The artistic project AweAre – a movement quintet was a costume-generated performance that was co-created with four dancers and performed at Ny Carlsbergfondet’s (New Carlsberg Foundation) performance festival Up Close in Denmark (2020). This project originates from the fact that I have for years designed and produced costumes for contemporary dance which has given me a love for the art form and a fondness for collaborating with dancers. However, in this project I do not focus on relationships between costume and choreography. With this project I explore how the AweAre costume – that was crafted to connect four dancers – acts as a shared starting point for a co-creative process of listening with the costume. A process that implied that we co-creatively explored how the four dancers listened and were affected by their placements in the costume. 

In this project I combine Jane Bennett’s concept of “vibrant matter” and Donna Haraway’s concept of “making kin”, firstly to suggest that crafting the AweAre costume was a process of making kin with the vibrancy of textile materialities. Secondly, I suggest that the values of vibrant kin-making were crafted into the AweAre costume implied that I had to explore and listen to how the dancers’ made kin with the vibrancy of the costume. This artistic project studies how listening became a tool to share and navigate the dancers’ different experiences and how this listening tool allows us to negotiate and co-create a relational performance score.

Co-creators: Alex Berg, Camille Marchadour, Daniel Jeremiah Persson and Josefine Ibsen. Victor Dahl composed a soundscape for the performance.

The artistic project AweAre – a movement quintet 

Bibliography

References

Barbieri, Donatella & Crawley, Greer (2019). The scenographic, costumed chorus, agency, and the performance matter· A new materialist approach to costume, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 6(2), 143–162.

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant matter – a political ecology of things. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 

Bodiciu, Corneliu Dinu Tudor (2023) Symbiosis: A New Paradigm for Understanding How Bodies and Dress Come Together, Fashion Theory, 27(4), 493–509, DOI:10.1080/1362704X.2022.2111020

Dean, Sally E. (2021). ‘Aware-Wearing’: A Somatic Costume Design Methodology for Performance, In (Eds.) Sofia Pantouvaki, Sofia & Peter McNeil, Peter (2021) Performance Costume – new perspectives and methods. Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 229–244.

Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble – making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Kirkeby, Ole Fogh (2016). Protreptik – selvindsigt og samtalepraksis, Samfundslitteratur. 

Pantouvaki, Sofia; Fossheim, Ingvill & Suurla, Susanna (2021). Thinking with costume and material: a critical approach to (new) costume ecologies, Theatre and Performance Design, 7:3-4, 199-219. 

Skærbæk, E. (2009), Leaving Home? The ‘worlds’ of knowledge, love and power, In Bizzini, S.C. & Malabotta, M.R. (Eds.), Teaching Subjectivity –Travelling Selves for feminist pedagogy. Stockholm: Centre for Gender Studies, Stockholm University. 46–67. 

Østergaard, Charlotte (2022). Kostume-drevne performances – kostumers generative og performative potentialer, Dansk teaters 300 år jubilæum, Peripeti – tidskrift for dramatiske studier, 19(2022), Institut for Kommunikation of Kultur, Århus Universitet, 40–55.

Østergaard, Charlotte (2023). Listening Through and With Costume, Nordic Journal of Dance - Volume 14(1), 90–99.

Digital references

The Biennale for Crafts and Design, Denmark (2019) 

Textile Techniques as Potential for Developing Costume Design, The Danish National School of Performing Arts (2016/2017) 

UP Close performance festival, Ny Carlsbergfondet (2020)

Additional readings

Bryan–Wilson, Julia (2024), At pynte på Madalenas tråd, Kunsten som forum 15, Billedkunstskolernes forlag, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. 

Ely, Karmenlare (2015). Yielding to the Unknown: actor training as Intensification of the Senses, in (Eds) Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla & Ely, Karmenlara, Responsive Listening: Theatre Training for Contemporary Space. 15–33. 

Ely, Karmenlare & Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla (2015), Introduction, in (Eds) Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla & Ely, Karmenlara, Responsive Listening: Theatre Training for Contemporary Space. 11–15. 

Fredens, Kjeld (2018), Læring med kroppen forrest, Hans Reitzels Forlag. Gørtz, Kim & Mejlhede, Mette (2015) Protreptik i praksis, Jurist- og Økonomiforbundets forlag.

Haraway, Donna (2020/1991), Et Cyrbogmanifest – naturvidenskab, teknologi og socialistisk feminisme i det sene tyvende århundrede, Forlaget Mindspace.

Haushild, Mille Breyen (2024), Vedligeholdelses poetik, Laboratoriet for Æstetik og Økologi. 

Ingold T. (2016), On human correspondence, Journal of the royal anthropological institute (N.S.), Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(1), p. 9-27.

Latour, Bruno & Schultz, Nikolaj (2022). Notat om den nye økologiske klasse – hvordan man skaber en selvbevidst og stolt økologisk klasse. Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Macnamara, Looby (2014), 7 ways to think differently – embrace potential, respond to life, discover abundance, Permanent Publication.

Margulis Lymm & Saga, Dorion (2023/1984). Gaia and Philosophy, Ignot. 

Nancy, Jean-Luc (2007), Listening, Fordham University Press. Neimanis, A. (2012), On collaboration (for Barbara Godard), NORA – Nordic journal of feminist and gender research, 20(3), p. 215–221.

O’Brien, Kerry (2016), Listening as activism: the “sonic meditations” of Pauline Oliveros, The New Yorker, December 6, 2016. 

Oliveros, Pauline (2010/2022), Quantum Listening, Ignota Books.

Oliveros, Pauline (2015), The difference between hearing and listening, TED talks November 12, 2015. 

Oliveros, Pauline (2005). Deep Listening – a composer’s sound practice, iUniverse.

Paulson, Steve. 2019. “Making kin: an interview with Donna Haraway,” LARB Los Angeles review of books, published December 6, 2019. Accessed online March 2^nd, 2023. 

Pontoppidan, Andrea Fjordside & Bencke, Ida (2022). Husholdingsbogen for Radikal Omsorg. Laboratoriet for Æstetik og Økologi. 

Reeve, Sandra (2012). Nine Ways of Seeing a Body, Triarchy Press. 

Shah, Rajni (2021), Experiments in Listening, Rowman & Littlefield.

Stahlschmidt, Anders (2022). Den opmærksomme lytter – bliv bedre til at høre hvad andre siger. Lumholt & Stahlschmidt.

The L:sten:ng Beinnal

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (2015), The mushroom at the End og the World – on the possibilities of life in capitalist ruins, Princeton University Press. 

Tsing, Anna; Swanson, Heather; Gan, Elaine & Bubandt, Nils (2017), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. University of Minnesota Press. 

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Listening matters that matters

Attuning to making kin 

Listening with the AweAre costume 

Bibliography 

Video edit of AweAre – a movement quintet

Co-creating AweAre – a movement quintet

The values of kinship

The AweAre Costume

Making kin with vibrant matter

I argue that in our sharing sessions one of my hosting response-abilities was to ask open-minded and curious questions that invited the dancers to explain and approach how they experienced a specific situation. Another responsibility was to exercise my abilities to listen to the dancers’ experiences and to embrace that specific improvisations or explorations with the costume would evoke different responses from the four dancers. Moreover, in the sharing sessions I exercised listening to the dancers with kindness and in a non-judgmental manner as an attempt to listen to what was not said or what was said between the lines – with an awareness that what I heard between the lines was my interpretation. 

I suggest that our sharing sessions informed and focused the costume explorations and the dialogues that followed. I argue that our sharing sessions and our dialogues became the key element that evoked a collective awareness and crafted a shared language that made us attend to the collective dimensions of the costume (Østergaard 2023, 96). Thus, our different listening(s) became a way of thinking together that moved the process forward and made us discover the relational and performative potential of the costume in the situation.

Other than that, through the dialogue we explored how the dancers could co-exist in the costume; not that co-existing was a matter of consensus or that the co-existing was purely pleasurable. In the collective interview the dancers shared how exhausted they felt after the rehearsals, after the performances and even one week after the project ended. 

The dancers described how their wearable part had ‘pushed and pulled’ their bodies in ways that had made them quite sore. Moreover, re-listening to the interview, the dancers’ descriptions of the ‘after-effect’ made me aware that the position ‘in the middle’ was more challenging than I realised in our process. This dancer’s reflection on the ‘after-effects’ showed that even though I tried to listen as broadly as possible and to the four different placements in the costume, there were still aspects that I missed and that I did not hear. I can only speculate; I wonder why this dancer did not share their sensation of struggle in our sharing sessions. Perhaps because they were polite, perhaps they had not formulated the struggle while we were rehearsing or performing, perhaps the bodily soreness made them more aware of how challenging it was to be placed in the middle or perhaps something else entirely. Separate from this, in an interview I conducted one year after our process and the performances the dancers could quite quickly recall the embodied memories of the costume.

Attending to dilemmas 

Even though I argued that I crafted values of kinship into the costume, in the rehearsal I realised that I also crafted a hierarchy into the composition of the costume. During our process, but also through the interviews, it became apparent that the costume had a three-divided hierarchy: at one end two dancers were interrelated and empowered and could thus somehow control or overrule the movements of the others; in the middle the dancer was trapped and unfree; and at the other end the dancer was ‘on the edge’, with little possibility of interacting with or influencing the group. As host, I could not ignore the hierarchy that was embedded in the costume. I was accountable for how the costume was crafted and thus it was my responsibility to approach the hierarchy and to find ways to navigate the hierarchy together with the dancers. In our short rehearsal process, and in the performances, we managed to approach the hierarchy by beginning to explore how to listen to the different placements in the costume. However, as mentioned, it was not until the collective interview two weeks after our process that I realised how challenging the middle position were. 

As I crafted AweAre I made kin with its textile materials and its composition. Still, our listenings and co-creative process revealed that the AweAre costume had a persona that I did not know existed while I crafted it. Through the interviews it became clear to me that in our process I only just began to become familiar with the AweAre costume. There is still much that I do not know and that I potentially will never know. What I do know or rather, what I learned is that the AweAre costume’s materiality and composition demanded of us to listen. I wonder whether perhaps we humans had less control and that the AweAre costume controlled us, our actions and listenings. For example, even if some of the dancers had more power than others it was the force of the costume that provoked the hierarchy. 

Bennett notes that we “open up space for forms of ethical practice that do not rely upon the image of an intrinsically hierarchical order for things” (Bennett 2010, 12). With the AweAre costume a space of dilemmas appeared. During the process we touched upon aspects of the dilemmas related to the hierarchical placements in the costume, and during the interviews other aspects became apparent to me. In the process we discovered the movement/listening hierarchy of the AweAre and we only managed to approach some of those dilemmas of the hierachy. 

Becoming familiar 

I chose to host an iterative rehearsal process that consisted of explorative sessions where the dancers moved and improvised with the costume, and of sharing sessions where I asked the dancers to share their sensorial experiences of their placements in the costume (Østergaard 2023, 93) and to reflect on how they experienced the collective dimensions of the costume. In the sharing sessions ­– where everyone had time to speak – we gained insights into how the costume affected the four dancers in similar and yet different ways. 

What seemed similar was what the dancers called the ‘dramaturgy of the costume’, which was somehow also the dramaturgy of our co-creative process. One dancer described the dramaturgy as a progression that started with an awareness of and absorption in exploring their wearable part/placement to gradually expanding their attention towards embracing the collective dimensions of the costume. Another dancer described the dramaturgy as “getting to know yourself in relation to the costume and the costume getting to know us”. This reflection points to the fact that the dancers made kin and became familiar with the costume, but also that the costume had to become familiar with the dancers. At the time of our rehearsals the concept of kin-making was not yet on my research agenda. Nonetheless, the costume was a kin-maker which made the dancers refer to it as a more-than-human person or persona (Østergaard 2023, 94).

Attending to details

The four dancers, the costume and I were a new constellation or assemblage in the situation that we all had to become familiar with. Haraway reminds me that “the devil is in the details” (Haraway 2016, 47), and I had to pay close attention to the playfulness between the dancers to discover the nuances of what happened between them and to approach what they experienced. Moreover, as the host I had placed myself as an outside eye or as a witness – an act that could have indicated to the dancers that I intended to direct or that I was the curating or evaluating ‘eye’. Even if I did not intend to act in any of the former roles, as host I had to pay attention to how I acted since I was actively affecting our temporal and situational assemblage and our creative relationship. Thus, as the host, I argue that the way in which I attended to and listened to the experiences of the dancers mattered. Haraway writes that 

details link actual beings to actual response-abilities. Each time a story helps me remember what I thought I knew, or introduces me to new knowledge, a muscle critical for caring about flourishing gets some aerobic exercise. Such exercise enhances collective thinking and movement too. Each time I trace a tangle and add a few threads that first seemed whimsical but turned out to be essential to the fabric. (Haraway 2016, 115–116) 

Haraway points to the fact that attending to nuances of the dancers’ experiences was an exercise of attuning my lydhørhed (link) and my ability to listen and respond to them. I also had to exercise and/or explore how I could craft conditions that made the dancers able to listen and respond to each other and to the costume. I needed to attune my response-abilities as a way of gaining knowledge of how the costume affected the dancers in different ways, and as an opening or invitation to the dancers to co-explore the costume and co-create the performance. 

As mentioned (in Co-creating AweAre – a movement quintet), I asked the dancers to select and negotiate their placements in the costume. Even though I thought that offered the dancers agency, the short try-out of the different wearable parts and/or placements gave them no grounds to understand the impact of their choices. Thus, the question is whether the choice offered the dancers agency or not. However, the question highlights that whatever conscious and unconscious choices I made, my choice affected the collective process and informed how our co-creative relationship unfolded and flourished. Thus, as the host I need to be aware of and I must attend to how my choices affect what the dancers are able to do as well as maintaining cognisance that it affects our creative relationship. 

Listening and sharing

The Danish philosopher Professor Emeritus at Copenhagen Business School Ole Fogh Kirkeby writes in Protreptik – selvindsigt og samtalepraksis (1) that a key concept in his modern version of protreptic (2) is translocutionarity (3), which suggests “that you do not know what you mean until you hear yourself say it” (Kirkeby 2016: 72). (4) Translocutionarity indicates that speaking is not a matter of formulating the perfect argument or explanation – it is the act of listening to oneself while speaking. This suggests that when we explain what we experience our attention is orientated towards our experiences. As we speak, and if we listen to ourselves while we speak, we can approach, unfold and discover new or other insights pertaining to what we have experienced. For example, by listening to ourselves while speaking and explaining we awaken our embodied memories with specific costume, whereby we recall and potentially re-discover how and what we sensed and how we were affected by this costume. Additionally, when we speak, we most likely consciously or unconsciously listen to and compare the present experience with past embodied memories.

In the context of sharing experiences, it does not only matter how we listen to ourselves, but it also matters how we listen to others. I suggest that when we listen to someone who explains how they have experienced a costume we might or might not understand or fully grasp what they are trying to explain. On the other hand, if we are open-minded their explanations might give us an inkling of something that is familiar and/or it might evoke some of our own embodied memories with costume. When we share our experiences of costume, we must embrace the fact that when we listen to others sharing their experience, they might have experienced something completely different to what we have. I suggest that if we are willing to listen with curiosity to each other’s costume experiences and if we allow each other’s explanations to be dwelling, hesitant, searching or something other, we potentially open ourselves to other people’s experiences. 

Attuning to making kin 

As a starting point I would like to include a short summary of reflections unfolded in other paths. I suggested that I crafted values of kinship into the AweAre costume. Bennett reminded me (re-quoted) that “the ethical responsibility of an individual human now resides in one’s response to the assemblages in which one finds oneself participating” (Bennett 2010, 37). As craftsperson I was responsible for the assemblage that I curated. Thus, as a responsible craftsperson I must be aware of and attend to how my handling and/or mastery of the (chosen) crafting techniques affected the way that I, as single human in the privacy of my studio space, made kin and became familiar with the vibrant ‘personalities’ of the stretchable textile materials. I suggested that the values of kinship imply that during the crafting I must curiously explore ways of creating relationships with the textile materials by listening to, responding to and being affected by them as well as having a metaphorical dialogue with them. 

I unfolded the process of co-creating the AweAre – a movement quintet performance. From crafting the AweAre costume to the performance-making process the assemblage had transformed: it now included the four dancers who I invited to co-create the performance and a costume about which I did not know how it would craft or affect the four dancers. I argued that the values of kinship imply, firstly, that I must acknowledge that the dancers as fellow craftspeople have trained their sensitivity in different ways than I have. Thus, the techniques that the dancers master informed the way that they approached the AweAre costume. Secondly, the value of kinship implies that I was accountable for inviting the four dancers to make kin with the AweAre costume in ways that mattered to them and/or related to their craft-skilfulness. I therefore had to be open-minded and curious towards the dancers’ experiences and towards the relationships that the AweAre costume evoked and/or provoked between them and us.

Making kin with vibrant matter

Crafting 

As a starting point I will shortly address crafting. The verb crafting originates from the Old English cræftan, meaning “to exercise a craft; to build, to make skilfully”. The noun craft originates from Old English cræft (West Saxon, Northumbrian) and -creft (Kentish), meaning “power, physical strength”, and in Old English it includes “skill, dexterity; art, science, talent” via a notion of “mental power”. Thus, the verb crafting points to the craftsperson’s ability to control their doing through mastering and embodying specific techniques and thus embedded in crafting is an urge to strive for mastery. As such, one could argue that crafting implies that the craftsperson, no matter their exact profession, must constantly improve their physical abilities and mental power to embody and perform their skilful doing. Additionally, crafting suggests that a craftsperson crafts their materials in order to embody or master specific techniques that can include mastering and handling specific tools. For example, a skilful designer and a skilful dancer will most likely master and embody different techniques, materials and tools. 

The origin of the verb crafting highlights the craftsperson’s strength to master specific skills, while less emphasis is placed on other aspects involved in the crafting processes such as tools, spatiality, temporality and more-than-human materialities. In the context of costume, crafting indicates that the craftsperson – a designer, a maker, a tailor or someone else – must master specific techniques to shape specific textile materials according to a design. The mastery insinuates that the craftsperson potentially positions themselves hierarchically above the textile materials and that the textile materials are in service of and/or must subordinate the design. However, as an artist craftsperson, it is the textile materials that has my interest, as they are a constant source of inspiration.

In what follows I will dive into Jane Bennett’s concept of “vibrant matter” and Donna Haraway’s concept of “making kin” – concepts that in different ways attend to more-than-humans. I unfold how I combine these two concepts as lenses to think-with in the artistic project AweAre – a movement quintet. 

Sensibility towards the vibrancy of materialities

In Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things Jane Bennett writes that “to experience the relationship between persons and other materialities more horizontally, is to take a step towards a more ecological sensibility” (Bennett 2010, 10). This suggests that crafting includes more than the craftsperson’s skilfulness and more than a human-centric perspective on mastery. The craftsperson must “step back” and be sensible towards materialities in order to create a horizontal relationship to the materialities that are present in the situation. Bennett continues that there is an “ethical task […] to cultivate the ability to discern nonhuman vitality” (Bennett 2010, 14) by “affecting and being affected by other bodies” (Bennett 2010, 21). Bennett’s vibrant matter is an ethical call for humans to distribute agency to bodies other than the human. Thus, the craftsperson’s skilfulness includes the ability to be sensible to and affected by the vibrancy of the materialities. This suggests that human mastery is not a matter of controlling materialities. Rather, it is a matter of crafting horizontal relationships with the material matter that are present in the situation. 

In the context of crafting costumes, inherent in crafting is that the craftsperson has the power to select the specific techniques that they will use to craft the chosen or curated textile materials. Consequently, the craftsperson’s aesthetic choices will shape the crafting process: the technical choice(s) will inform and affect the craftsperson’s sensibility towards the textile materials and the textile materialities will inform the craftsperson’s attitude towards the crafting techniques. How can the craftsperson be sensitive towards the consequence of their aesthetic choices and, at the same time, create a horizontal relationship with the textile materials that allows both parties to flourish in the process? How can crafting foster vibrant procedural relationships between the craftsperson, the techniques and the materials? These questions have guided my thinking on how to form horizontal relationships with textile materials that include attending to the values that are embedded in this horizontal crafting attitude. Attending to textile relationships and crafting values suggests that the craftsperson must listen to more their visions. To reflect on the above-mentioned questions, I turn to Donna Haraway’s concept of making kin.

Kin-making

In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene Donna Haraway writes that 

kin making is making persons, not necessarily as individuals or as humans. […] [M]aking kin and making kind (as category, care, relatives without the ties by birth, lateral relatives, lots of other echoes) stretch[es] the imagination and can change the story. (Haraway 2016, 103) 

Haraway’s kin-making stretches kinship to include forming relationships with kinds that are not human, which is an invitation to include these other more-than-humankinds in our stories or worldings. In Haraway’s wording, “ancestors turn out to be very interesting strangers; kin are unfamiliar” (Haraway 2016,103). In Haraway worlding kin-making is becoming familiar with what is unfamiliar, whether the strangers are human or more-than-human. In the context of crafting this highlights that the craftsperson is familiar with, and thus has knowledge of textile materials. At the same time in each crafting process the craftsperson must become familiar with the qualities of the specific textiles as if it was an act of becoming familiar with unfamiliar ancestors. It is through the making-with or crafting-with that the craftsperson makes kin or forms relationships with more-than-humans like textile materials. 

In recognition of the fact that nothing makes itself, Haraway points to sympoiesis as the act of making-with (Haraway 2016, 58). Sympoiesis describes complex, dynamic, responsive and situated systems of worlding-with or doing-with “a host of companions” (Haraway 2016, 31). It is important to note that symbiosis within biology includes

three main types of symbiotic relations based on the ways in which symbionts live together as mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. In a mutualistic symbiosis both partners benefit from the relationship […] Commensalism may be used in a broader sense than only relating to nutrition, where one symbiont takes advantage of the other without causing any harm. In parasitism, one of the symbionts takes benefits at the expense of the other. (Bodiciu 2023, 497)

As such I suggest that within Haraway’s sympoiesis is an acknowledgement that relationships with more-than-human companions are not just pleasurable and calm but can also be challenging and demanding. 

Making-with are situations where humans and more-than-humans become familiar with each other and where both parties as companions are important and valuable. Making-with suggests that crafting consists of processes that serve more-than-human needs and more than the craftsperson’s (designer, chorographer, performer and/or others) aesthetic visions and needs – crafting comprises “open-ended exploratory processes” (Haraway 2016, 78) where textile materials are the craftsperson’s creative companions. 

Haraway argues that kinship is not a given but requires attention and endurance from humans to allow more-than-human bodies to become ‘persons’ on their own terms. In the context of crafting costume this suggests that the craftsperson must not only be sensitive towards the textile materials as vibrant matter, but that the craftsperson must be willing to make kin in the textile materials as non-human persons or companions in order to make-with them. Thus, crafting encapsulates situations where the craftsperson must explore and search for the vibrant kinship that can emerge with the textiles.

Crafting costume involves processes where the craftsperson becomes familiar with the ‘personalities’ of their textile companions and through the dynamic tension between them they make kin. In crafting processes it matters whether the craftsperson cares for and listens to or ignores or overrules their textile companions. Moreover, as crafting processes are temporal, the craftsperson might potentially and most likely only become familiar with parts of the textile companions ‘personalities’. This includes the fact that the kinship – becoming more familiar with (un)familiar particularities of specific textile materialities – that hopefully emerges with the textile materials is potentially different than the craftsperson had imagined prior to the crafting or kin-making process. 

Even though I have above used only crafting as an example of the processes of making kin with vibrant textile materialities, it also applies to studying, using and analysing costume. In Thinking with costume and material: a critical approach to (new) costume ecologies Pantouvaki et al. argue that

costume is not merely a passive artefact, or a project created from idea to material, but an act of correspondence (Ingold 2013), ‘something active with which you engage and interact’ (Malafouris 2013, 149), an enactment between makers and materials. (Pantouvaki et al. 2021, 203). 

In the article Pantouvaki et al. do not directly point towards the concepts that I use in this artistic project, however as with other costume and performance-making colleagues, they are influenced by new materialism. I strongly agree when Pantouvaki et al. propose 

that thinking with costume and material, taking the material into consideration as co-actant and collaborator for the creation of meaning, leads to a costume practice where the thinking, the material (world) and the body (soma) are co-constitutive, intertwining ‘between intentionality and affordance’. (Pantouvaki et al. 202, 204) 

As an artist craftsperson that crafts costume some of my key collaborators or co-creators are textile materials. While crafting I listen to and with the textiles as more-than-human co-creators. In the crafting process we – the textiles and I – are co-crafted or co-constituted and as such the textiles inform and influence my costume thinking. However, in this project it is the listening with the textiles and the costume that has my attention. 

Sound (2:56): the after-effect of the AweAre costume 

The AweAre Costume

The backdrop for the AweAre costume

The AweAre costume was developed from the knowledge I gained from a costume that – like the AweAre costume – connected four people and that I crafted in one of my KUV projects (1). This costume’s wearable parts were woven. Due to the way in which I technically wove with textile ‘threads’, and due to the looseness of my weaving, as the wearable parts were worn the ‘threads’ did not stay in place. Thus, over time the shape of the wearable parts transformed, which made it almost impossible to figure out how to dress and place the wearable parts on wearers’ bodies. While I crafted this four-person connecting costume I had imagined exploring the costume in multiple settings. However, due to the transformation it became impossible. At the same time, the vibrancy of this connecting costume had awoken my curiosity and I took the first opportunity that presented itself to craft a new version.

As an opportunity, the AweAre costume started as an exhibition project and thus it was originally crafted for the curated exhibition The Biennale for Crafts and Design in Denmark (2019). In the exhibition context AweAre was potentially more a wearable object than a costume. In the exhibition space AweAre hung from the ceiling on four hangers and there was an invitation to the audience to touch and wear it. As I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, as I crafted AweAre my aim was for the wearable parts to have a stretchable fit that would enable exhibition guests with different body sizes, hights, etc. to fit into them, as well as making the part easy to put on on top of whatever the guest or wearer was wearing. As I did not want the shape of the wearable parts to transform I was eager to develop a more stable, yet flexible, interlocking technique than the weaving.

Listening matters that matters

The collective costume body

I named the costume AweAre which – at the time of naming the costume – was inspired by and a tribute to Sally E. Dean who with her term “aware wearing” highlights that we (not only performers but also costume designers and other performance-makers) must be aware of how costume affects wearers. As such, the sharing session and the listenings that the sessions evoked came from a genuine wish to explore how the dancers were affected by the costume and how they formed co-creative relationships with the costume. Reflecting on our process, it has become apparent that the costume’s name has an expanded or additional perspective. The we in AweAre was critical. The three AweAre – a movement quintet performances that the dancers performed at the festivals were versions of how we (that includes the costume) became during our process. 

In our short rehearsal process the dancers’ made kin with the AweAre costume and through their explorations we became somewhat familiar with the costume’s demanding personality. I argue that in the three performances the dancers and the AweAre costume became a collective costume body. A collective costume body where the dancers and the costume depended on each other. They became an organism that listened with and responded to the ‘push and pull’ in the stretchable textiles that connected them. The connections became vibrant matter that vibrated with their movements and the vibrations affected their embodied dialogues. As an organism they listened to and with the vibrations between them. At times the vibrations evoked subtle and careful listenings, at other times it provoked surprising and rapid responses that changed the direction of the organism. Even though the collective costume body was a vibrant organism, it did not imply that the navigating and negotiating within the organism was pleasurable. It was exhausting and demanding.

Cultivating listening cultures

In our process my aim was to explore relational and co-creational aspects of the AweAre costume. As an attempt to create a relational awareness or mindset in our rehearsal process, I hosted the sharing sessions. As mentioned, in the sharing session I had a genuine interest to hear, explore and gain knowledge of how the costume affected the dancers, individually and collectively.

Eva Skærbæk (1) writes that “independence without any link to dependency leaves both parts ignored, invisible and unloved” (Skærbæk 2009, 49). Skærbæk reminds me that if I do not show that I depend on and care for the dancers as fellow co-creators they become invisible.  Therefore, it is critical that I, the host, listen to the co-creators as it is through the listenings that I show that I care about how costume affects their bodies.

As much as listening is offering attention to co-creators it is also a hosting orientation that the host demand of the co-creators. However, listening is not easy. This artistic project showed that listening is something that we consciously choose to do and even though we choose to listen to our fellows there are always things or aspects that we do not hear. Either because we do not want to hear it or because we cannot hear it from our position, or perhaps we are unaware that there are things or aspects that we do not hear – which is somehow straightforward and yet complex. In our process there were aspects that I, as host, did not hear and that I thus did not pay enough attention to, and there were aspects that I became aware of retrospectively. 

Still, I suggest, that the repetitions of the sharing sessions became more than an offer: it became collective acts where we practiced how to listen. I argue that in the artistic projects the listeings that made us more empathic towards viewpoints other than our own and which made us pay closer attention to the listening dynamic between us. Thus, exchanging our different experience and viewpoints became critical for developing a collective awareness. Together we discovered the hierarchy that was embedded in the costume, and we approached the hierarchy by listening to the different placements in the costume. These co-directional listenings increased our collective awareness or collective listenings, which created another challenge since the collective listening was demanding and, at times, tiring and overwhelming. At the same time, I still suggest that the collective awareness became affirmative; though not affirmative in the sense that it created harmony, consensus or a sensation of being completely understood or ‘heard’. The affirmative was an acknowledgment that the costume had a hierarchy and that the hierarchy ‘hid’ in the playful dynamic between the different placements – where some placements were heard, and others less so.

I suggest that as we enter new collaborations listening is collaborative culture that we must rehearse and cultivate co-creatively. I suggest that listening with costume attunes our lydhørheder (link) towards our co-creators. I argue that curious and open-minded co-creative costume processes include the critical, affirmative and caring act of listenings with the human and more-than-humans other with whom one is in an interconnected and co-creative relationship with. 

Listening stretch-abilities

Listening is not just an offer we give to other people; it is being willing to stretch oneself towards our co-creators whether the co-creators are human or not. What became apparent was that the AweAre costume, and especially its stretchability, taught me something about how listening with costume is acts of stretching towards the textile materials and toward the ‘personality’ of the costume. 

As I was crafting the AweAre costume, interlocking the three crafting techniques – braiding, weaving and knotting – demanded time and patience and my full attention. The textiles’ stretchability was demanding, and they required of me that I used my strength to interlock them. I still sense the soreness in my body – especially a sensation that my hands were swollen – after days of interlocking. As I listened to the dancers describe the ‘after-effect’ of the costume I empathised with them but I did not connect the two. In hindsight, it seems like part of the kin-making that is embedded in the AweAre costume is the demand of the stretchable textile materials. 

It was a process where I simultaneously had to make kin with each string in relation and response to the colours of the strings, with the crafting techniques and with how the shape of each wearable part as well as how the composition as a whole evolved visually. For example, from my aesthetic viewpoint the visuality of the parts – and thus potentially of the whole composition of the costume – became less dynamic if one of the interlocking techniques became visually too dominant or readable. Hence, there had to be a tension between the three techniques of braiding, weaving and knotting – they had to be interlinked or sampled in ways that blurred or blended the techniques into one another. 

During the crafting process I additionally experimented with ways of connecting the four wearable parts. I experimented with combining textile surfaces and strings with an ambition to create a natural transition from the wearable parts to the connecting parts of the costume. In the crafting process, being a single body presented a limitation to physically test whether the connecting parts could carry the weight of four bodies. The crafting or interlocking of the wearable parts had given me some knowledge of and kinship to the ‘personalities’ of the different textile kinds that I could build on. At the same time, I stretched, dragged and pulled the connecting parts in as many ways as possible to discover weak points where the connecting parts could potentially tear under the weight of several bodies.

Visiting memories of crafting AweAre

As I unfolded in the beginning of this path, the AweAre costume was originally crafted for an exhibition project. Thus, the costume was crafted before I started this research, and I can be criticised for describing a crafting process that took place before the research started. On the other hand, in my artistic practice textiles are my creative source and recourse. In the slow crafting process textiles are vibrating, stimulating and inspiring companions. As the textile companions leave my hand and my studio space, they have taken a shape and they will form other relationships that are beyond me; like in the exhibition space where AweAre had a life of its own. However, the experience of making kin with textiles during crafting processes remains within me as precious embodied memories that I can induce. 

I was offered the PhD position at Malmö Theatre Academy in March 2019, but the employment did not start until January 2020. Thus, as I was crafting the AweAre costume the research was already in the planning stage. As I started the research, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world (March 2020) and the artistic research plans I had were cancelled or postponed. The Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns also resulted in that I together with the AweAre costume as my creative companion, was invited to the Up Close performance festival. The festival became an excellent opportunity to co-explore the AweAre costume with four dancers. As Danish governmental regulations – at the time of the invitation – prescribed distance between people, I decided to prolong the length of connections between the wearable parts. As I crafted the prolongations or re-crafted the connecting parts of the costume, my memories of crafting the AweAre costume was induced. 

The demand of the stretchable materials was also in the demand of the AweAre costume: I had to stretch myself towards the dancers’ experiences of how they were ‘pushed and pulled’ by the stretchability of the costume. In other words, as we were exploring and ‘struggling’ with the AweAre costume, it was especially the textile materials and its stretchability that challenged us to stretch our listenings to include ourselves but also to listen beyond ourselves. The AweAre costume demanded that we co-creatively stretched our listenings towards what the stretchability and spatial positions evoked and provoked between us. As mentioned in another path, one of the dancers suggested that I as the host acted as the mediator between their experiences, however I suggest that the costume was our mediator: a mediator that made us relate by stretching our listenings towards shaping a co-creative relationship with the costume.

In collaborative or co-creative processes I suggest that we must be willing to stretch our listening towards perspectives and positions that are different from our own, and that in the stretch we will learn something that we did not know prior to the stretch. The ontological question is how far we (humans) can stretch ourselves towards different human and more-than-human others without stretching ourselves beyond our limits or boundaries. What the AweAre costume and the dancers taught me is that I must be willing to stretch my listenings to learn things or aspects about costume that I do not know and that I cannot approach singlehandedly. Listening is also entering into landscapes of (ethical) dilemmas of how costume affect our bodies and what relationships the costume crafts between us. This project shows that listen with costume demanded of us to stretch our listenings beyond what we expected or knew which was rewarding to our co-creative relationship.

(1) For this KUV (kunstnerisk udviklings virksomhed translates to artistic research) project, Textile Techniques as Potential for Developing Costume Design, (2016/2017) I invited three tailor colleagues (employed) at the Danish National School of Performing Arts to join me. Side by side and in dialogue we (individually) developed several costumes using crafting techniques inspired by braiding. One of my research ambitions was to invite the tailors to make costumes from a perspective different to that of their daily work at the school. As they usually produce costume in collaboration with and from drawings made by scenography students, they never develop their own costume ideas. As I was challenging the tailors, I also wanted to challenge myself. Therefore, I intentionally chose a role of stretchable material that the tailor workshop had stored for years which I did not find particularly inspiring. The textile smelled and its yellow colour was a bit too murky to my taste. 

The values of kinship

As an opening I will offer a short reintroduction of AweAre. As I wrote in the article Costume-generated performances – costumes performative and generative potential (1) the AweAre costume have 

four wearable parts. These four wearable parts are uniform yet varied in their shape. The costume is crafted in stretchable textiles and the wearable parts of the costume are connected through a combination of textile strings and textile surfaces. The stretchable textile implies that each wearable part can stretch and fit different human body sizes. From the outside the AweAre costume reads as a unit. However, from the inside the experience of wearing the AweAre costume is different. The stretchability of the costume, for example, implies that when one wearer moves they will stretch the textiles, whereby they will affect the other wearers’ movements. (Østergaard 2022, 51)

I do not insinuate that we listened to and heard the same, however sharing and discussing what we heard or learned though our listenings unfolded aspects of the costume persona that none of us could have approached singlehandedly. As such, our listenings created connections or a co-creative relationship between us and the costume. Through our listenings we realised that AweAre was a persona with a will or power to force or generate movement between the dancers. This willful persona invited the dancers to be playful and at the same time demanded of the dancers to pay attention to how they moved together as a collective body. The AweAre persona demanded of us that we attended to how we listened and responded to each other. 

Listening ‘mediator’ 

In individual interviews (2021) I asked the dancers to reflect on my role. One dancer responded that due to our ongoing dialogue “it felt like we were invited into your research inquiry”. Another dancer said that my role was to “ask the right questions that triggered the discussion”. The dancers’ reflections suggest that my questions were for them to further explore and unfold their own sensations and/or experiences and the listenings enabled them to become familiar with their fellow dancers’ sensations and/or experience. Moreover, the dancers indicated that my questions were an important part of evoking dialogues between us. 

A third dancer reflected that “it was sometimes difficult to empathise with the others who were placed in different parts of the costume”. This dancer explained that the “lack” of empathy for fellow dancers was because “it was difficult to break out of a role or sensation while being inside the costume. Therefore, it was important for us inside [the costume] to have someone to go to, to have an exchange with”. This dancer suggested that I acted like a “communication centre” that “connected” them as well as that I was a “bouncing person or the voice to bounce our sensations back on and who would see it from a different point of view”. The last reflection indicates that ­– despite the cheerful and playful atmosphere – the dancers did not necessarily understand or empathise with their fellow dancers’ experiences. This dancer suggests that my position acted like a mediator between the dancers even though, or perhaps because, I was placed outside.

Complexities of listening from a placement

In a conversational interview on listening (2023) I had with one of the dancers, they said while reflecting on our first rehearsal day from their placement and thus viewpoint from within the costume:

“I remember them having fun in their power position or in the hieratical setting of the costume. I could sense and hear them – and I listen to them from my point of view, which was from further away. But they couldn’t hear me. […] I know that they at some point thought that I wasn’t listening to them – because they were having fun doing something and I wasn’t joining. But I couldn’t join due to how the costume was made. So, for them they might have felt that they were listened to me”.

The dancer’s reflection highlights that the composition of the costume created a hierarchy between the four dancers that not only affected their movements but also affected how they were able to listen to one another. Even though the dancers thought that they listened to their fellows, it did not imply that their fellows felt heard or listen to. Thus, due to the different placements or positions in the costume it was easy to misinterpret or have a different perception of what was ‘said’ and how someone responded or did not respond, for example to an invitation to ‘join the fun’. 

The dancers’ reflection highlights that the costume’s stretchability (the ‘push and pull’ effect) and spatiality (the composition of the four placements) simultaneously caused rather different sensations and/or experiences and thus fostered embodied dialogues where what was ‘heard’ and ‘said’ was sometimes interpreted quite differently. Additionally, the quality, tempo, rhythm or direction of the dancers’ movements constantly changed and thus the nuances of their embodied dialogues constantly evolved and/or changed directions. Thus, listening with the costume – with the stretchable and spatial connectedness – was complex. 

As the host placed outside as witness, it was also hard to depict who or which placement was causing the shifting movement qualities, tempos, rhythms or directions. It is most likely that I – like the dancers – at times misinterpreted what caused the changing dynamic between them. Thus, as the mediator between the dancers, what I heard or how I interpreted what I heard was never neutral and thus neither were my listenings. Nevertheless, in our sharing session my question and the suggestions I made in the process arose from my curiosity of trying to understand or explore the dynamic between the dancers and to do so co-creatively with them. 

Crafting values

Haraway writes that string figures – like Cat’s Cradle – are thinking as well as making practices (Haraway 2016, 14). This suggests that crafting is practices that craft speculative and facultative ways of being with the world. 

As craftsperson I sensed that the kinship that I experienced with the assemblage was woven into the pattern or composition of the AweAre costume. As such, I suggest that the values of making kin and co-creating with an assemblage was crafted into the AweAre costume. However, the question is if other people sense these interwoven values. Still, the interwoven values have a consequence for the further creative life of the AweAre costume and I am therefore accountable for the continuation of the kin-making and co-creating. Firstly, to craft a material body is to acknowledge that a costume like the AweAre costume will craft material bodies or will craft and affect the humans who wear it. The act of crafting material bodies entangles human bodies and textile materials (costume), and in their encounter they are never separate but are interlinked. Secondly, the AweAre – a movement quintet performance involved four dancers who simultaneously had to become familiar with the costume and each other. Even though I had crafted the AweAre costume, I could not predict how the four dancers would meet or make kin with the costume and what our encounter would craft. As I was aware of the values that I had crafted into the AweAre costume I was responsible for the continuation of the kin-making and co-creating processes, but I could not expect that the dancers would make kin and co-create in ways similar to mine. 

Listening with the AweAre costume 

Visiting as a part of listening 

I have unfolded that in our sharing session we listened to the dancers’ experiences of their placement in the costume. In the listening we tried to understand and gain insights on how the placement affected the dancers in similar and different ways. As the host, our sharing sessions enabled me to ask questions and to listen to how the dancers described their experiences. From my position the dancers’ explanations often contained something other than and more than I saw and something that I did not expect. As I did not experience the bodily effect of costume, the sharing session was crucial. The sessions became openings and ways for me to approach and ‘visit’ the four dancers’ placement in the costume and ways to gain (in)sight of their perspectives on the collective dimensions of the costume. 

I mentioned that while repairing the costume I ‘visited’ my meditative crafting state, and as I was repairing the costume, I realised that I had crafted a hierarchy into the costume. I intentionally use the word visit to suggest that ‘visiting’ was ways of listening to and approaching the dancers’ experiences and ways to recalling the dialogues that I had with the four dancers and/or what had happened between them. Haraway writes that 

visiting is not an easy practice; it demands the ability to find others activity interesting, even especially others most people already claim to know all too completely, to ask questions that one’s interlocutors truly find interesting, to cultivate the wild virtue of curiosity, to retune one’s ability to sense and respond­­­ – and to do this politely! […] [H]olding open the possibilities that surprises are in store, that something interestingis about to happen, but only if one cultivates the virtue of letting that one visit intra-actively shape what occurs. They are not who/what we expected to visit, and we are not who/what were anticipated either. Visiting is a subject and object-making dance, and the choreography is a trickster. Asking questions comes to mean both asking what others finds intriguing and also learning to engage that changes everybody in unforeseeable ways. (Haraway 2016, 127)

Haraway suggests that visiting is practicing our abilities to attend to others with curiosity, politeness and a willingness to explore things or aspects that we did not foresee. 

Visiting my meditative crafting state was ways of thinking-with the materiality and spatiality of the AweAre costume in the present and in the past. Therefore, while repairing the costume I re-visited or re-discovered the composition of the costume. For example, I realised that one placement in the costume was quite distant form the others. At the same time, the repairing or crafting helped me linger on how I listened to the dancers the previous day. For example, I recalled the dancers’ embodied sensitivity towards the costume and I visited or re-listened how the dancers had described that the costume pulled on specific limbs and how the ‘push and pull’ affected them. Moreover, the lingering made me re-consider what I heard. For example, I speculated on what the dancers – especially the dancer placed in the distant position – had said, what they left unsaid or what they had potentially said. The crafting and the lingering on the dancers’ expressions offered a new awareness or new perspective on the costume’s materiality and spatiality. Through the re-listening I made kin with and/or became familiar with aspects of how the costume affected the dancers that I did not hear or understand the day before, which enabled me to see contours of the costume from their embodied perspectives. Through the dancers I learned something about the costume that I did not know. I became familiar with new or other aspects of the costume ‘persona’ that I was unaware existed. In this new light the costume became a teasing, provoking and challenging persona that had a demanding voice. As the crafter and the host I could not ignore the challenging persona and the hierarchy of the costume that I had just discovered. I needed to re-attune my sensitivity towards the different placements in the costume and together with the dancers we had to discover how or whether we or they could listen to the four different placements in the costume.

Re-attuning our listenings

Of course, it was not only the ‘visiting’ or re-listening that made me reconsider what I saw or heard. By repeatedly listening to what and how the dancers described their experiences and thus their perspectives on the costume I constantly gained new (in)sights that made me re-attune my gaze and made me pay closer attention to how I listened to the dancers’ movements with the costume. The re-attunement became a relational attunement that made me listen to the dancers’ embodied articulations or dialogue in more profound and polyphonic ways. 

Moreover, the iterative process of exploring the costume and sharing and listening to what was explored and experienced made us collectively pay closer attention to the nuances of the different placements. As such the iterative process made us constantly re-attune to our listenings whereby we co-creatively became familiar with the AweAre costume. I intentionally write listenings in the plural to highlight that in the repetition of sharing and listening we learned something new or something that expanded our listening. We shared and discussed our perspectives, inklings, assumptions and creative solutions of how to navigate and negotiate with the costume persona. Each time we listened we attended to and discussed different details that made us re-attune our listenings. In the first few sharing sessions our focus was rather human-centric, yet, at the same time, these sessions orientated us towards the more-than-human persona; towards the vibrancy of costume and towards making kin with the collective costume body. 

Complexities of movement dynamics

Even though there was a playful atmosphere between the dancers, or perhaps because of it, their experiences was different. The dancers’ playfulness was somehow caused by the costume’s stretchability, while at the same time the composition or the spatiality of the costume, made it complex if not impossible to grasp whether the origin of the dancers’ movements was the materiality or the spatiality of the costume. Moreover, the dancers’ movements were not coordinated or choreographed and therefore it was hard to detect, depict and decide in which way one dancer’s movements affected the movements of the other dancers. Thus, who or what was causing and affecting the dancers’ different experiences? Bennett writes that “a cause is a singular, stable, and masterful initiator of effects, while the origin is a complex, mobile, and heteronomous enjoiner of forces” (Bennett 2010, 33). The heteronomous quality suggests that what was causing and effecting the dancers’ experiences operated independently of them. This indicates that the costume as the mediating connecter evoked movement impulses in the dancers and provoked movement forces between them. The dancers’ movement impulses were dependent on the dancers’ willingness to be affected by the costume’s materiality and spatiality. The forces were dependent on the intra-action between the dancers and the costume, and as such the dancers and the costume became interdependent. This suggests that the origin of the dancers’ different movements was in a constant state of flux between the movement impulses evoked in the dancers and the collective forces that the costume provoked. 

However, even though placed outside, I had no clear overview and it was complex to grasp the movement impulse and forces that were at stake in between the dancers. As an attempt to understand or further approach the dynamic of the collective costume body we or they slowed down in tempo and tried to listen to the different directions or placements in the costume. As mentioned, during the three performances the dancers curiously continued to explore the dynamic of listening with their collective costume body.

Listening as practicing curiosity

Once more I return to Haraway, who suggests that we must “cultivate the wild virtue of curiosity” and that we must “do this politely” (Haraway 2016, 127). The origin of the word ‘curiosity’ points to the desire to see, learn and know what is strange or unknown, including carefully paying attention to details. I suggest that implied in Haraway’s paring of curiosity and politeness is that when we show curiosity towards other people we must sense and respond to the other person in a considerate manner. On the other hand, curiosity, hand-in-hand with politeness, could be interpreted as if our listenings and responses are polished, and thus that our curiosity or interest is somewhat superficial. 

Our sharing session was invitations to all of us to listen, to ask and be curious towards the dancers’ different experiences. We listened politely, and at the same time through our listenings we expanded our (in)sight and empathy towards each other’s sensations, experiences and perspectives of the costume’s spatiality and stretchability and/or the personality of the costume persona. Through the listening dialogues we co-creatively made kin with and/or became familiar with relational aspects of the costume. For example, the listenings made us aware that we related to and with the costume in different ways. Our different ways of relating with the costume at the same time became openings that made us curious to explore the differences. Our curiosities made us respond to each other’s perspectives and made us explore ways in which we could co-creatively navigate and negotiate with the costume. 

Relational listenings 

Haraway suggests that we must study “relations with relations” (Haraway 2016, 34), which is both intriguing and complex. During the costume explorations and/or performance-making process I related with the dancers through how they made kin or related with the vibrancy of the costume. We related with each other through sharing and listening. Our dialogues created relationships between us. As we continued to curiously explore and discuss how we could listen with the costume our relationship became closer. 

Bennett writes that “Derrida points to the intimacy between being and following: to be (anything, anyone) is always to be following (something, someone), always to be in response to call from something, however nonhuman it may be” (Bennett 2010, xiii). This suggests that responding is being in response to or with fellow humans or more-than-humans, and to follow them. Not only did the costume connect the four dancers, but the costume was also our shared orientation or our relational meeting point. Even though I was placed outside, our sharings and listenings implied that I became closely engaged with the dancers’ entangled relationship with the costume. 

In The scenographic, costumed chorus, agency and the performance of matter: A new materialist approach to costume Donatella Barbieri (1) and Greer Crawly (2) write that the performativity of costume is generated through material discursive processes (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 143). In our case I suggest that the performativity of the AweAre costume was evoked by the stretchability of and the ‘push and pull’ between the different spatial positions. Moreover, during the process I followed the dancers and we bounced between exploring, listening, sharing and reflecting/discussing, whereby we co-creatively became aware of aspects of the performative potentials of the AweAre costume. I write aspects in the acknowledgment that our process was rather short.

Barbieri and Crawley suggest that employing new materialist approaches to costume include “ethical negotiations in which [there] is a re-balancing of human and non-human matter” (2019, 144). This suggests that in performance-making processes the costumes are as important as humans. I argue we – us humans and the AweAre costume – became interdependent partners that related through and with our different bodies and/or materialities. Moreover, I suggest that the performative potentials that we explored were caused by how we related and listened to the costume as our co-creative partner. 

The name AweAre plays with combining ‘to be aware’ and ‘to wear’. The name is also a tribute to my friend Sally E. Dean (2) who has introduced the term “aware wearing" (3) (Dean 2021). Aware wearing highlights that costume affects performers’ bodies and describes for example how performers can become aware of somatic impacts of costume. 

In hindsight, I realise that the name AweAre also points towards the awareness I have in the crafting process. Therefore, in this path I attend to my crafting values to explore how and/or which values I crafted into the AweAre costume, including which implications these values had for the further life of the costume.

Crafting as kin-making 

In another path I described that the process of crafting the AweAre costume was a kin-making process. I am fully aware that the kin-making is seen from my perspective – the human perspective – and that I cannot know how the textile materialities perceived our kin-making process. Yet, as craftsperson I search for the places where flows between the textile materialities and my hands, eyes and my body/mind emerge and flourish. Places where the textiles and I merge or become together during the crafting process.

In my practice many crafting processes are slow and thus costume often emerges over time. Like with the AweAre costume, my intentions and/or how I imagine an outline of a costume sets the direction. The intentions are starting points that allows me to focus and become absorbed in the crafting process. I intentionally use the word outline – that is somehow vaguer than design – to highlight that what I describe here differs from when I design costume. When I design costume, and as I start to produce specific designs, I have a clearer visual goal and thus the crafting process is often quicker. 

While crafting, my intentions and/or the imagined outline slip in and out of my attention: sometimes I attend to a specific direction – a specific part or a detail –, sometimes I do not attend to any direction, and sometimes I realise that I must change direction. Attending to specific visual, tactile, compositional or other directions or orientations, the slow repetitive crafting process awakens and controls my attention. In the repetition, through the repetitive movements, I enter a mode that attunes my attentiveness towards exploring the relationship or kinship between the crafting techniques and the textile materials. The repetitive crafting rhythm often becomes meditative. In the meditative moments – that can last hours and days – I am aware of the emerging composition, but I do not judge or evaluate what is in-process. I am in flow with the textiles and with the crafting techniques. I sense them on my skin and in my body–mind. 

Returning home after a meditative crafting day in my studio, I somehow sense the touch of the textile materials. I sense how the textiles have affected me – whether my hands, shoulders and/or other parts of my body are sore. The crafting lingers in me while I make dinner and reminiscences of the crafting process sometimes slip into my dreams. They are – on and off – with me and I do not know whether it is the crafting technique(s), the textile materialities, the emerging composition or the sense of my sore body that I sense. In these moments and/or situations I become aware that an intuitive flow is awakened and is flourishing. In the intuitive flow I have a strong sense of having metaphorical dialogues with the textiles and with the crafting techniques. It feels like I listen to what the textiles ‘say’ and what they ‘want’. I listen to how the textile matearials and the crafting techniques inform each other in ways that I often cannot fully grasp and that I therefore cannot put into words: I just sense dialogues between us. In the intuitive flow I am unsure whether I am in control or whether it is the crafting process that controls my attention. However, I am sure that it is not about being in control or having power over the textile materials through or with the crafting techniques. I just know that if I give in to the intuitive crafting flow I will most likely be surprised by what occurs. In the lingering and meditative crafting process I sense dialogues between the textile materials and the crafting techniques, and I trust that if I listen carefully, they will tell me things and that our metaphorical dialogue will lead us somewhere.

As a craftsperson or as a crafting designer I appreciate these repetitive and meditative crafting processes even though I know that they might interrupt my sleep and that I will experience moments where I feel stuck or when I lose my direction in the kin-making process. I argue that the AweAre costume arose from the kinship and the metaphorical dialogues that I had with the textile materials and the crafting techniques – a process where I simultaneously made kin with the textile materials and the crafting techniques. However, I cannot say that I fully know the qualities and characteristics of both kinds, but in the crafting process I became familiar with aspects of their or our interwoven kinship. 

Kinship 

Haraway reminds me that kinship is being in sympoiesis with other kinds, for example textile materials. In the sympoiesis or kinship I must be kind (the adjective) or sympathetic and open-minded towards other kinds, whether these are human or not. In the crafting process the textiles and I become kin even though we are of different kinds. I suggest that in crafting processes I must constantly attune my lydhørhed (link) or listening abilities, my willingness and skilfulness to make kin or become familiar with the more-than-humans as a way of honouring the vibrancy of the textiles and as a way of acknowledging that I can never fully know them. 

Jane Bennett reflects that “perhaps the ethical responsibility of an individual human now resides in one’s response to the assemblages in which one finds oneself participating” (Bennett 2010, 37). This suggests that we are not only interconnected with the assembly we are part of, but we are responsible for the way that we respond to the assembly; like the textile materialities, the crafting techniques, the mannequins, my studio space and other kinds that are part of our assemblage. As a craftsperson textile materialities intrigues me as more-than-human companions. The technical crafting knowledge that I have gained over years is the bridge that allows me to collaborate or co-create with the textile materials. As with crafting the AweAre costume it was a process of making-with the textile materials, and that included the other kinds or companions that were part of our assembly. Together we crafted the AweAre costume, or maybe the costume was crafted as an effect of the kinship that emerged in our assembly. Either way, as such the AweAre costume was co-created. 

We also decided that we would co-create a score not a choreography (2) with the group. This offered the four dancers the freedom to improvise and to keep developing the performance while they performed. However, we did not define what kind of score we hoped to develop – we trusted that a score would arise between the four dancers, the AweArecostume and me (the host). 

The co-creative process

Here we are on the first day (23 June 2020), in a black box studio space at Malmö Theatre Academy, Sweden; four dancers, the bright yellow AweAre costume and me. 

I am placed as an outside witness, and I have no intention of acting like a choreographer or director. Moreover, I do not intend to dictate or decide which dancer will inhabit which wearable part of the costume. I therefore suggest that they explore each of the four wearable parts and placements in the costume. After the first two test-rounds we pause, and I ask the dancers to share what they have experienced. They talk about the playfulness between them and how a specific wearable part touches their body and makes them aware of particular limbs. The dancers are quite articulated in explaining what they experience, but I also sense politeness in their answers/explanations.

The performance day (27 June 2020) arrives. What is most vivid in my memories is that as soon as the dancers entered the performance space I almost forgot the audience. During the performances I listened to their movements and the dynamic between them. Even though the dramaturgical score was simple, the three performances were quite different. In one performance it was very visible how the ‘push and pull’ rippled through the movements from one dancer to the next. Even though I was at a distance I have a strong embodied sensation of bouncing with the dancers in these ‘rippling’ moments. In another performance the movements of the dancer placed ‘in the middle’ showed me that the ‘push and pull’ was a sensation of being enclosed or trapped in the middle. In the last performance I realised that the two dancers who were placed at the same end of the costume as a pair could counterbalance with each other in their part of the costume. Even thought it might have looked as if these two dancers simply followed the performance score, I experienced that this pair had the power to direct or retain the group, including the power to decide when the performance would end. 

In all three performances I experienced the four dancers and the costume as a collective body became an organism that navigated together. As an organism the dancers and the costume were friendly towards each other, and it was as if the costume acted as the silent but very demanding friend. In moments when the dancers counterbalanced with each other the costume demanded of them to navigate or negotiate who was willing to give in and who was controlling who. Even being friendly with the costume the dancers happy left it behind between the performances. On the other hand, in the interview one of the dancers reflected that on the performance day the costume became a part of their body and that they felt ‘whole’ as soon as they wore the costume.

AweAre – a movement quintet

AweAre – a movement quintet was created for the performance festival UP CLOSE. The festival that took place at Det Classenske Bibliotek (20–21 and 27–28 June 2020) and were developed in response to the Covid-19 lockdown in Denmark by Ny Carlsbergfondet (New Carlsberg Foundation). The festival curator Natalia Gutman invited twelve artists/artistic duos to create and perform fifteen-minute performances and each of the twelve performances were performed three times (13:00, 15:00 and 17:00) on one of the four festival dates. Invited were, among others, the visual artist duo Hesselholdt and Mejlvang, choreographer Tim Matiakis and solo dancer Astrid Elbo, performance artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and I was the only costume designer. 

AweAre – a movement quintet was programmed (June 27) with two other performances by the composer Louise Alenius and the artist duo Maja Lee Langvad and Kristina Nya Glaffey. In this four-minute edited video (4:04) of AweAre – a movement quintet the dancers reflect on their experiences of performing with the AweAre costume. 

Co-creating AweAre – a movement quintet

I was invited to the Up Close performance festival by the festival curator art historian Natalia Gutman. Gutman specifically asked me to develop a performance with the AweAre costume. As unfolded the AweAre costume was originally created as a textile project for the curated exhibition The Biennale for Crafts and Design, Denmark. At the opening reception I had invited four dancers to improvise in the costume, and this improvised performance resulted in Gutman’s invitation.

As I received the invitation for the Up Close performance festival I saw it as a perfect opportunity to study how four dancers and I could co-creatively explore aspects of the performative potentialities with the AweAre costume. I intentionally write aspects as an acknowledgment of the fact that, in the rather short rehearsal period, we only managed to touch upon aspects of the AweAre costume’s performative potentials. 

As I knew the process of co-creating the fifteen-minute performance AweAre – a movement quintet would be part of my research, the dancers signed an informed consent agreement. In the following I will anonymize the dancers as much as possible. I use the pronouns them and they. 

The following is written from the I-perspective which build on my embodied memories of our co-creative process. Edited extracts from a collective (1) interview made two weeks after our process will accompany the text in which the dancers unfold and reflect on their experiences of the costume and of our co-creative process. 

Starting points

As mentioned, when I was invited to the festival the AweAre costume was already crafted. Due to quite strict Covid-19 regulations at the time of the invitation I decided to prolong the connecting part of the AweAre costume. This crafting adjustment made me revisit the kinship values – kin-making and co-creating with the vibrancy of the textiles – that I had crafted into in the AweAre costume.

Prior to the process of co-creating AweAre – a movement quintet I had a few experiences with people wearing, moving and improvising in the AweAre costume. One of them being the improvised performance at the opening of The Biennale for Crafts and Design. The duration of these improvised explorations was rather short. Nonetheless, these experiences had shown me that a playful atmosphere quickly emerged between the people who wore the AweAre costume. 

I decided to invite one of the dancers that was part of the improvised performance (who I call X) to be a part of developing AweAre – a movement quintet for the festival and we discussed how to proceed. I knew that our rehearsal period was short, and it seemed most productive for X, as my co-creator, to suggest three dancers who they knew and who they wanted to share the AweAre costume with. Thus, I invited three dancers – who I did not know and had not met – to perform and with whom to co-create the performance. 

After testing the four different wearable parts I ask the dancers to share which placement they prefer. No one is in doubt. Every dancer has a clear preference for a particular placement, though these preferences overlapped and do not include all four placements. There is thus no problem on an individual level but there was a puzzle in the communal as preferences overlap. What solves the puzzle is that X is willing to, or maybe feels obliged to, inhabit the placement that no one has shown interest in, X included.

We continue, somehow more focused now that the placements are divided. The atmosphere is playful, and the dancers explore the movement possibilities in their wearable parts and explore how their placements impact the group. 

At some point and rather suddenly the textile that connects three of the four dancers’ rips. Watching at a distance, I do not notice, but once I get up close, I can see that I must act quickly otherwise the costume cannot last the rest of the day. I do not want to interrupt the dancers’ playful explorations. So, while the dancers continue to move with costume, I move with them and tie extra string here and there to stabilise the rip. It is as if we are dancing together and for a moment I visualise the performative potential of this shared or entangled dance. During the rest of the day the dancers’ 'push and pull’ stretches the extra attached strings, which prolongs the connection or the part of the costume that connects them. 

The ‘push and pull’ effect is something that the dancers unfold in our sharing sessions. The ‘push and pull’ is a bouncy sensation whereby when one of them moves, this movement affects the movements of one or more of the others. They also explain that the ‘push and pull’ is rippling sensations of movements that moves through the textile material that connects them, from one person to the next. While moving, we also discuss how much they can or dare to lean into the materiality of the connecting parts, and counterbalance with each other and the costume. They explain that the counterbalancing with the stretchable material gives them a new sense of gravity. Additionally, the dancers quite quickly refer to the costume as a “person with will and power” and a “force” that generates movements between them. What they do not say, but what is obvious to me, is that the dancers mainly follow their own impulses, which means that when someone follows an urge, this person will for a moment drag the rest of the group in a specific direction. Or rather, this last reflection is in hindsight. On the day we were trying to grasp the ‘push and pull’ dynamic. 

The next day (24 June 2020), while I am repairing the rip in the costume I reflect on our rehearsal. It was not directly articulated, but I sense that our rehearsal was quite different from the performance-making processes that the dancers are used to. 

I reflect on that the dancers’ playfulness somehow made them change directions constantly, and at the same time the multidirectional quality of their movements had no clear direction. Their movements made the impression of running on the spot and of ‘pushing and pulling’ which, as movement quality, could potentially have looked like a struggle, but it mainly looked messy or read as non-directional. I knew that the playfulness was an important starting point, but I wonder whether the playfulness somehow blocked something other. 

To overview the composition and to repair the rip I have placed the wearable parts of the costume on mannequins and thus the costume takes up my entire studio space. Even though I was aware of the composition, here with the backdrop of the rehearsal day I see and rediscover the composition of the costume in a new light: one placement is distant and maybe even disconnected from the other placements in the costume. I realise that I have crafted a costume that creates a hierarchy between the dancers – which is a revelation but also shocking. To approach the hierarchical question, I know that I need to pay closer attention to how we listened to the different placements in the costume. 

The next day (25 June 2020) we meet at the performance location Det Classenske Bibliotek (Copenhagen, Denmark) where we have one hour to rehearse in the space. We discuss whether the performers shall enter and exit from the same door or from two opposite doors – we decide on the former. The dancers explore the simple dramaturgical score: entering the space, moving to the end of the space, turning and returning to exit from where they entered the space. Before we know it, the hour is over.

I have rented a smaller rehearsal space in Nørrebro for the rest of the day. As we restart, I ask the dancers whether they have specific explorations that they like to test. I share my reflection of that their playful – that I also acknowledge – implies that they mainly follow their own impulses. I suggest that they explore how they can listen to the different placements in the costume and that they move in a slower tempo to be able to do so. 

As the dancers explore how to listen to the four different placements in the costume, the concentration between them is intense. The slower tempo also allows the dancers to test different bodily positions in the counterbalancing, for example laying on their backs or on their side and twisting their bodies in the wearable parts. We pause and I ask whether and how they hear the people in the different placements of the costume. In hindsight, it is clear that all of us are trying to grasp the ‘hearing’ or ‘listening’ dynamic and that we thus search to find words that describe the hearing and listening exchange. 

Sound (2:02): Inviting performers 

Sound (1:02): Slipping into the costume