Being in the troublesome 

In Staying with the trouble – making kin in the Chthulucene Donna Haraway writes that

trouble is an interesting word. It derives from a thirteenth-century French verb meaning “to stir up,” “to make cloudy,” “to disturb.” […] The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. […] In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures but as moral critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings. (Haraway 2006, 1)

Haraway argues that being truly present with each other is learning to become capable of responding when we struggle, however troublesome it might be. The unfinished configurations suggest that we must embrace that explorative processes as relational entanglements are un-static and thus that explorative or co-creative processes are never just calm and pleasant. Haraway reminds me that the troublesome is in fact places or situations that stir things up. For example, it provokes us to re-consider what we assume or expect collaborative or co-creative processes must contain, such as having certain structures and positions. In the stirring we awake and – even if we struggle – we might come alive to respond and entangle in new ways. 

As mentioned, as we were struggling to find new or other directions I struggled with an assumption that a good host must be in control and is expected to lead or guide a team through creative struggles. However, I was caught up in a troublesome and stirring cloudiness where I was not in control and where I had no vison of how to direct or lead us past or beyond the troublesome place. 

As an attempt to find other directions I revisited a list of ideas that I, prior to the workshop, had and that I interested in exploring with the performers that contained, for example, different (co-)crafting and explorative ideas. However, as we stated the rehearsal process I decided not to share the list as list could indicate that I had specific visions or expectations for our process. In the research diary I reflected that

“I bring a bag of ideas. Leave room for the others present to find their interest. Maybe some of my ideas aren’t in focus yet – maybe these ideas will enter the stage later and in other forms or in other situations. And maybe it’s ok that some ideas never enter the stage. Maybe it’s just not the right time or space – and maybe I don’t know how to make these ideas come alive just yet.”

Re-reading this points at two things. Firstly, even though we struggled I was doubtful whether the list with ideas had any relevance to where we were in the process. Thus, I wondered whether pursuing and/or pushing any of the ideas forwards was more out of desperation than from a creative desire or urge. Secondly, I use the word bag instead of list. As Ursula Le Guin suggests in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, bags contain thing that we collect and that we can take out and share with others (Le Guin 1968, 168). As I had brought a bag of costumes I was eager to explore what the bag evoked in the co-creators and how that corresponded to their creative baggage. As such, it was less interesting to insist that we had to explore the costume assembly according to my baggage, and thus, once again, I decided to not pursue any of the ideas from my list. 

Remaining in the troublesome

As mentioned, during these two rehearsals we tried hard to be creatively inventive, which was quite draining. During these days I battled patterns or structures within me that assumed that being a responsible host was synonymous with leading and being in control. However, to me, co-creation or co-creating is not a matter of leading or controlling but is a genuine wish to share creative agency with others. In an interview Barad unfolds that in agential realism 

agency is about response-ability, about the possibilities of mutual response, which is not to deny, but to attend to power imbalances. Agency is about possibilities for worldly re-configurings. So agency is not something possessed by humans, or non-humans for that matter. It is an enactment. And it enlists, if you will, “non-humans” as well as “humans.” At the same time, I want to be clear that what I am not talking about here is democratically distributing agency across an assemblage of humans and non-humans. Even though there are no agents per se, the notion of agency I am suggesting does not go against the crucial point of power imbalances. On the contrary. The specificity of intra-actions speaks to the particularities of the power imbalances of the complexity of a field of forces. (Barad in interview, Dolpijn & van der Tuin 2012, 55)

According to Barad, agency it not something that someone has and not something that can be democratic distributed. Agency is about the possibilities of mutual response between humans and more-than-humans as well as a quest to attend to power imbalances. As such, I must explore or speculate to whom and how we responded or in which way we were able to respond during the rehearsals where we struggled. Through exploring our responses I can approach and speculate on the power imbalances between us. Moreover, power (im)balances offer opportunities to speculate on relationships between us and the costume assemble, between the human and more-than-human. Inspired by Haraway I use the word speculate. Haraway writes that “science fact and speculative fabulation need each other, and both need speculative feminism” (Haraway 2016, 3). To me, Haraway’s “speculative fabulation” highlights the research dilemma: what happened in the explorative situations is a fact, however what in fact happened is an interpretation. In the entangled position I can speculate and fabulate but I cannot claim an absolute truth of, for example, how and to whom we responded and I cannot objectively evaluate the power (im)balances between us. 

To speculate on the days where we struggled: we were very caught up in our quest of seeking responses from other humans, which perhaps made us less responsive to what happened between us. However, despite our struggles to find new or other directions in our physical explorations that exited us, we had rather enlightening dialogues where we reflected on the nuances of co-hosing the first showing as well as sharing and discussing our different perspectives of the multiple ways in which the CA colleagues participated in the showing. Moreover, with the showcases – ours and the five that we attended – as backdrops, we speculated on the differences and similarities between collaborative and co-creative structures and/or processes. As such, our dialogues were quite productive, at the same time, during the two rehearsals we were caught up in our assumptions that rehearsals had to be productive in particular ways, assumptions that physical explorations are the purpose of rehearsals and that they are more valuable than dialogues. 

In the days where we were struggling and in between our rehearsals I was caught up in my own struggles and in the research diary I mainly responded to my vanity of whether I was a good host. At the same time the doubts made me revisit the values within co-creativity which – to me – are that co-creators bring other baggage, offer other perspectives and offer other (in)sights than mine. Reflecting on these values, I knew that even though it was uncomfortable I had to dare to remain in a troublesome place and trust that something would emerge between us that could spark our explorative orientations in new directions. 

The artistic project Conversation Costume

The co-creators’ reflections on our explorative process 

I value my co-creators’ contributions and their reflections have informed my research. The following is an edited excerpt of an online interview that I undertook with Fredrik and Jonathan two weeks after our Conversation Costume explorations. I add that I have their consent to share their reflections and to use their names.

Video (10:46): parts of the interview with Fredrik and Jonathan. Photo and video documentation: Lydia Hann and Charlotte Østergaard.

The next day we returned to the black box where we tied all the knotted pieces in-process together and to one object. However, this object read as a fashion idiom that mainly called for posing. Then we decided to explore different ways of responding, which had some potential. 

During these two rehearsals I wrote in the research diary, in a short and rather undetailed manner, what we explored. I mainly reflected on the concerns I have. I ask: “what happens when the space has been filled with other voices and then we are back on our own feeling a bit empty – are we missing the input of others?” 

The question highlights that we had a wish to expand our three-person team, which was evoked by the excitement of the first showing. For example, moving outside the black box was a shared decision and conscious attempt to interact with other people or a hope that bypassing people would respond to our explorations. As we returned to the black box we left the door open in the hope that someone may walked by and drop in. However, the academic year at Oslo National Academy of the Arts had not started and there were still some Covid-19 regulations in force. At the time it was not obvious to us, however our ambition of expanding our team or interacting with bypassing people was bound to fail. 

As we were searching for reactions and/or interactions with others we simultaneously tried hard to be inventive. However, our explorations were rather impulsive, and we did not long remain with any of the things that we tested. For two days we were groping blindly. I do not write it directly, ­but we were far from being as playful or jamful as we had been in the former rehearsals. We struggled to find new or other creative directions or possibilities with the costume assembly that excited us enough to pursue them further. 

Troublesome days 

As described, even though we tested several things, for two days, we somehow lost the sense of having a shared orientation. As the host it was discomforting and troubling that I did not manage to move our explorations smoothly from the excitement of the participatory showing into other interesting or exiting directions. As host I was accountable for what I had set in motion and yet I did not manage to make the transition back to our small team particularly easy for my fellows, and I was not particularly at ease with the situation.

As the co-creators reflected in the interview when I asked them about our struggling days, “it felt a bit scary and demotivating to have a sensation of running out of ideas”. The co-creators’ reflections point towards expectations that I also had that we had to be creatively inventive all the time. In the diary I wondered whether I “as host had to push or lead to make sure that we use our time effectively.” The effectiveness addresses a narrative that rehearsal processes must be creatively productive. Unproductivity is a failure, and the failure to progress creatively is the responsibility of the host who is accountable for the situation. I had somehow forced us to continue exploring, but our explorations were rather disorientated. I wondered whether in the midst of the situation I had lost my hosting orientation and whether ensuring creative efficiency contradicted my hosting attitude that, for example, valued time in which to listen. As we were struggling, who was I listening to? Was I listening to my expectations that in each and every rehearsal we had to produce something interesting or was I listening to external expectations ­– that I assumed others had of what a good host and a good rehearsal process is? 

The artistic project Conversation Costume (2021) was part of a workshop facilitated by the Costume Agency project that were held at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. With Conversation Costume I re-enter the rehearsal space to explore a ‘costume assembly’ with two participating performers who were also my co-creators: Fredrik Petrov and Jonathan Ibsen. In the different pathways I will use the co-creators’ first names and switch between calling them co-creators, hosts and co-hosts.

In this project I use Karen Barad’s concept of “entanglement” to unfold that crafting costume for Conversation Costume intertwined in an internal dialogue with my sister’s craftings with an ambition of approaching the concept of connecting costume from new or other perspectives. The costume assembly contained, for example, a number of textile pieces in-process. During our co-creative rehearsal process I participated – on as equal terms as possible – in the physical explorations of the costume assembly.

In this project, I explore how we combined and tangled with the costume assembly in different ways as well as explore how the costume assembly crafted and tangled with our bodies during our explorative process. With this artistic project my ambition is to approach what an open-minded co-creative costume exploration evokes between us as co-creators and at that same time explore which hosting dilemmas this open-minded hosting approach provoked. 

Staying with the troublesome

Loosing directions and orientations

In the interview I asked the co-creators to reflect on our process including situations where they experienced that we struggled. This path related to their reflections (listen to the co-creators' reflections on our explorative process) and dives further into an exploration of and reflection on the dilemmas that our struggles provoked. 

It is evident that our first showcase had excited us, and it was therefore tempting to further develop the ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ exploration into a participatory performance in-progress for the next showing. At the same time, to wrap up our playful and jamful attitude after what was only three rehearsals felt like missing out on new or other explorative and performative opportunities with the costume assembly. We thus decided, or perhaps I convinced the co-creators, to continue exploring other potentialities with the costume assembly.

As an attempt to trigger new or other explorative directions and to approach the costume assembly from another perspective we moved to the hallway to explore how another space would inform our explorations. We crafted or co-composed different spatial compositions that we tangled with in different ways. For example, we explored the effect of running from one end of the hallway to the other while being tangled with the composition. However, due to the dimensions of the hallway our experiences were that however we tangled with the composed costume assembly we disappeared. Then we went outside the building and connected ourselves to different objects – like a large waist container and a fence – with the costume assembly. These explorations did not really spark any creative energy between us, so we did not pursue this for very long. 

Dilemmas in the troublesome

Even though I decided to dare to remain in the troublesome, I had an uncomfortable feeling of ‘running behind’ our rehearsals and being unable to address and/or discuss the struggles as they were occurring with the co-creators. 

In the research diary I tried to understand what was occurring, which in fact was that I had only very vague creative hunches of what would lead our exploration in new or other directions, and I knew that the co-creators’ creative hunches would be as good as mine. What was additionally occurring or rather shimmering in my system was that daring to remain in the troublesome place was not a choice that I made on our behalf. It was a consequence of my inability to respond productively to the situation. I was facing an ethical dilemma; I did not know how to move us past or beyond our struggles and as the initiating host I was wondering whether this rather vague way of responding was being responsible and acting as a responsible host. 

Barad writes that “being in one’s skin means that one cannot escape responsibly” and that “before all reciprocity in the face of the other, I am responsible” (Barad 2007, 392). Barad points out that hosting is facing the responsibility of the situation. Before the reciprocity that is embedded in the hosting hospitality the host must face their responsibility. As the initiator of Conversation Costume I had defined the explorative process as co-creative, and even if I had chosen another collaborative strategy we might still have faced troublesome rehearsal days. In Conversation Costume there was an imbalance in our starting points or starting positions: as the participating host I was also the researcher that had framed the co-creative exploration whereas the co-creators were hired by the CA research project to attend in the explorative process that I had defined. Even though we discussed the co-creative approach during rehearsals it did not change the fact that I had defined and framed how we would approach the costume assembly in the rehearsals. Even though I could not predict how my hosting strategy and the co-creative approach would unfold – for example that our roles or positions would be quite fluid – I was still responsible for what I put in motion during the rehearsals. Even though I knew that I was responsible, during the troublesome days I had to face the responsibility of insisting that we continue to explore other potentialities with the costume assembly and face the dilemma that my choices affected my co-creators. As I appreciated the creative relationship with the co-creators, and as I valued their contributions, I was worried that I did not step up to my responsibilities and thus that I did not show my appreciation for the co-creators’ contributions. 

Building on the Danish theologian and philosopher Løgstrup, dramaturge Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk (1) writes that

ethics as a relational practice demands risk taking, exposing yourself and letting go of some ego structures. I must dare failure, which demands courage in ethical action. Løgstrup operates with the concept of the ethical demand as a radical demand, because it is a demand that he claims is impossible to fully meet. The ethical demand is radical, says Løgstrup, because I can never know if the way I choose to act will serve the other’s needs. I am responsible for the part of the life of the other that I hold in my hands on any occasion and for my own actions in response to each situation. (Eeg-Tverbakk 2021, 5)

As Eeg-Tverbakk suggests, the ethical stance in relational practice is to let go of the ego, for example the desire to be acknowledged as a good host. As host I must dare to expose the doubts, failures and dilemmas that I experience. The ethical demand implies that however I act I am responsible for my actions, and at the same time I cannot know how my actions meet the needs of the co-creators. For example, what they expect, assume, desire, long for or dream of.

Co-creative patterns

Co-creative dynamics 

Cutting into entanglements 

Entangled costume conversations

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Bodily compositions – the first work-in-progress showing 

Crafting entanglements 

The co-creators’ reflections on our explorative process 

Material-discursive listening(s)

Staying with the troublesome

Bibliography

Spatial compositions – the second work-in-progress showing

Temporal we’s (we in plural)

Barad’s concept of entanglement suggests that through intra-action components form or craft an assemblages or ensembles of temporal we’s. In Conversation Costume the we(s) were co-composed through practices of, for example, crafting, composing and exploring. As an assembly or ensemble, we, they, you and I arose and existed though the entangled nature of relating-with the costume phenomenon that we were part of and that the temporal we(s) depended on. By cutting into specific relational we(s) I can discover which intra-actions – for example concrete and metaphorical embodied dialogues – emerge during, around and/or after specific costume explorative situations. By cutting into the specific we I can approach who we are and were in the situation. A we that is organic, evolving, changing and surprising and that emerges through an entanglement of multiple human and more-than-human components.

Inspired by Barad’s concept of entanglement I cut together-apart to explore the situated and temporal we’s that emerged and that were co-composed during Conversation Costume. I will unfold how the process of crafting nine knotted pieces in-process became an entangled we that intertwined specific and metaphorical dialogues and explorative situations that, for example, included people who were not present in the space. In other pathways I will cut together-apart to explore how specific components, for example we (humans), that participated in the Conversation Costume explorations and the costume assembly co-created temporal we’s. I will explore how the framings of Conversation Costume and of the Costume Agency workshop formed, re-formed and transformed the we’s that related-with Conversation Costume during the two weeks – like Barad's writing on relata-with-phenomena – as a costume phenomenon. 

Cutting into entanglements 

In this path I unfold how Karen Barad’s concept of “entanglement” informs the artistic project Conversation Costume. I dive into specific aspects embedded in Barad’s concept to explore how the complexities of entanglements relate to studying relational and co–creational costume phenomena. For example when we practice costume we need to be aware of which rules or structures we choose to follow. Do we have (pre)defined roles and if we do, we need to question why and what the purpose of these roles are. In our roles or positions, do we direct or co-create and who do we listen to? Moreover, do we assume that our practice must lead in specific directions?

Karen Barad’s concept of entanglement 

Karen Barad’s concept of entanglement derives from their work on agential realism which draws from Niels Bohr and quantum physics – especially from the concept of quantum entanglement – that argues that particles are interconnected in such a way that the state of one particle is dependent on the state of other particles. In Meeting the Universe Halfway – Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning Barad writes that in “the dynamic nature of scientific practice […] humans enter not as fully formed, preexisting subjects but as subjects intra-actively co-constituted trough the material-discursive practice that they engage in” (Barad 2007, 168). This suggests that people who partake in, for example, artistic research are co-constituted through their engagement with practice. In addition, costume as practice and as research phenomena are entanglements of human and more-than-human materialities or bodies. Therefore, within Barad’s agential realist framework humans and costume do not exist as separate entities that interact. Instead, being entangled implies that we are shaped through our intra-actions with the material-discursive practice that costume phenomena is. 

Barad has two important points on intra-action: 1) “intra-action affects what’s real and what’s possible, as some things come to matter and others are excluded, as possibilities are opened up and others are foreclosed” (Barad 2007, 393) and 2) “intra-acting responsibly as part of the world means taking account of the entangled phenomena that are intrinsic to the world’s vitality and being responsive to the possibilities that might help us to flourish” (Barad 2007, 396). 

In the context of costume, Barad’s first point suggests that what seems real and important in costume is an effect of what and who we include and exclude from our practices. Who and what is invited to be included in our costume practice(s) affects the way that we practice our costume practices. Our conscious and/or unconscious choices 1) affect our experiences of what are possibilities and impossibilities, 2) reveal that there are aspects that we do not consider as relevant or important and 3) potentially prevent us of from seeing or imagining that there are other perspectives on our costume practices which at the same time 4) indicate that costume can be practiced in multiple other ways. 

Barad’s second point suggests that we are accountable for how we engage with the entangled costume phenomena. How we respond and are responsive to the vitality and vibrancy costume phenomena determines whether and how we flourish with practice. Our attitude – for example our perspectives on and assumptions of costume practice(s) and our willingness to be open towards attitudes that are differs from our own – shapes or crafts what we experience as essential and we are accountable for what we perceive as essential in the costume practice and/or costume phenomena that we entangle with.

Co-creative patterns

Diffraction 

My aim with Conversation Costume was to approach what open-minded co-creative costume explorations imply. In several paths I have explored how our different experiences, perspectives and assumptions acted as openings, for example to entangle with the costume assembly in different ways and for dialogues exploring our different listening strategies. In this path I explore how different matters also informed our co-creative explorations. Here Karen Barad’s “diffractive pattern[s]” (Barad 2006, 89) is a useful lens. Barad writes that 

diffraction is a matter of differential entanglement. Diffraction is not merely about differences, and certainly not different in any absolute sense, but about the entangled nature of difference that matters. (Barad 2007, 381) 

Diffractive patterns look like moiré patterns in drawing or moiré effects in textiles, however where moiré patterns/effects are artefacts or images that create optical illusions, diffraction is not illusive. Diffraction is tuning into patternings of differences. Barad explains that 

waves make diffraction patterns (think of the pattern made by dropping two stones in a still pond, for example) precisely because multiple waves can be in the same place at the same time, and a given wave can be in multiple places at the same time. (Barad 2018, 65)

Like the stones in the pond cause multiple waves to appear and interfere, studying co-creative patterns thought the lens of diffraction is exploring how different matters – whom, what, how and where – influence, inform, provoke, obstruct or in other ways interfere with the entangled explorations. Moreover, the diffractive patterns of the waves are never still but always in motion. Thus, exploring co-creative patterns through the lens of diffraction is a matter of following the waves to explore how and what they move. 

In an interview Barad explains that they call diffraction a 

methodology, a method of diffractively reading insights through one another, building new insights, and attentively and carefully reading for differences that matter in their fine details, together with the recognition that there intrinsic to this analysis is an ethics that is not predicated on externality but rather entanglement. Diffractive readings bring inventive provocations; they are good to think with. (Barad in interview, Dolpijn & van der Tuin 2012, 50)

As such, exploring co-creative patterns is a matter of carefully readings or listenings to the specificities – the nuances and the natures – of our entangled costume explorations and to the different matters that interfered with our explorations. In this path I will explore and unfold how different aspects of the CA structure were matters that, like waves, interfered, moved and affected different things between us during Conversation Costume.

Navigating different research agendas 

The main researchers of the CA research project, Christina Lindgren and Sodja Lotker, write that

as costume designer/director and dramaturg/curator we were very interested in understanding ‘how costume performs.’ […] An important part of our research was also sharing, doing it together – we wanted to include as many costume designers, directors, theorists, light designers, students and performers as possible to make space for them to explore and join in our research (Lindgren & Lotker 2023, 13).

During their research (2018–2022) Lindgren and Lotker facilitated eight workshops and I was pleased that Conversation Costume was selected to be part of workshop #5 which ran parallel to workshop #6 and #7.

For the three parallel CA workshops Lindgren and Lotker had selected twelve different costume designers with twelve different costume projects to partake, and their intention was that we with our projects unfold different aspect of how costume performs. As the CA project generously provided black box spaces for our rehearsal processes, hired performers and light designers to partake in our explorations and arranged that a tutor team would support our creative processes, I was keen to return the CA’s generosity by delivering the outcome that the CA researchers were expecting: two work-in-progress showings. 

Work-in-progress indicates or assumes that I had a vision or direction for how the costume assembly would generate a performance in-process and/or that we would develop the work-in-progress from one showing to the next. These assumptions somehow contradicted my research ambition of in collaboration with the performers to co-creatively explore different potentialities with the costume assembly. I feared that the two work-in-progress showings ­could imply that we would use most of our time rehearing and producing a product to showcase. As an attempt to navigate the CA project agendas and my research goals I, on our first rehearsal day, stated to the two performers that my ambition was not to produce a work-in-process performance – that we would refine from one showing to the next – but that we co-creatively explore different work-in-process potentialities and/or fabulations with the costume assembly.

Sharing sessions – dialogues

As I mention in other paths, my hosting strategy included that we each day shared, exchanged and reflected on our experiences of and perspectives on our explorations, for example what caught our attention and what inspired us sensorially and visually, individually and collectively. The sharing sessions became openings to discuss, for example, what worked and what did not work and what interested us creatively and what was less inspiring. These discussions lead to new explorations where we either collectively agreed on something specific to pursue or where one of us suggested an exploration that this person wanted to lead or host.

What mattered in the sharing sessions was that over the days we had time to return to matters. Besides co-creatively fabulating on new or other explorative ideas, other matters re-appeared as ongoing dialogues, for example our different perspectives on listening and jamming and the fact that our way of co-creating was a reoccurring topic. In the dialogues we shared and compared our practices to explore, for example, how listening informs our practices and reflected on whether our practices favour or promote certain listening strategies. Through the dialogues our practices entangled, or perhaps it was us – we – who became more and more entangled through and with our dialogues. 

Components 

In To Think with Agential Realism (1) Malou Juelskjær writes that Barad’s intra-action is “the activity where relationships are created” (Juelskjær 2019, 23). The activity is “relationally conditioned” and “it is in the causality […] between the components that their creation is re-understood” (Juelskjær 2019, 23). In the text Juelskjær uses the Danish word omforstået (re-understood) that, according to the Danish dictionary, does not exist. However, in this context the word suggests that intra-action evokes new or other understandings and thus in each relational entanglement we must be willing to re-understand components. This implies, for example, that we must reconsider and/or re-evaluate our assumptions of and perspective on the components we entangle and relate with. 

The concept of components suggests that as humans we are co-constituted but also affected in a phenomenological sense by other components, whether these components are human or not. How we relate-with other components and how they relate-with us will affect what we see, hear or sense. At the same time, in entanglements we might have to re-orientate our orientation while we relate-with. As components we become-with other human and more-than-human components. In the context of costume, this suggests that when we craft textiles and/or explore costume(s) we are co-constituted or co-composed through our entanglement with other components, for example combinations and qualities of fibres, surfaces of textiles, shapes of costumes and fellow human explorers. As components ­we co-constitute other components and as components we are dependent on the other components. 

Employing the concept of components in the context of Conversation Costume suggests that the human and the more-than-human participants, the space, the duration, the framing and other aspects of the entanglement were components that acted as relational openings between the different components. 

Barad continues that “relata do not pre-exist relations; rather, relata-with-phenomena emerge through specific intra-actions” (Barad 2007, 140). This implies that a costume phenomenon does not exist prior to the relations(hips) that it entails. It is in the active engagement(s) of relating-with the entanglement between different components that costume phenomena can be investigated. In other words, it is through the relationships that specific costume intra-actions evoke that the phenomena be investigated. 

Cutting into entangled components 

Barad argues that “intra-actions enact agential cuts, which do not produce absolute separation, but rather cut together-apart” (Barad 2014, 168). Barad’s cutting together-apart is an acknowledgement that research never produces absolute separations between components. For example, when I write about crafting, I cannot separate my aesthetic choices or curation of crafting techniques from the textile materials – that I, by the way, also have curated, and vice versa. In our together-apartness the crafting techniques and the textile materials are never independent entities and without the textiles and how I use crafting techniques our entangled together-apartness becomes a statement of intent and not a practice of relating-with other components through and with my body.

In The scenographic, costumed chorus, agency and the performance of matter: A new materialist approach to costumeDonatella Barbieri (2) and Greer Crawley (3) argue that “costume is itself ‘doing’” (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 146) and suggest that the “Baradian temporal and specialized ‘agential cut’, a doing rather than a being, in which material relationships and forces are selectively included to make connections, is enacted. An agential cut permits the placing of costume at the centre” (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 147). By placing costume phenomena in the centre the researcher is able to cut into “all implicit in an engagement that seeks to understand what the material does, its attributes […] in order to engage co-creatively with it” (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 148). Thus, cutting together-apart is a method to follow specific components that are part of the costume phenomena. Even though crafting textile materials and the act of crafting material bodies or costume is an important part of my research practice, when the textiles are crafted I must leave that path and cut into what the costumes evoke and provoke in explorative situations with other people. In each situation I must relata-with-phenomena by cutting together-apart to explore the relations that emerge and how or whether they flourish. As such, Barad’s cutting together-apart is to follow specific parts to investigate the specificities of where, when or how different components together-apart relata-with-phenomena whereby they shape and affect the research phenomena itself. And as Barbieri and Crawley write, Barad’s agential cut foregrounds costume’s specific material intra-actions and their inherent ethical tissue (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 149).

Sharing and comparing can potentially become judgmental battlefields. Haraway writes –  about the arts activism project PigeonBlog – that the artist-researchers were learning to learn with generosity to interact with pigeons where “all the players [pigeons and humans] rendered each other capable; they ‘became-with’ each other in speculative fabulation” (Haraway 2016, 22). As an act of becoming-with, I suggest that comparing and sharing is learning-with our different practices. For example, when we shared and compared we discovered similarities, but it was the differences that mattered. It was the differences between our practices that offered us opportunities to ask genuinely curious questions on matters that differ from our own practice. Moreover, through the curious questions and in the mutual generous exchange we explored some of the assumptions that were embedded in our practices. At the same time, I argue that in the dialogues we became generous players that played each other capably and ably. Moreover, I suggest that in the mutual generous exchange or dialogues we are seen, heard and valued for what we bring. 

However, the sharing and comparing of dialogues is not an easy game to play. It is a delicate game that in its seriousness can become heavy and prohibitive, but it can also be light, playful and bubbly. As the host that set this game in motion, at times I had to silence my urge to speak or to interrupt. I had to listen, and several times I repeated or rephrased questions to explore, learn and/or to better understand the experiences and perspectives of my fellows. The game of learning with generosity from each other’s practices and perspectives required time – time to linger and return – and required of us to be curious, generous and patient towards each other and ourselves. My experience was that we willingly played along ­and during the rehearsal period we became more and more able to fabulate with our different perspectives and jam with our different ways of practicing. Even in the two days where we struggled (unfolded in Staying with the troublesome) our dialogues were quite fabulating.

Sessions with tutor team

Regarding Conversation Costume I have chosen to only to touch upon the dialogues I had with the tutor team: dramaturge Sodja Lotker and theatre historian Knut Ove Arntzen. As the designer selected to explore a specific costume project during the CA workshop I was the only one of our three-person team who was intended to meet the tutor team: two meetings, each of one hour duration. My impression was that the CA project’s aim was that the tutor team should support the costume designer’s development of a performance concept and the progression of the costume performance from one showing to the next. 

The performers were also hired to partake in another costume project by a fellow costume designer and thus they were not able or even intended to attend the tutor sessions. In the first tutor session I was not particularly at ease with the fact that the performers were not invited or able to attend. As we were in the midst of building a creative relationship it felt strange to discuss the co-creative strategies without their presence and reflections. 

In another path I shortly address that the conversation in the second tutor session sparked my imagination. Surprisingly, the conversation also awoke one of the tutors’ – dramaturge Sodja Lotker – curiosity and thus she attended the rehearsal that followed. Sodja’s presence during what became the first version of the ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’ explorations was significant. Her dramaturgical (in)sights and genuinely curious questions sparked new aspects and dynamics into our co-creative explorations and into our ongoing dialogue.

Working alongside others – multiple voices

As I mentioned , twelve teams participated in the CA workshops. Each team had seven three-hour rehearsals to explore costume and to develop a performance in-progress or showcase. The main co-creative team of Conversation Costumewas Fredrik, Jonathan and I and during the process several CA colleagues engaged in and contributed to our process. Our dialogues often included reflecting on actions, reflections and perspectives offered by CA colleagues or were the effects of embodied dialogues with people beyond our team. For example, after the first showing and as we returned to our rehearsals, we shared our impressions that we were the only team that invited the group to actively participate in the showing, whereas the other teams placed the group as audience. Moreover, we were the only team that jointly presented and actively participated in the showing. We did not evaluate or judge our colleagues’ showcases; however, the impressions, that the showcases left, provided us with a lens to explore and discuss whether our co-creative approach was similar or different to the other teams’ ways of collaborating. Our impression was that our listening and jamming with the costume assembly, as well as how we co-created explorations, differed from the other teams’ ways of collaborating.

Apart from the fact that the showings offered us a lens to reflect-with, the showing also offered (in)sight into how the fellow costume designers positioned themselves in the showings, which indicated how they potentially positioned themselves during their rehearsals. My impression was that the costume colleagues placed themselves outside the costume explorations, leading or directing the explorations. I did not evaluate the costume colleagues’ choices and creative decisions. Still, the costume colleagues’ positioning helped me to reflect on the nature of my entangled position, for example that my active participation prevented me from having an outside overview of the performative and aesthetic expressions of our explorations. Instead, I experienced performative and aesthetic qualities and potentialities from within our entanglements. In the entangled position I was not looking but listening with my entire body to the complexities of the costume assembly and to our co-creative process. My experiences were that the costume assembly sparked our creativities in different ways and that sharing our different creative experiences opened doors that enabled us to elaborate on each other’s creativities and to co-create explorations on the fly. 

Documentation

In this path I have, through the lens of diffraction, explored different matters that affected our co-creative explorations and that we navigated co-creatively. I will end this path with a short reflection on a different matter. The main documentation of Conversation Costume is the research diary that I mostly wrote using a computer, but aspects are noted in the sketchbook that I used while I was preparing for the workshop. In the diary I wrote what we explored during the rehearsals, I noted some of the co-creators’ comments and some of the feedback we received from our CA colleagues, I reflected on my position as participating host and I explored and elaborated on the worries or concerns I had during our process. 

Being actively engaged in the explorative process I often forgot to document our rehearsals. I therefore do not have extensive photo material or video documentations and I only recorded a few of our sharing sessions. Two weeks after Conversation Costume I interviewed my co-creators, and their honest reflections have been valuable for this research. 

If I was to repeat Conversation Costume I would expand the documentation to include a co-creative approach. I would invite my co-creators to contribute: to write, to draw, to take photos or videos or document it in whichever (short or long) manner or format they find interesting, and I would have used some of our rehearsal time to do so. However, at the time it did not cross my mind. 

Crafting entanglements 

The process of crafting costume for Conversation Costume differed from how I crafted the connecting costumes in the two other artistic projects in this research. In Conversation Costume the crafting process entangled dialogues that were beyond, besides or alongside the textile materials and the crafting techniques and the process were interrupted and re-started. In the process I had to re-orientate my crafting strategies and thus the process led into an unexpected direction. 

Costume context 

Conversation Costume was as part of the Costume Agency’s (CA) workshop #5, 17–26 August 2021. The CA workshop was originally scheduled to run in the first two weeks of August 2020 and the outcomes of CA workshops #5, #6 and #7 was intended to be presented the Critical Costume 2020. However, due to the Covid-19 lockdowns the CA workshop was postponed and the Critical Costume 2020 was transformed into an online conference. 

To be able to partake in the CA workshop I had to send a proposal that needed to be accepted. In my proposal (January 2020) I wrote (slightly edited): 

At the CA2020 workshop I like to dig deeper into the research of how costumes that connect people affect us bodily and collaboratively. How can costume that connects (connecting costume) act as conversational tools between me and fellow wearers during explorative situations where everyone shifts between positions of wearing, watching or directing? 

After each explorative session the group will reflect on the individual and collaborative knowledge that appeared during the exploration and that we gained. 

In between the explorative sessions I might alter some of the connecting costumes in accordance with the collaborative process and the collaboration with the group. 

Before CA2020 I will produce two new prototypes. An all-in-one full-body garment version and a version in parts so that the wearers can dress each other and change connecting points. Having several prototype versions offers the possibility to research if and how different bodily connections create different movement structures/hierarchies and different reflections/conversations. 

In dialogue with, or rather inspired by, Camilla, I tied the strings together with some knots close to other knots and also with more distance to other knots in a manner that was as random as I possibly could. As I was knotting I also chose the colourful strings as randomly as possible. With the randomness I tried to craft as intuitively as Camilla, which is perhaps an impossibility. When I am in a creative flow I enter a meditative state of crafting, even if I do not think I evaluate how and what I craft in this state, perhaps I intuitively do so. I cannot know how Camilla experiences crafting since she cannot explain herself intellectually. Camilla’s explanations lie in her craftworks. As I was knotting the ‘randomness’ was an attempt to let go of control, for example not to create specific patterns or compositions with the knots and with the colours. As I started a new knotted piece I was trying different variations of the random knotting technique. 

I ended crafting nine knotted pieces in-process that were quite open-ended and rather unfinished – unfinished in the sense that I imagined that during the CA workshop we could potentially continue to craft and/or re-craft these pieces. I therefore decided to bring the extra string that I had cut and a pile of uncut textiles similar to textiles that I had crafted the pieces from. Because of the content of my original proposal – that the CA had accepted – I also brought the three connecting costume prototypes that I had crafted. As a totality I called this: costume assembly. 

Conversational dialogues 

I suggested that the costume assembly ­– like figurative ceramic arrangements (see Crafting Orientations) – evoked and cultivated embodied conversations between us, in line with Osmond’s “embodied conversations” (link). Barad notes that embodiment is being of the world in its dynamic specificity (Barad 2007, 377). That we (humans) are of the world – instead of in the world – implies that we are always entangled with other humans and more-than-humans, which suggests that we communicate with the dynamic specificities of our entanglements. In costume phenomena the dynamism specificities are, for example, the tensions between our different creativities and between our human and more-than-human different materials and/or bodies. 

In the different paths I often use the word dialogue instead of conversation. Conversation can be perceived as an everyday practice that is casual and informal, whereas dialogue perhaps has a deeper, more intentional focus on understanding or gaining new insights. However, Barad’s entanglement confronts notions of separation and invites re-thinking of conversation and dialogue not just as communication between pre-existing entities but as encountering processes that shape and co-constitute temporal we’s. As encountering processes, we jammed between lighter chattier or playful embodied conversations and dialogues where we tried to explore and understand each other’s perspective on a more fundamental level. Moreover, through the embodied conversations with the costume assembly we expressed ourselves and in the conversational dialogues through and with the costume assembly temporal we’s were shaped. What seems evident is that the costume assembly sparked our conversational dialogues and through our conversational dialogues we became different versions of temporal we’s. 

Barad’s concept of entanglement is complex: not only does it challenges notions asserting that we (humans) as individuals have independent identities, it opens worlds where we are of the world and where we only exist through and with encounters or entanglements. As researcher, the concept of entanglement made me re-consider and re-think what I take for granted. For example, it was revealing and rewarding to revisit the days where we struggled. In dialogue with Barad, I realised that I was stuck in traditions stipulating that in rehearsals we must produce something specific. In the days where we struggled I, as host, failed to see that our conversational dialogues were what we produced, which was crucial for our creative relationship. In the struggle I forgot that the name of this artistic project pointed towards the conversational and as such the conversations have many phases and forms. 

Being connected

Even though I attend to that we trained and thus crafted our bodies in different ways, in hindsight it is surprising that as I entered Conversation Costume I had a somewhat divided perspective on crafting and exploring: crafting was making costume and exploring was physically engaging with crafted costume. However, as we co-composed connections with the costume assembly the act of crafting and exploring entangled. As such, crafting became co-creative acts of composing and entangling the costume assembly and our bodies; crafting new connections and shaping relationships of becoming-with and co-existing with the costume phenomena. 

Barad writes that “ethics is about mattering, about taking account of the entangled materializations of which we are a part, including new figurations, new subjectivities, new possibilities––even the smallest cut matters” (Barad 2007, 384). Barad notes the smallest matter matters. Being connected while studying relational and co-creational costume phenomena was complex and there are aspects that I did not notice. However, what was clear was that relational and co-creational costume processes crafted creative tensions and exchanges between us that made us open towards our differences. We entered material-discursive exchanges between being human and more-than-human bodies and/or materials and through our entanglement we became equal partners. At the same time, being entangled – connecting, hosting, participating, researching, relating – connected me with the ethical dilemmas that are always a part of collaborating with others and being of the world. Barad’s entanglement connects me to the act of responding responsibly and invited me to share the dilemmas I experienced within costume phenomena. As such the entanglement of Conversation Costume invited me to dive into the dilemmas and the pleasures of hosting co-creative and communal costume explorations. 

At the centre of my proposal was an ambition to craft new versions of connecting costume. The Japaneses Magic Pattern techniques (1) served as the foundation for shaping the wearable parts of these costumes. Aspart of the proposal I sketched ideas in drawing and in textile. Within the proposal was intentions that the connecting costumes, during the workshop, should be adjusted and/or further developed in close collaboration with the performers. As the proposal was accepted (early 2020) I continued to test the pattern-making techniques and I crafted early text versions of theses new connesting costumes. But as the Covid-19 pandemic hit (March 2020) Scandinavia and the world I paused the crafting process. 

Crafting 

As I returned to craft costume for Conversation Costume (spring 2021) the two other artistic projects in this research had allowed me to explore two different versions of connecting costumes with different number of people in different settings. Thus, my focus had shifted: I want to develop the connecting costume in new direction that would invite co-creators to craft and/or co-compose.

The new direction and the crafting re-orientation that it entailed included several crafting ambitions that did not directly relate to the concept of connecting costume. For example, I had an ambition to further develop the sampling technique that I used for the AweAre costume and for years I have had a wish to lean knipling techniques (2). I use the Danish word knipling that translates to the English lace. However, translating lace back to Danish is blonde which is less specific than knipling. Knipling points towards the specificities of the time-consuming lace-making technique which is what had my interest. In knipling the crafter produces lace that have quite specific patterns by hand with a thin thread and using very specific tools. Knipling has not gained as much public popularity as, for example, knitting and crocheting have in the past years. Still, knipling is an important part of Danish craft history and was around the 1600s quite a known industry – where women produced lace at home – in Tønder, the southern part Denmark. 

Combining the two crafting techniques is somehow a contradiction, since the sampling blurs the borders between different interlocking techniques and the knipling or lace-making is a knot-like technique used to create lace with specific pre-designed patterns. Nevertheless, as an attempt to combine the techniques, or rather as an attempt to move the connecting costume in a new direction, I intuitively started to test how to tie or knot textiles together in random manners; random in the sense of being more unorganised and less three-dimensionally focused than the sampling technique that I used/developed for the AweAre costume. I knotted in ways that I imagined resembled the knipling technique, however without using any of the tools that are crucial for knipling and without creating lace-like patterns. As I crafted, I explored how I could tie string together and experimented or played with having different distances between that knots that I knotted. While I was crafting, I was eager not to create specific patterns or to create a wearable part, and I intentionally did not place craftings in-process on a mannequin.

At the time I had lots of stretchable textiles in various colours which I cut into a pile of colourful strings. The pile of string had quite a different feel to it than in previous projects. For example, quite colourful. The random manner thus included combining the colours in less organised or controlled manners than I normally do or had done earlier. In the crafting, in the knotting, I entangled with the textile string or maybe the material entangled with me. 

A metaphorical dialogue

This was an entanglement that at some point, surprisingly became visible to me as related to my sister Camilla’s craftings. As mentioned in Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic (link) with Alzheimer’s as an unescapable companion, Camilla’s crafting expressions have over years transformed to become wilder, less controlled and somehow more intuitive. During the different states of Camilla’s crafting transformations her expressions have inspired me to craft textile samples as a way of decoding her crafting techniques. However, my samples read as analytical interpretations and were less intuitive, playful and/or colourful than Camilla’s craftings. As I was tying knots and knotting the colourful textile strings together, I quite unexpectedly realised that there was a link to Camilla’s crafting. I felt like I entered an internal or metaphorical dialogue with Camilla’s craftworks and I intuitively knew that something was emerging or that I was learning something new from Camilla’s craftings.

Crafting openings

In the Costume Agency – artistic research project book I wrote that Conversation Costume was

“inspired by the 17th and 18th century figurative ceramic arrangements placed in the centre of the dining table that aimed at cultivating conversation among the people participating. Moreover, in agriculture cultivating suggests that something sprouts or grows by using, for example, a specific method. For me, cultivating suggests a focus both on the process as well as on the product” (3) (Østergaard 2023, 97).  

Thus, my intention was that the costume assembly acted as entry points and as embodied dialogue evokers through which I could explore which kind of co-crafting and co-creative flows could flourish between us. Where one exploration could lead to the next and where our exploration could go in multiple directions. As such the flourishment that I aimed to explore focused primarily on the co-creative process and less on producing a specific product like a performance in-progress. This implied that I did not have any vision for the two work-in-progress showings that were scheduled during the CA workshop. Moreover, as my ambition was to explore how we could to co-create with the costume assembly I intentionally did not produce a rehearsal plan that included a list of tasks or explorations I wanted us to pursue.

My hosting intention was to create a non-hierarchical structure between us – being equal co-creating partners. I thus participated physically in the explorations throughout the entire process. Placing us horizontally as co-creators aimed to encourage us to initiate, host and/or co-host explorations and to elaborate on and jammed (4) with each other’s creative ideas. Moreover, like in AweAre – a movement quintet, another part of my hosting strategy was to have daily sessions or dialogues where we listened, shared and reflected on our different experiences and perspectives. 

As the performers were not acquainted with my work and as I was unsure how to approach the knotted pieces in-process, I – in the first rehearsal– started with what was most familiar to me in the costume assembly: the connecting costume. In the diary it is evident that our explorations with the connecting costume did not last for long. Instead, the performers or co-creators began to connect and tie different parts of the costume assembly together and connect them to the space and to their bodies. As one of the co-creators reflected the knotted pieces in-process offered more creative agency than the connecting costumes did. This reflection fostered ongoing dialogues that circled round questions like what constitutes costume and can textile objects as the knotted pieces in-process act like costume and at the same time be spatial or scenographic objects? These ongoing dialogues meant that the knotted pieces in-process became the centre of our attention and that the strings, the uncut textiles including the connection costume prototypes acted as practical tools to tie or craft the knotted pieces together and connect them to each other, to the space and to and between us. 

Entangled costume conversations

Co-crafting connections

Barad writes that 

responsibility–the ability to respond to the other–cannot be restricted to human-human encounters when the very boundaries and constitution of the “human” are continually being reconfigured and “our” role on these and other reconfigurations is precisely what “we” have to face. (Barad 2007, 392)

Reconfiguring our human roles suggests that co-creating dynamics are responding responsibility to what it is that we encounter – in our case, the costume assembly – and thus entangling with will play with and/or provoke the boundaries between our different creative curiosities such that they are reconfigured. 

Moreover, Barad’s responsibility decentres us (humans) and we must respond responsibly to the costume assembly as our more-than-human co-creators. In Conversation Costume we responded to the costume assembly as our more-than-human co-creator by co-crafting spatial compositions. The compositions connected and entangled us and thus crafted or shaped temporal we’s. In the complexities of our entanglement none of our rehearsals and showings can be ascribe to one of us as they were co-crafted and co-authored. We all had a share in what we composed and as such I suggest that co-crafting and co-creating is sharing and being part of sharing the complexities of entangled processes. Perhaps the dynamics in co-creative costume phenomena are to navigate and negotiate not just to which extend we were willing to share but to stretch our creative curiosities to explore how many ways and variations there are of co-authoring creative connections between humans and more-than-humans. 

(3) Left: secondhand decorative ceramic arrangement of unknow origin. Right: contenmporaty version of ceramic arrangement by the Danish artist Lousie Hindsgavl. Photo: Charlotte Østergaard

(4) In the first rehearsal and as an opening I shared that jamming was inspired by how musicians engage in musical dialogues and spontaneously craft compositions on the fly. Equivalent to how improvising musically is to be collectively responsive, my aim was that the costume assembly enables us to have responsive embodied conversations. I suggested that jamming did not favour particular improvising techniques but was an invitation to mix and sample techniques.

(2) The photos in the slideshow are from Drøhses Hus in Tønder (Denmark) and also contain knipling tools that I have bought seconhand. Photo: Charlotte Østergaard

Jamming playfully – playful jamming

As we started our rehearsal process I suggested that we explore how we could jam with the costume assembly. I intentionally used the word jam to indicate that I did not favour any improvisation technique over others. As we started to explore, my impression was that the way in which we jammed with the costume assembly sprung from the improvision techniques that we knew from our practices. Thus, in our dialogues I encouraged my fellows to share what improvisation includes in their practices and from their perspectives. For the performers dance-improvisations often include listening and responding to tasks given by, for example, a choreographer. As a craftsperson improvisation often includes listening and fabulating with textiles on how I can sample different crafting techniques. 

As mentioned, in our dialogues we returned several times to improvisation. In the generous exchanges we explored how our improvisational techniques differ, however, and importantly, we realised how closely our improvisational techniques intertwine with listening. Within improvisational techniques/practices there are often quite specific expectations regarding who shall/must listen and to whom. 

As mentioned in another path, some of our CA colleagues expressed that participating in our first showing had childish qualities. In her PhD thesis Insubordinate Costume Susan Marshall writes that 

the capacity to play and to wonder are two characteristics frequently associated with being childlike but the importance of wonder and the intrinsic link between play and creativity […] are two characteristics I consider fundamental in the performers’ approach to my modular costumes (Marshal 2021, 164). 

In the context of Conversation Costume, in the exchange and open-mindedness towards our different improvisation techniques, jamming became a willingness to risk appearing childlike or foolish, while at the same time the playfulness that jamming awoke liberated us from attending to how we appeared in the eyes of each other or vice versa. As we jammed we did not have to prove that we were good improvisors or that we improvised in the right way. In the playful approach the novice could imitate the master and the master could imitate the novice. Or rather, it was not a matter of imitating jamming enabled us to expand our abilities. For example, as the novice I could improvise with my fellows and through their mastery or skilfulness I learned to improvise with the costume assembly in ways other than how I improvise with textiles while crafting. By listening to and learning from my fellows I did not become as skilful an improvisor as them. However, their mastery, or rather their playfulness, sparked my creativity, which made me dare to become playful with them and to playfully jam with our different ways of improvising with the costume assembly. As for the fellows, they expressed that the jamming, or perhaps it was the playfulness, liberated them from the expectation that they had to produce interesting movement material in service of an outside eye.

In the Conversation Costume explorations jamming and playing entangled; we jammed playfully and played jamfully. We played with the costume assembly as if it was an instrument and we played with our bodies as if they were violin bows and vice versa. In the rehearsals we jammed with our bodily and costume assembly instruments whereby we (co)composed compositions on the fly. As the jamming implied that we entangled with the compositions, the compositions were constantly re-created or re-composed. Thus, as we were playing, we could not predict or control how the soundscape of the ever-evolving composition would sound: it had momentary monophonic qualities but it was mostlypolyphonic in nature. Within the entanglement the jammings were curious and fabulating ways of exploring how we could play together and/or play along, for example by mixing and sampling, interpreting, interrupting, listening, disturbing, (co)hosting, (co)inventing, (co)crafting and negotiating. At the same time the jamming was not only playful it included moments of being exhausted, stuck, disorientated and insecure

For me, being physically active – allowing myself as non-performer to be part of the improvisation during our rehearsals and on the stage in our work-in-progress showcases – evoked listening qualities that differed from how I listen when I craft. For example, in the process of crafting the nine knotted pieces in-process I listened to the textile strings’ surfaces, tacticity and stretchability with my fingertips and with the strength of my hands, and I also listened to the metaphorical and actual dialogues that emerged around the crafting process. During our explorations I discovered that listening had spatial qualities that shifted from an experience of proximity to an experience of embracing the space. The proximate listenings was orientated towards sensorial and/or tactile details of the knotted pieces, which felt like touching, responding and being affected by another body. The sensation of embracing the space arose as soon as we started to co-craft and co-compose the costume assembly in the space. It was an experience of sending or receiving vibrations through the material as well as spreading or extending our movements into the space. What I call embracing the space relates to what the performers called the extension of their bodies. Thus, by listening with the temporal compositions of the costume assembly our listenings had spatial qualities. 

The spatial qualities always included proximate sensations. When the costume assembly and we were co-composed and entangled across the space I was orientated towards the proximate sensations and towards the spatial qualities, or rather my listenings was constantly bouncing and re-orientated by that which I experienced was calling for my attention. The spatial qualities of our entanglement in a composition called for careful listenings to and with the movements that occurred in the temporal compositions in order to listen to our spatial entanglements. For example, listening to the push and pull qualities and the changes of directions or re-directions of these push and pull qualities.

Moreover, with the temporally composed costume assembly as connecters, I was, at times, suddenly intimately entangled with my fellow co-creators’ bodies in ways that would have, for example in fitting situations, crossed personal boundaries for the performers’ and me. Thus, touching, being touched or being close to one or several of the co-creators’ bodies I was orientated and attentive towards their (re)actions and responses. At the same time, I expanded my listenings towards my own experiences in a way that felt new or different to crafting and that allowed me to act in ways other than I do when I craft or fit a costume on a performer’s body. Thus, during our explorations I expanded my listening abilities to listen with and to my body to the temporal compositions of the costume assembly and to how we tangled and moved with the compositions. For example listening with my size and weight, my flexibility and inflexibilities, my heart, mind and imagination.

During the workshop we explored aspects of what material-discursive listening includes and that which invited us to hear, see and sense ourselves, each other, the costume assembly, the space, and the interrelationships. Our listening practice, or how we listened, was co-created and co-explored though different explorative situations. In practice, our costume-body explorations included, for example, different ways of relating, reacting and being affected by the costume assemble by 1) arranging, combining, composing or dressing the costume assembly on one’s own, on each other’s bodies or on/in the space, 2) wearing the costume assembly in different ways, 3) moving with or being moved by the costume assembly, 4) noting the spatial and relational dimensions of the costume assembly and 5) employing the effect of working in, for example, darkness, silence, sometimes semi-silence using our breath or breathing as vocal responses and with music. 

Co-creative dynamics 

My ambition with Conversation Costume was to study co-creative costume processes or dynamics. In the research diary I wrote that “I am at a point in my life where I am open-minded towards more multifaceted aesthetic choices that hopefully offer space for other people’s creative ideas.” 

The aesthetic choices that I mention include more than the visuality of the costume assembly; it is attending to how the co-creative structure shaped our creative relationship. Diving into Conversation Costume, it is evident that the co-creative structure shaped or crafted different dynamics between us. Barad writes that

dynamics are about change. To specify or study the dynamics of a system is to say something about the nature of and possibilities for change. This includes specifying the nature of causation, the nature of the causes that effect change, the possibilities for what can change and how it can change, the nature and range of possible changes, and the conditions that produce change. (Barad 2007, 179)

In the context of co-creative structures dynamics is not a matter of stability in the structure but about studying the possibilities for change, what can change and what causes changes in dynamics between humans and more-than-humans, for example exploring how fixed or fluid roles or positions are within the co-creative structure. 

Positions

The intention to position us as horizontally as possible was an ambition of sharing creative authorship with my fellow co-creators in the explorative rehearsal process. In practice the shared authorship meant that we could initiate and host explorations. The shared authorship also meant that our roles or positions changed: sometimes we were hosting, sometimes we were co-hosting, sometimes we were participating, sometimes we added other, more or new aspects to specific explorations and we always elaborated on each other’s creative idea. Like in a former artistic collaboration (1) where the change of roles or positions fostered critical dialogues between us (Østergaard 2018, 63). However, in Conversation Costume we were never merely hosted or participated; instead, during the explorations our positions were fluid. It is evident already during the first rehearsal our positions began to blur and, at the same time, the “bodily boundaries” (Barad 2007, 377) between us and the costume assembly blurred or became more fluid. We became entangled. Moreover, our embodied dialogues blurred the boundaries between being professionals, being playful (grown-up) children and building personal relationships. 

Thus, the rehearsals were like ping-pong games where we played with, between and among our different creative ideas and with the fluidity of our positions. The playful ping-ponging crafted relational dynamics between us that was energetic, powerful and playful. However, it is evident that the co-creative gaming also crafted dynamics that were less playful. For example, we had two rehearsals where our energy was low and where we struggled with the fluidity of our positions. In the explorative situations it seemed as if it was the fluidity of our positions that caused the change of dynamics between us, however, the cause also existed in the space between complexities of entangled matters. 

Spaciousness

My ambition was to craft a space where we shared creative authorship which, at the same time, questions or challenges my creative spaciousness of my hospitality. I intentionally choose the word spaciousness instead of openness. Openness as a spatial quality suggesting that a door is open and we are invited to enter, whereas spaciousness suggests that we are somewhere specific where there is space. Even though there is space there are also spatial conditions that we must navigate and that we are invited to negotiate. To me, the Danish rummelighed (spaciousness), as human and relational quality, is our ability to give space to others by being flexible and stretchable. 

Therefore, throughout our explorative process I had to attend to my abilities to be flexible and to stretch my creativity towards co-creators’ creativities. For example, I had to be willing to go along with my co-creators’ proposals to discover potentialities in their creative proposals that were at first invisible to me. As such, I tried not to judge the co-creators’ creative proposals which at times were challenging, especially in the few situations where a proposal was not in line with my creative preferences. These situations created in me a dynamic where I had to silence my urge to make counter-proposals and not fall for the temptation to say “I don’t think this is a good idea” or “I know that this won’t work”. As I could not predict or know where any creative proposals would lead, I had to go along. Moreover, I had to embrace the position that within all our creative proposals was a risk that the exploration would fail to awaken our creative curiosity. 

If I had judged each and every proposal proposed by the co-creators based on my preferences and assumptions, it could have created a dynamic where my judgments determined which proposals and thus which explorations we would pursue. In other words, I would have limited the co-creators’ creativity. As such, I would have failed to be spacious in my hosting approach towards the co-creators and I would also have failed to create the conditions for spacious space that accommodated our different creativities could co-exist.

Curiosities and responsibilities

As it turned out during our rehearsals, we co-created a dynamic where we navigated between our different creativities, for example by being willing to go along with each other’s creative proposals. Importantly, it was a dynamic of sharing our creative curiosities and then navigating and negotiating our different curiosities by generously and honestly discussing whether to co-create iterations of specific explorations or to explore related or less related creative ideas. 

Based on my experiences from Conversation Costume, I suggest that spaciousness is relational dynamics where we co-creatively stretched our creative muscles, our creative flexibilities and creative curiosities towards the space between us. My proposal that spaciousness is relational dynamics of co-creative stretchings can be criticised for being an uncritical postulate since spaces have walls and thus there are always spatial limitations. 

Barad writes that 

we are responsible for the world of which we are a part, not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing but because reality is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping and through which we are shaped. (Barad 2007, 390)

In line with Barad, I argue that co-creating is shaping and being shaped. Even though we cannot know what our creative proposals will shape, we are still responsible for the fact that our proposals will shape something. As our responses will shape the space that we share we are responsible for how we respond to each other’s creativities and creative curiosities. Are we willing to stretch towards each other’s creative experiences and expressions? Are we willing to let the stretching towards each other re-shaped our creative ideas? 

It is essential that co-creation is sharing, however it is never easy to share. It requires that we are generous and honest in our spaciousness. For example, that I, as host, are willing to listen to the co-creators creative curiosities as well as that I am willing to share and negotiate my own creative curiosities, which includes acknowledging that sharing my preferences, biases and prejudices might re-shape my perspective. As I cannot and will not force co-creators to co-create, I can only propose by showing my own willingness to stretch myself towards the places or the spaces between us. Acting according to my proposal, I must also show that I am willing to practice. In practice there will be times where I fail to stretch towards the co-creators’ creative curiosities, however I still dare to propose that we practice stretching our creative muscles together. 

Some of the most precious memories I have from Conversation Costume are from the showings. It is, for example, the memory of co-hosting the first showing. In the second showing it stands crystal clear how the co-creators – Frederik and Jonathan – including the light designer, generously shared their reflections and responded to the CA colleagues’ questions and comments. Though their responses they took ownership of our showing and of our collaborative work, which touched me deeply. From my perspective the showings highlighted what happened during our process, which was that all the iterations of the ‘temporal textile landscape composition’ and ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ were not mine, they were ours, as we co-authored them. 

Material-discursive listening(s)

During the rehearsal process and in our dialogues, we realised that our understanding of listening was influenced by the value or belief systems in our backgrounds. For the performers their dance training meant that listening valued bodily proximity of touch – the touch of bodies and skin – of fellow dancers. Moreover, listening often required that they as dancers had to accept any given task. Listening to a task implied that they had to be inventive and produce interesting movement-material that was often more in service to an outside eye than listening to themselves and following their own sensorial and imaginative impulses. During our exploration the performers unfolded that listening to and with the temporal composition that we co-crafted and co-composed with costume assembly, enabled them to extend their bodies into the space and thus extend the reach of their listenings. One of the co-creators reflected that listening with the temporal compositions became an “extension of my own body, for example, my arms or legs. Exploring how can I reach out over the whole room and connect with the whole room and with you.” The other co-creator reflected that bodily entangling with the temporal compositions was 

“a way to be bigger than oneself and to achieve power by suddenly being able to manipulate a space in a completely different way than you can with just your own body. I found that we have always been connected, even if it hasn't always been clear. We've kind of been moving together without touching each other at any point”.

Slideshow: In this explorative session I had invited two CA colleagues to join. Therefore Sally E. Dean and Lydia Hann appear in some of the photos as the actively participated and contributed to the session.

As the rehearsal ended we had explored multiple variations or iterations of the ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ explorations. We realised that it was not only exciting to be a bigger group but that our guests had offered embodied articulations that were different from ours. Thus, as the next day was the first work-in-progress showing we decided to invite our colleagues to co-create another iteration.

The first work-in-progress showing

We had not prepared a detailed introduction and therefore our way of inviting our colleagues into the ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ exploration was improvised. Nonetheless, as the day before, Fredrik explained the rules, for example that we would work in silence and the two positions of wearer and composer. 

As turned out, due to the number of participants there was a lack of material with which to compose. At the same time the lack of material implied that there was constant rotation and re-compositioning of the costume assembly. Even though the composers occasionally paused to witness the wearers it was as if the co- and re-compositioning had an organic quality as well as it became less clear who acted as wearer or composer. Apart from that some wearers hid under the composition without moving at all during the session and three people placed themselves at the edge of the room and watched from a distance. 

Bodily compositions – the first work-in-progress showing 

Bibliography

References

Barad, Karen (2007). Meeting the universe halfway – quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, London: Duke university press.

Barad, Karen (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart, Parallax, 20(3), 168–187. DOI: 10.1080/13534645.2014.927623

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

Dolphijn, Rick & van der Tuin, Iris (2012), New Materialism· Interviews & Cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. 

Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla (2021). Perspectives on Ethics in Performance Practice, Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Project 2018-2021, Output Phase #01 'Setting the framework', Workpackage 2 'Map Ethics!'. Lead Partner: University of Bergen (Norway), Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design. 

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

Juelskjær, Malou (2019). At tænke med Agential Realisme, Nyt fra Samfundsvidenskaberne.

Le Guin, Ursula K. (1986). The carrier bag theory of fiction, Dancing at the edge of the world – thoughts on words, woman, place, New York: Grove press, p. 165–170.

Marshall, Susan (2021). Insurbortinate Costume, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Østergaard, Charlotte (2023). Charlotte Østergaard· Conversation Costume, In (eds) Lindgren, Christina & Lotker, Sodja, Costume agency – artistic research project, Oslo National Academy of the Art, pp. 97–100.

Østergaard, Charlotte (2018). MASK: Dialogue between an inside and an outside perspective of costume, Studies in Costume & Performance, 3(1), 61–80.

Digital references

Knipling (lace making) 

Costume Agency 

Additional readings

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2021/2017), Brev til en nybagt forælder – et feministisk manifest i femten punkter, Politikens Forlag. 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2021/2017), (2012/2020) Vi burde alle være feminister, Gyldendal. 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2022/2021), Notes on Greif, 4^th Estate.

Arao, Brian & Clemens, Kirsti (2013), From Safe Space to Brave Space – A new way to frame dialogue around dversity and social justice, In (Eds) Landreman, Lise M., The Art of Effective Facilitation – reflections from social justice educators. Routledge. 135–151.

Barad, Karen (2018). Troubling time/s and ecologies of nothingness: re-turning, re-membering, and facing the incalculable. New formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics 92. 56–86. 

Behrndt, Synne & Lothker, Sodja (2023). Dramaturgy and Research in Devised Theatre, Prague: Academy of Performing Arts. 

Daugaard, Solveig & Schmidt, Cecilie Ullerup (2022), Vi skriver sammen, Kunsten som forum 08, Billedkunstskolernes forlag, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. 

Freire, Paulo (1993/1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books. 

Gómez-Pena, Guillermo & Garcia-López, Saúl (2021). La Pocha Nostra: A handbook for the rebel artist in a post-democratic society, Routledge.

Hedva, Johanna (2019/2016), Syg kvinde teori, Laboratoriet for Æstetik og Økologi. 

hooks, bell (2001), All about love: new visions, William Morrow. 

Kunst, Bojana (2021). Feministisk omsorgspolitik og nærheden mellem kunst og liv, Kunsten som forum 02, Billedkunstskolernes forlag, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. 

Lindgren, Christina & Lotker, Sodja (2023). Costume agency – artistic research project, Oslo National Academy of the Art.

Lykke, Nina (2008). Kønsforskning – en guide tik feministisk teori, metodologi og skrift, Samfundslitteratur.

Martin–Thomsen, Camille; Mcphee, Siobhán Wittig & Akenson, Ashley (2021). The Scholaship of Critique and Power, Teaching & Learning Inquity The ISSOTL Journal, 9(1). 279–293.

Mattern, Shannon, Reparationsmanualer, Vi skriver sammen, Kunsten som forum 12, Billedkunstskolernes forlag, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. 

McKinney, Joslin (2015). Vibrant materials: the agency of things in the context of scenography, in (Eds) Bleeker, Maaike, Sherman, Jon Foely & Nedelkopoulou, Eirini, Performance and Phenomenology: traditions and transformations, Routledge Theatre & Performance Studies series, 121–137.

Spatial compositions – the second work-in-progress showing

In this path I unfold how we in the first work-in-progress showing invited our collages join and co-create a version of an exploration that I call ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’. The ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ arose from an exploration that Fredrik hosted and where we had roles as wearer or composer. The composers co-compose a costume directly on the wearer(s) body/bodies and the wearer(s) responded to the composition by moved until the costume composition fell off their bodies. The composers witnessed the wearers movements. 

Part of the CA programme/schedule included two work-in-progress showings. Showing work-in-progress indirectly suggests that the aim of the CA workshop was that each costume designer/artist and/or design team – the costume designer/artist and the assigned performers – had to develop a performance in-progress that progressed from one showing to the next. As mentioned in other paths, my ambition was that we co-creatively explore potentialities of the costume assembly and that I have no ambition of producing a performance in-process. Therefore, in the CA book I mention the showings as “co-creational work-in-progress potentials or fabulations” (Østergaard 2023, 99).

I have unfolded that in our first showcase we invited our CA colleagues to participate in and thus our first showing was co-created with the participants. In the second showcase we decided to do something different: to ‘preform’ a co-crafting spatial composition and to improvise with the composition, all within a loose frame that built on the vocabulary we had developed during our rehearsals (Østergaard 2023, 99). What in the CA book I called costume-body-space improvisations I rename in the following and call ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’. 

A contour of ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’

What became the ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’ exploration(s) arose after two rather troublesome days (unfolded in Staying with the troublesome) ­in the hours between a conversation I had with the assigned tutor team (Knut Ove Arntzen and Sodja Lotker) and our next rehearsal. The conversation with the tutors started as a reflection on how we could develop the ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ participatory showcase even though I knew we would not do so. We reflected that our showing was a textile landscape ­or a tactile text that organically transformed with the movements of the CA colleagues that participated. 

The contour of what became the ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’ was a co-creative journey that started by co-composing a textile composition in the space. I then imagined that we would leave the space shortly, where I would offer us a listening intention or orientation, whereafter we would return to the space to listen, respond and entangle with the composition and each other. At this point a lighting designer had set up different lamps in the space and I was eager to test how different light qualities would affect us. I intended to include darkness since in earlier sessions we had experienced that darkness made us listen more intensely. Furthermore, I realised that our explorative sessions often stopped after a certain amount of time – therefore I wanted to explore if it was possible to extend the duration. 

The ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’ 

Even though we had been struggling, and perhaps especially since we had been struggling and feeling stuck, the performers were more than willing to explore the journey. However, I did not explain my idea in detail. In the research diary I tried to capture the session but it is clear that my description is rather fragmented, and there are many aspects of our exploration that I do not unfold. Still, re-visiting the description awakens memories of the intensity of this exploration that lasted about an hour. 

What was significant in this exploration was Fredrik and Jonathan through their actions several times indicated – by withdrawing – that they were wanted to end the session but I responded with dressing. Both actions (withdrawing and dressing) were unarticulated signs that we had developed. As my intention was to extend the duration of the session I repeatedly refused to accept my fellows’ signs. What finally ended the session was that Fredrik collected and threw a chunk of the composition or of the costume assembly into the hallway and left the space – an action or response that was rather surprising. As such my non-accepting attitude provoked an unexpected response which shook us out of the struggle or deadlock we had been in. The chain re-action surprisingly re-awoke the dynamic flow between us. Thus, in the subsequent dialogues we realised that we (once again) had established several unspoken rules and signs or embodied articulations and discussed that listening must include attending to oneself; allowing ourselves and each other to listen, respond and be affected in different ways. This highlighted that if we do not listen to ourselves the politeness in our responses can become polished ways of listening that aims to avoid potential conflicts. For example, avoiding showing that we are provoked or that we disagree. We did not address it directly but the unexpected chain re-action situation revealed that our listenings included more than responding politely: it was being playful, jamful and childish together and sometimes being annoyingly teasing and responding to the annoyance. As such, this first version of ‘temporal textile landscape composition’ opened new or other potentials listening with(in) our acts of co-composing. 

In the last showing we performed new or other version of the ‘temporal textile landscape compositions’ exploration. We had a set few directions or dramaturgical scores: co-composing a textile landscape, leaving the space shortly to receive a listening intention, returning to perform a listening exploration that included the light designer could do whatever she was inspired to do, and we also had a pre-agreed light cue as a sign to finish. Thus, the showing was based on and was a fabulation of the embodied vocabulary or language that we had developed. 

This Video (23:38) of our second work-in-process is produced by the Costume Agency project and all credits are included in the video. Christina Lindgren has kindly granted permission that I can use this video documentation. 

I suggest listening to the sound file while watching the video. Note that it is possible to adjust volume on both video and sound file. 

Video (1:37): In this short video Fredrik and Jonathan reflects on our first showing. I asked a colleague to video document the showing, which was agreed with the group that participated. However, I do not intend to expose their participation. Thus, in the few screenshots and videos that appear only Fredrik, Jonathan and I are recognisable

As Fredrik and Jonathan mention in the video, one participant reflected that the exploration, the act of dressing up, had childish and silly qualities. As they reflect, the childishness and silliness were an important aspect of our way of improvising or jamming. Not only did the childish playfulness liberate us from judging or evaluating how our actions looked from an outside perspective but, and importantly, the playfulness was an invitation to laugh and be silly together, which made us daring and open-minded in the way we listening to and improvised or jammed with each other and the costume assembly. As such, the childish playfulness was a way of jamming and sampling each other’s ideas on the go.

Another aspect of the expanded version of the ‘composing and wearing, listening and moving’ exploration was our fellow colleagues’ different modes of participation. Some were very active, others were more passive and a few acted as witnesses. In the rehearsals that followed the showing we had longer reflections or dialogues on participation, for example whether witnessing is active or passive and whether this witness-position indicates distance to what is explored. I pointed towards Wenger’s different modes of participation (1) to suggest that the witness-positioning could indicate shyness or unwillingness to participate physically and at the same time show engagement in what was physically explored. We tried not to judge or conclude anything about our colleagues’ positions or actions, though the reflection was nonetheless rewarding since it allowed us to share and listen to how our colleagues’ actions and feedback affected us in different ways.

Even with, or maybe due to, the different modes of participation, the exploration was like an evolving organism – which seemed to contrast with our exploration the previous day that was conducted in rounds. Hence, it was a revelation to us that our CA fellows and the larger group’s ways of participating went into multiple directions. They were less attuned than we had been to the rules and thus they were quite playful and jamful with the rules. Their actions indirectly pointed towards the fact that we in our smaller group had orientated ourselves towards sameness. The showing made us realise how quickly unarticulated rules – a kind of ‘right way’ – had emerged between us, almost unnoticed. 

Barad notes that what is real and what is possible – as possibilities that open or close – are iteratively produced and performed (Barad 2007, 393). This suggests that by opening our explorative process – by inviting our colleagues to entangle with the costume assembly – our colleagues’ different ways of entangling opened up new possibilities that were foreclosed to us due to the ‘rules’ we had developed. Even though we (Fredrik, Jonathan and I) crafted the invitation, the we that we (all of us including the costume assembly) produced and performed emerged through the entanglement of our different creative responses that the situation evoked. The we that the situation evoked was a temporal explorative community that all of us had a part in and was part of shaping. 

Sound file (2:34): Fredrik and Jonathan's relections on the second showcase