre (connecting) costume and discovered that it was a co-performer with a demanding voice. In Community Walk we explored how the connecting costume “threw” us in multiple directions: it evoked playfulness between us and with others (people and urban/nature elements) while at the same time provoked a strong sense of exposure. In Conversation Costume we explored how an assembly of costumes invited us to co-create different connections and/or compositions with the space and with/between us and other people, and we experienced that the costume assembly lead us in surprising and unexpected directions.

With this research I suggest that it is critical that in co-creative situations we cultivate our listening abilities towards human and more-than-human others and I argue that costume is a tool that enables us to do so. Moreover, I argue that co-creativity is a call to listen, which implies that we must host with communal hospitality.

Welcome to the artistic research PhD thesis by Charlotte Østergaard

Crafting Material Bodies – exploring co-creative costume processes

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