Acknowledgements

What is presented on this Research Catalogue page is the submitted thesis for a doctoral degree in artistic research in Performing Arts at Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University, December 2024. This artistic research was carried out between 2020 and 2024 at Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University, Sweden. 

It is impossible to mention everyone who has enabled and contributed to this artistic research. I want to express my gratitude to all my colleagues and the administrative staff at the Malmö Theatre Academy and at the faculty of Fine and Performing Arts for their help, advice and good collegiality. 

I also want to express my gratitude to the supervisors I had during the research: Esa Kirkkopelto, Sofia Pantouvaki and Camilla Egg-Tverbakk. Sofia, thank you for generously being the consistent supervisor that – with your academic expertise and in-depth knowledge of costume research – has challenged my thinking, offered valuable feedback and supported my ideas. Camilla, thank you for kindly accepting to become second supervisor – your dramaturgical insights and feedback has been valuable. 

At the centre of this research lie three artistic projects wherein I collaborated with many people. 

I am grateful to: 

• Ny Carlsbergfondet and curator Natalia Gutman for the invitation to the Up Close performance festival, Victor Dahl for composing a beautiful soundscape and especially to the amazing co-creators of AweAre – a movement quintet Alex Berg, Daniel Jeremiah Persson, Camille Marchadour and Josefine Ibsen.
• Metropolis (Trevor Davis, Katrien Verwilt and Louise Kaare Jacobsen) for the invitation to Wa(l)king Copenhagen and especially to all the wonderful participants in and co-creators of Community Walk: Agnes Saaby Thomsen, Aleksandra Lewon, Anna Stamp, Benjamin Skop, Camille Marchadour, Daniel Jeremiah Persson, Jeppe Worning, Josefine Ibsen, Julienne Doko, Lars Gade, Paul James Rooney and Tanya Rydell Montan.
• Costume Agency project conveners Christina Lindgren and Sodja Locker for inviting me, light designer Kaja Glenne Lund, the other participating artists and a special thanks to the wonderfully openminded co-creators of Conversation Costume, Fredrik Petrov and Jonathan Ibsen. 

To all the co-creators in the three projects: I am thankful for your willingness to play along and for offering your insightfulness to this research. A special thanks to Agnes Saaby Thomsen who created the beautiful ikons for the three artistic projects.

I would like to express my appreciation to my former collages at the Danish National School of Performing Arts who, by supporting my KUV projects in costume, enabled this research: Ralf Richardt Strøbech, Inger Eilersen, Signe Allerup, Ghita Ohman, Pia Petersen and Sannie Østerby.

I am grateful to my dear colleagues, friends and self-chosen families, Anne Merete Ohrt, Christina Lindgren, Christina Sydow, Eva Nitschke, Eva Skærbæk, familen Forman, Gylleboverket, Helle Graabæk, Kirsten Bonde Sørensen, Lars Gade,  Marie Ledendal, Mette Saabye, Mia Maja Hansson Frederiksen, Rikke Lund Heinsen, Sally E. Dean, Steinunn Knúts Önnudóttir, Studio 19E, Susan Marshall, Tanja Hylling Diers, Tina Saaby and Thomas Adelhorst – that by asking, fabulating, wondering, laughing, comforting, collaborating, suggesting and listening have supported and contributed to this research. 

I am humble to the stretchable textiles, my more-than-human creative companions, that during the research showed new creative (in)sights. I am indebted to those who made these textiles: the more-than-humans – the soil, the weather, the wind, the insects and others – and the humans who crafted and/or manufactured the textiles.

I dedicate this artistic research to my closest textile family: my sister Camilla Østergaard, mother Ehs Østergaard and in memory of my father Paul Østergaard (who from the mid 1990s undertook practice-based research at Aarhus School of Architecture at a time when no one really recognised practice as research).

FRAMEWORKS

With the following four texts I contextualise the research and place it in artistic research:

• In Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic I suggest that crafting is a non-linguistic language that we must attend to. 
• In Four Core Concepts I introduce four theoretical concepts that I use as lenses to think-with in the artistic projects. 
• In Costume Contexts I situate the research in relation to costume and design scholars, artists and practitioners that my research builds on and connects to.
• In Artistic Research Method I frame my artistic research method, position myself as artistic researcher and unfold how the artistic projects and the research has evolved.

Apart from that, this section includes Lund University's spikblad document and the text Acknowledgements.

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Acknowledgements

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Artistic research method

Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic

Costume Context

Four core concepts by four scholars

Costume Contexts 

In 2015 I attended Critical Costume (1) at Aalto University, Finland. At the conference scholars and practitioners presented various perspectives on costume. As a first-time conference attendee, I was struck by the openness of the organisers and of the fellow attendees to share and exchange. Even though I as costume designer and educator in costume had wonderful colleagues, at Critical Costume I met and entered a costume community that I did not have at home. 

In the first volume of the journal Studies in Costume and Performance editors Donatella Barbieri (2) and Sofia Pantouvaki (3) write that costume is “emerging as a vibrant area of research, [that] is still in the early stages of development, particularly if compared to more established fields such as architecture or drama” (Barbieri and Pantouvaki 2016, 3). With the journal the editors’ (4) “ambition is to ultimately alter the way costume is perceived, being often subsumed onto others’ work and dissolved into a range of other different scholarly priorities” (Barbieri and Pantouvaki 2016, 5). It can be argued that costume is still an emerging research area (5). Either way, Critical Costume and Studies in Costume and Performance (6) offer important platforms where costume scholars and practitioners can share and exchange their research and the platforms have manifested an awareness of and attention to the ever-growing international costume community of costume researchers.

My research is a tribute to the costume communities – local and international – that I am grateful to be part of. In what follows I will situate the research in the costume and design landscapes that are known to me and that my research builds on. At the same time, I acknowledge that there is rich costume and design landscapes beyond what I mention and what is known to me. 

Costume thinking

At Critical Costume 2020 Sofia Pantouvaki introduced the term costume thinking. Pantouvaki argues that 

costume thinking is not about costume or design, as much as about critical thinking through costume – a means to articulate how costumes becomes a tool for analysis, negotiation, communication, experimentation, expression of ideas and behaviours. Beyond the designing for the body, costume thinking addresses the philosophical dimensions of human existence and the ways in which costume creates space for critical thinking. (Pantouvaki 2020, Critical Costume)

Pantouvaki’s costume thinking highlights that costume is a critical practice and “a way of think[ing] through as well as to act or do, and even to be as a researcher” (Barbieri & Pantouvaki 2020, 5). 

My artistic research project is deeply planted in the soil of practice (7) – in the act and art of doing. Thus, the critical costume thinking that this artistic research evokes emerged from practice and I, as researcher, speak with the voice of the artist practitioner that I am. Thus, as artistic researcher I think with practice and my thinking emerges with practice.

Embedded in the critical costume practice is that costume is not “seen anymore as being ‘in service of’ performance in a subordinate role, but rather as a central contributor to an often-renewed sense of collective practice, proposing new directions in turn, to the making of performance itself” (Pantouvaki & McNeil 2021, 1). As such, the costumes that are at the centre of this research are beyond character and dramatic text and are not created to support specific chorographical score(s). In three artistic projects specific costume are the starting point for co-creatively investigating what costume enables us to do. Therefore the critical thinking in the artistic projects is not exclusively solidary but include co-creative thinking-with our doings.

Photos from the KUV-project Textile Techniques as Potential for Developing Costume Design (2016/2017): from the final presentation of the project and two images of students (The Danish Naional Schoolof Performing Arts) that explored the connecting costumes. 

Costume collaboration

International scholars Madeline Taylor (14) and Suzanne Osmond (15) have made important research costume collaborations between costume technicians, designers and performers. Their research explores, in different ways, hierarchies within contemporary production, at the same time as their research beautifully attends to and thus values the labour undertaken behind the scenes in wardrobes by costume technicians. 

Madeline Taylor’s research explores interpersonal dynamics, collaborative mechanisms and emotional intelligence in contemporary costume productions. Taylor writes that realisation processes “requires not only understanding the material costume and how it is created, but also the emotional intelligence to navigate the collaborative process” (Taylor 2021, 274). Taylor here highlights that costume technicians’ skilfulness includes much more than their crafting abilities. For example, in the process of making costume the technicians’ emotional intelligence enables them to navigate the costumes’ designer’s aesthetic vision or “aesthetic orchestration” (16) (Pantouvaki 2010, 73).

Suzanne Osmond’s research explores collaborative decision-making and creative problem-solving in fitting situations. Osmond introduces the term “embodied conversations” that “refer to the specific phenomenon of collaborative interactions that occur on and around the body of the performer in the costume design process” (Osmond 2021, 277). Osmond uses the term to highlight that non-verbal gestures and facial expressions are equally important in communication between collaborators. Thus, in costume collaborations like fitting situations, collaborators must be aware and attend to the embodied conversations – their own and their fellows’. 

Taylor and Osmond’s research is conducted at larger theatre institutions with inhouse wardrobes, whereas my research is not situated within institutional stettings or structures. Osmond and Taylor’s research highlights that we in costume collaborations must attend to interpersonal dynamics and embodied conversations and/or languages. In context of my research, this suggests that I – as the researcher that hosts costume encounters – must pay attention to the dynamic and the dialogues that the situations and the costume encounters evoke. As host I must also attend to how I invite people into specific costume encounters and how my hospitality enables collaborators or co-creators to respond to the costume encounters in multiple ways. 

Bibloigraphy 

References

Arrigoni G., Schofield T., Almeida T., Chatting D., Freeth B., Haas A., and Diego Trujillo-Pisanty D. (2014), Betagrams: Maker culture and the aesthetics of prototyping, In Brunnell K., & Marshall J (Eds,), (2014). All makers now? Craft values in 21^st century production, Conference journal 1, Falmouth University, July 10–11 2014,  9–16. 

Barbieri, Donatella (2017). Costume in Performance – Materiality, culture and the body. Bloomsbury.

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

Barbieri, Donatella & Pantouvaki, Sofia (2020), Costume and ethics: Reflections on past, present and future entanglements, Studies in Costume and Performance, 5(1), 3–11.

Barbieri, Donatella & Pantouvaki, Sofia (2016), Towards a philosophy of costume, Studies in Costume and Performance, 1(1), 3–7.

Osmond, Suzanne (2021) Fitting Threads: Embodied Conversations in the Costume Design Process, in Sofia Pantouvaki; Peter McNeil (Eds): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Method (2021), Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle edition. 277–294. 

Pantouvaki, Sofia & McNeil, Peter (2021). Activating Costume: A New Approach to Costume for Performance, in (eds) Pantouvaki, S. & McNeil, P. Performance Costume – new perspectives and methods. Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 1–4. 

Pantouvaki, Sofia (2020). ´Costume Thinking’ as a Strategy for Critical Thinking, Critical Costume (2020). Online conference presentation: link.

Sanders, B.-N. Elizabeth & Stappers, Peiter Jan (2014). Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making codesigning, CoDesign, 10(1). 5–15. 

Taylor, M. (2021), Building Costumes, Building Language in the Costume Workshop, In Pantouvaki, S. & Peter McNeil, P. (Eds.): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Method, Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition, 263–276.

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

Online references

Behind the Scenes: Hussein Chalayan at Sadler's Wells (Gravity Fatigue). Part 1

Behind the Scenes: Hussein Chalayan at Sadler's Wells (Gravity Fatigue). Part 2

Behind the Scenes: Hussein Chalayan at Sadler's Wells (Gravity Fatigue). Part 3

Critical Costume 

Marlin Bülow’s website 

Zofia Jakubiec; Costume Agency workshop #5 In relations 

Charlotte Østergaard KUV-projects:

Textile Techniques as Potential for Developing Costume Design (2016/2017)

In Dialogue with Material – on Physicality in a Design Process (2018) https://ddsks.dk/da/projekter/dialogen-med-materialet and 

https://artisticresearch.dk/kuv/arkiv?po=628

New materialism and costume 

In Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body Barbieri writes that “costume required a high level of material investment” (Barbieri 2017, 32). In the book Barbieri’s historical examples shows that textile material/costume have been creative resources for performance artistes long before the concept of new materialism (8) was coined. An example is Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance (1890). In Fuller’s encounter with the “generous fluidity of the fabric” (Barbieri 2017, 126), “the performer and the material became equal creative partners” (Østergaard 2022, 44). In context of Martha Graham’s Lamentation (1930), Barbieri suggest that “it is possible to assume that the choreography would have been developed through the use of costume from the very beginning” (Barbieri 2017, 128). 

Fuller and Graham were dance pioneers who was aware of textile materials and costume potentials as creative partners and I sympathise with their material/costume attitudes. Even though Fuller and Graham used textile as more-than-human co-creators in their performance-making processes, in their time – in the industrial revolution – there was perhaps less focus on balance(s) between human and more-than-human matter as there is today in a world facing such a profound climate crisis. 

In The scenographic, costumed chorus, agency and the performance of matter: A new materialist approach to costume Donatella Barbieri and Greer Crawly (9) argue that in costume new materialism become “ethical negotiations in which [there] is a re-balancing of human and non-human matter” (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 144). This re-balancing is “questioning hierarchical and territorial dualism not only in terms of mind/body, nature/culture or subject/object but also in terms of male/female, local/global and present/past [… and] the power asymmetries intrinsic to these binaries” (Barbieri & Crawley 2019, 146). This suggest that we need to revise our design and performance-making production structures. With new materialism as creative partner, we – researchers and designers – must re-evaluate how we collaborate. As my research aims at studying relational and co-creational aspects of costume I do not intend to reproduce structures where someone envisions a performance or an event that the collaborating team materialises by, for instance, visualising, embodying and/or producing specific parts of a production/performance/event. Thus, in the research 1) I do not expect that my co-creators will or must embody a predefined vision of mine, 2) I do not intend to act as an outside observer who watches, witnesses, analyses and/or directs the situations and 3) I have no intention of positioning myself hierarchically above people and materials. 

Connecting Costume(s) as prototyping

At the centre of this research is costume that connects people – what I call connecting costume. The concept of connecting costume emerged during the KUV (10) project Textile Techniques as Potential for Developing Costume Design (2016/2017) as a reflection on the power that I have in performance contexts: with my designs I decide what performers will wear in a performance. Inspired by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of “will to power”, (11) I crafted several connecting costumes that connect two or four wearers. While crafting, I imagined that the experience of being connected would create sensations of being limited and/or restricted. As it turned out, while testing these connecting costumes with acting and dance students the costumes evoked quite a cheerful atmosphere and playful energy between them. 

I claim the concept of connecting costume, however I am not the only artist that explores and/or uses costume or wearable objects that connects performers to each other. Therefore, I like to acknowledge a few artists/designers who with their artistic works related to the connecting costume concept perhaps more as distant relatives than as the close family that have informed the connecting costume concept directly.  

For the performance Gravity Fatigue (2015) (12) fashion designer Hussein Chalayan’s (TR/UK) garments included costumes – made in stretchable textiles – that connected two dancers as duos. Artist Marlin Bülow’s (SE/NO) site-specific performances (13) – for example Firkanta Elastisitet (2017) and Elastic Bonding (2019) – are movable installations where dancing bodies in elastic textile costuming are connected to the (performance) site. In the Costume Agency (2021) workshop #5 called “in relations”, costume designer Zofia Jakubiec (PL/NO), with the project Untitled, created a dance performance in-process with a costume that connected three dancers. In Chalayan and Jakubiec’s performances the connecting costumes are tools to generate choreographies and in Bülow the site-connected performers become movable sculptures. In the works of Chalayan, Bülow and Jakubie the costumes are made for specific performances or events. 

Even though the connecting costumes in this research are crafted to specific artistic projects, they also travel between events. As such, the connecting costumes do not merely belong to one specific performance context. Moreover, the connecting costumes are not crafted to fit specific bodies and thus anyone – regardless of age or gender, for example – can wear the wearable parts on top of whatever they are wearing. As my research intention is to explore what the connection costumes evoke in the wearers, I suggest that the costumes act more as prototypes than as finished products. In Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making codesigning Sanders and Stappers write that prototyping “confront[s] the world, because the theory is not hidden in abstraction” (Sanders & Stappers 2014, p. 6), as they are designed to “provoke or elicit response” (Sanders & Stappers 2014, 9). I suggest that in employing prototyping within artistic research the connecting costume(s) becomes an invitation to respond and medium to evoke dialogue. Moreover, prototyping highlights that we – humans and more-than-humans – are in “a state of constant becoming” (Arrigoni et al. 2014, 14) and thus prototyping are openings for exploring different interpretations of what the connecting costume(s) do and how they affect us sensorially and relationally.  

Four core concepts by four scholars

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed write that

concepts are at work in how we work, whatever it is that we do. We need to work out, sometimes, what these concepts are (what we are thinking when we are doing, or what doing is thinking) because concepts can be murky as background assumptions. But that working out is precisely not bringing a concept from the outside (or from above): concepts are in the worlds we are in. (Ahmed 2017, 13)

In the artistic project research, four core concepts – vibrant matter, making kin, orientation and entanglement – are the lenses that I use for thinking-with the four focal themes, namely crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating. The four core concepts contain values that resonate with mine. Moreover, the authors/scholars and their concepts challenge me to relate to and reflect on the interconnections between aesthetic choices and ethical implications or dilemmas that are embedded in the aesthetic choices I make. Below, the four core concepts and the authors are shortly introduced in a personal manner. I return to the four core concepts in the artistic part of the research called PROJECTS. 

Jane Bennet – vibrant matter

In the book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things the American political theorist and philosopher Jane Bennett (1) challenges western human-centric perspectives that matter is passive. In Bennett’s vitalism, things – like litter, electricity, foods and metals – possess vitality and vibrancy that influence human actions and political landscapes. Bennett writes that “if matter itself is lively, then not only is the difference between subjects and objects minimized, but the status of the shared materiality of all things is elevated” (Bennett 2010, 13). By emphasising that we – where we includes things or more-than-human matter – share materiality, Bennett challenges fantasies that humans are unique beings that can escape their materiality and master nature (Bennett 2010, ix). 

What opened my understanding of Bennett’s political ecology was a short description of a personal encounter with an assemblage of trash (Bennett 2010, 4). Bennett’s encounter reminded me of the Danish author Hans Christin Andersen’s fairy tales (2) where objects – like toys, teapots or needles – come to life at night and are animated with human qualities. Andersen’s animations are perhaps more playful than Bennet’s encounters, which are more theoretical. However, Bennett’s things have things-power (Bennett 2010, 4) that provokes and affects humans and they (Bennett’s things) are not subordinate to humans as perhaps Andersen’s human-animated objects are (they act like humans). 

Bennett’s vibrant matter is an ethical call to awaken and expand our (human) sensitivity and attention towards the materialities that surround us, and if we are sensitively open we can see that this applies also to costume. For example, crafting costume requires sensitivity and care for textile materialialites and when we wear and explore costume we must be sensitive towards the costume’s materialities since they will vibrate with our bodies in multiple ways. Bennett’s call resonates in the sense that we (costume designers/researchers and all our collaborators) cannot and must not enclose costume in one specific performance concept or meaning. Costume potentially has multiple vibrating lives if we are sensible towards their inherent qualities. Bennett’s ecological approach suggests that costume has circular qualities and/or appearances in the sense that each time we wear or encounter a specific costume (for example re-encountering a specific costume in different events and/or with different people) its materialities will potentially vibrate in new or different ways (than the day before or last year) that evoke different affects in our human materialities or bodies. 

Donna Haraway – making kin 

My first encounter with the American ecofeminist Donna Haraway (3) was the article Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege if partial perspective (4) wherein she argues that research is not objective but situated. Haraway’s situatedness highlights that a researcher (like all humans) has particular ways of seeing (perceiving) the world and there are thus always aspects that are out of the researcher’s sight (perception). Even though the researcher’s sight is partial, the researcher must expose their partial and yet particular sight which solicits being critical towards what is taken for granted within this particular sight. Haraway’s notion of situatedness has strongly informed my research position. 

In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene Haraway introduces the land(s) or era(s) of the Chthulucene which is inhabited by interconnected critters like plants, pigeons, ants, spiders, fungi, humans, bacteria and jellyfish and where elements like soil and water are matters that matter. It is worldings that cares for more-than-human beings and where “kin making is making persons, not necessarily as individuals or as humans” (Haraway 2016, 103). Thus, in the Chthulucene human exceptionalism and individualism (Haraway 2016, 30) are no longer valid. 

With tales of Navajo weaving, cat’s cradle (a game that I played as a child) and the crochet coral reef project, Haraway argues textile practices “are thinking as well as making practices, pedagogical practices and cosmological performances” (Haraway 2016, 14). Its heart warming that in the hands of Haraway women’s handicraft is valued as communal arts practices (Haraway 2016, 78) and does not separate thinking and making. In the words of Haraway, language becomes speculative fabulations that playfully tangles academic tradition and science fiction and thus theory and practice intertwines.

Haraway opens worlds of playful fabulation that suggests that costume are companions that we can and must make kin with. Haraway’s kinship makes me wonder whether we – while wearing and exploring costume – are more occupied with sensing ourselves, our own bodies, than trying to make kin with costume as material-companions. Haraway makes me speculate on ways of becoming familiar with the “persona” of the costume even though the costume persona or companion “only gains life” in the encounter with our human-bodies. To me, Haraway’s kinship suggests that exploring costume is not an act of animating a “dead” material-body, but is an act of relating to a living companion. Kinship requires that we (humans) are willing to attend to and care for costumes as (un)familiar relatives or interrelated bodies. Haraway’s kin making suggests that costume research is becoming familiar and becoming-together with costume as situated encounters where human-bodies and material-companions (costume) are equally important and valuable.

Sara Ahmed – orientation

The first time I read the British-Australian author and scholar Sara Ahmed’s (5) text Orientation Matters I was touched – I felt recognised as practitioner and as woman. In the text and dialogue with Edmund Husserl’s (6) writings on writing, Ahmed writes about writing and in her text tables are present. For example, the table that enables Ahmed to write and the dining table that as shared place allows the family to cohere as a group (Ahmed 2010, 248). While reading and lingering with the text, Ahmed’s tables translated to textiles and writing to crafting: where ideas (concepts, hunches, moods, feelings or others) are written or crafted with textiles and it is through the writing or crafting that these ideas are explored and developed in and shared with others. Moreover, like the dining table, crafted (for example as costume) or yet not crafted textiles allow people to gather and in the shared orientation towards the textiles the group can write or craft collective doings with the textiles. 

As with Husserl, in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others Ahmed recognises the phenomenologists – including Merleau-Ponty (7) – that her work builds on. In dialogue with the “old masters” she points towards aspects that they – in their time and positions – did not see or pay attention to. Ahmed notes that “the familiar takes shape by being unnoticed” (Ahmed 2006, 37) and thus falls into the background. Ahmed pays attention to backgrounds and argues that our backgrounds orientate us and that our beliefs and identities are constructed through societal norms that are embedded in us through our backgrounds. In the book Ahmed generously shares personal stories which situates her queering perspectives on phenomenology. In a time of political populism (8), Ahmed’s reflections on otherness (9) and queerness are highly relevant and have orientated my thinking. In the research I have, for example, experienced that costume in specific situations can queer us and costume as queer objects can make us experience the world slantwise (Ahmed 2016, 107). 

Still, it is Ahmed’s concept of orientation that has my main attention. As our orientation is informed by our backgrounds, we potentially do not arrive to costume explorative situations with similar orientations. When we explore costume, and if we do not attend to our orientations – for example what we expect, presume and assume – then what we take for granted falls into the background. Apart from attending to how our different orientations inform what we can and will do, I also use Ahmed’s concept of orientation to address and reflect on the act of hosting in explorative costume situations.

Karen Barad – entanglement

In the book Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning the American theorist and quantum physicist Karen Barad (10), through their agential realism, defines agency as relational-dependent and not as something that one has. In the book Barad applies their concept of entanglement (informed by Niels Bohr (11)) to philosophical and social realms and argues that everything in the universe is fundamentally interconnected, both at the quantum level and on lager scales. By suggesting that relationships are the basis for reality Barad challenges “the presumed inherent separability of subject and object, nature and culture, fact and value, human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic, epistemology and ontology, materiality and discursive” (Barad 2007, 381). In Barad’s agential realism we do not live as sperate entities; rather, reality is entangled phenomena where we exist due to our entanglement with the world. This suggests that in costume phenomena we (humans) emerge through and with our entangled relationship with costume and it is only in entangled relationships with the costume that we – humans and costume or the explorative costume phenomena – exist. 

The concept entanglement implies that – in research situations like exploring and studying costume – the boundaries between us (where us includes costume) are more fluid than fixed. As researcher, I must acknowledge that I am dependent on the human and more-than-human co-creators that I entangle with in the research situations. Due to the entangled nature of the costume phenomena, it is in the creative tension between us and how we negotiate our creative tensions (Barad 2006, 378) that I can approach our co-creative relationship. As such, creative tensions and negotiations are matterings that matter. At the same time as I (the researcher) must recognise that even though I attend to our creative tensions and negotiations, I might not fully understand or grasp my co-creators’ creative perspectives. For example, our creative expectations towards what we will explore in the present are most likely informed and thus entangled with past experiences. And where is the costume in the equation of our entangled creative negotiations? Barad’s concept of entanglement helps me to approach the complexity of our tensions in costume phenomena. Moreover, Barad’s entanglement challenges me to attend to and reveal the ethical dilemmas that are embedded in research phenomena (for example in my research position). 

References

Ahmed, Sara (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press. Kindle Edition.

Ahmed Sara (2010). Orientation matters, In (eds.) Coole D. & Frost S. New materialism – ontology, agency, and politics, Durham & London: Duke University Press. 234–257.

Ahmed, Sara (2006). Queer phenomenology – orientations, objects, others, Durham & London: Duke University Press. 

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway – quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, London: Duke University Press.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter–a political ecology of things, Durham London: Durk University Press.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege if partial perspective, Feminist Studies, 14(3). 575­–599.

Haraway, Donna (2016). Staying with the Trouble – making kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University. 

Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic

Language abilities

In Performing with Parkinson’s: Leaving Traces Pohjola et al. examine “the subjective experiences of what it means to perform as a dancer in a dance company that is based on PD [Parkinson’s disease]” (2023, 102). In the article (12) one “participant emphasized the significance of discovering a new language of communication and its profound meaning, both while dancing and in everyday life” (Pohjola et. al 2023, 109). The quote beautifully unfolds how through dance the respondent discovered a meaningful (non-verbal or non-linguistic) language that they did not know prior to the experiences of performing with the company. 

In their conclusion Pohjola et al. write that 

according to the experiences of the dancers, artistry has no bounds or limitations. Even if the physical body is limited, artistry can still be reached beyond physicality. Dancing offered the individual the possibility to be part of a communicative body and to have faith in daring to open oneself and be seen. Here is my body; here is my movement – here I am. Importantly, PD [Parkinson’s disease] was set aside; what prevailed was only dancing, a universal language that connects human beings. (Pohjola et. al 2023, 111)

“The universal language” of dance suggests an attitude towards dance (as language) that is not defined or evaluated by a person’s ability to perform, for example, ballet, hip hop or flamenco in particular predefined ways. Instead, the dancers defined their bodies and thus their language as “’differently abled’ instead of ‘disabled’” (Pohjola et. al 2023, 106). Thus, the communicative dance body was not defined by Parkinson’s disease and the differently abled does not devaluate the dancers’ abilities. On the other hand, “different” indicates that the dancers have abilities that are somehow different from the norm. 

I suggest that the differently abled is a call towards the observer – for example an audience –  to attune their lydhørhed towards the dancers’ differently abled dance language. I suggest that the differently abled indicates that 1) it is a language in its own right that 2) points more to the observer’s (audience, viewer) ability to listen than to the differently abled language. The differently abled challenges the observer: they must be willing to attune their lydhørheder towards a dance language that may be different to the dance language(s) that they are used to in other performance contexts.

The categorisation (disciplines) and abilities (skills) are interlinked in the sense that both come with specific cultural expectations. In the context of my research, inherent in the differently abled is that other people’s (my co-creators’) experiences and expressions are always different from mine. As researcher, I can judge and evaluate differently abled expressions from the abilities that I expect are inherent in a specific category or I can attune my lydhørhed to be curious towards the multiple unexpected abilities that my co-creators have. 

Crafting abilities – craft languages

Another example of a differently abled body is the American fibre artist Judith Scott (1943–2005), born deaf and with Down Syndrome. In 1987 Scott enrolled in Creative Growth (13), where “fabric quickly became her passion and medium of choice, and for the next eighteen years of her life, Scott created sculptures using yarn, twine, and strips of fabric, to wrap and knot around an array of mundane objects she discovered around her” (art 21). In the process of discovering fibre or textiles as a sculptural medium, Creative Growth gave a lydhørhed to Scott’s tactile-sensitive abilities and artistic talent.

In the article Judith Scott – renowned for her fiber art sculptures Tom di Maria (14) is quoted as saying that 

I believe that the sculptures she [Judith Scott] created are essentially evidence of her process and evidence of who she is. They're her stories tied and untied. I think she was unspooling her life history before us. […] I think she was also trying to mark her place in the world: This is what I do, this is who I am, this is my contribution. I think most artists strive for that. (Marech 2005)

Maria suggests that crafting (15) textile sculptures became Scott’s language. The organisation’s philosophy (16) enabled Scott to develop her non-linguistic or non-verbal crafting language. The organisation valued, exhibited and promoted Scott’s sculptures, which has made her work internationally renowned. I argue that Scott intuitively expressed herself through crafting textile sculpture and the organisation’s lydhørhed enabled Scott to communicate with a world that was beyond her reach (17).

I will end this short section by turning towards my sister. Eight years ago, Camilla (as mentioned born with Down Syndrome) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which implies that her quite advanced crafting skills, including her poetic-peculiar textile expressions, are dissolving. During the past few years Camilla’s craftings have changed “in stages” that have included sampling textile techniques in surprising (quite strange and random) ways. Today Camilla mainly cuts textiles into pieces. Even if Camilla (opposite Judith Scott) has language, when I ask why she crafts as she does, Camilla has no words to explain. 

With Alzheimer’s as her companion, it is as if the Alzheimer’s reveals itself through Camilla’s craftings and it is only through her craftings that I can become familiar with her “state of mind”. Thus, in my lydhørhed (attentiveness) towards the transformation in Camilla’s crafting language, I hear “things” that she is unaware of and that she therefore cannot explain. When I open my lydhørhed beyond my crafting expectations, I see/hear/sense (18) her presence and I feel her love. 

As Camilla’s younger sister, as Charlotte, her way of being in the world, her otherness (19) has shaped and sharpened my lydhørhed. With Alzheimer’s as a companion that we cannot escape, I must constantly attune my lydhørhed. I must embrace the new otherness that appears in her crafting language – an otherness that has its own surprising beauty and that inspires me artistically and relationally in multiple ways.

Sildeshow of Camilla's textile works 

The ambition with this text is to unfold why crafting is the central lens that I use throughout this research, or, rather, I will try to unfold the values that are, to me, embedded in crafting. Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic intertwines two of the key themes in the research: listening and crafting (1).

A short introduction

I use the word ‘crafting’ as a tribute to the (domestic) labour of women and to honour the knowledge of older and former generations, like my grandmother Elna Østergaard (1906–1991) who taught me to mend socks when I was a child. When I mend, I am reminded that people of former generations cared for their belongings in ways that we seem to have forgotten (2) and that we are trying to relearn. Thus, crafting or “mending with Elna” forces me to attend to the way in which I care for and reuse textile materialities (3).

As with my grandmother, crafting is a language that runs in my family. My only sibling Camilla Østergaard (1965) was born with Down Syndrome. As children our mother Ehs Østergaard (4) taught us crafting skills like knitting, weaving, embroidery and printing. Ehs intuitively used her textile craftsship (5) as a creative tool to expand, shape and sharpen my sister’s motor abilities. This meant that during our childhood we (Ehs, Camilla and I, and sometimes our childhood friends) spent hours and days crafting together. Thus, crafting created a strong connection between us and is our shared language. In what follows I will approach how crafting – as a non-linguistic and non-normative language – awakens and challenges me to constantly attune my listening or my lydhørhed towards other people. 

Bibliography

References

Art 21. Judith Scott. https://art21.org/artist/judith-scott/

Creative Growth. 

Evans, Brad (2018), Histories of violence: neurodiversity and the policing of the norm, LARB Los Angeles review of books, accessed online March 31, 2023. https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/neurodiversity-and-the-policing-of-the-norm-brad-evans-in-convers

Judith Scott 

Kirketerp, Anne (2020), Craft psykologi – sundhedsfremmende effekter ved håndarbejde og håndværk, Hjørring: Forlaget Mailand. 

Marech, Rona (2005). Judith Scott – renowned for her fiber art sculptures, SFGATE March 19, 2005. 

Pohjola, Hanna & Sivak, Eytan &  Åström, Åsa N. (2023), Performing With Parkinson’s: Leaving Traces, Nordic Journal of Dance – practice, education and research, 14(1), Senter for dansepraksis (SANS) on behalf of Dance Education Nordic Network (DENN), p. 100–115. 

Additional references

Ahmed, Sara (2017), Living a feminist life, Durham: Duke University Press.

Bolther, A. L. (2019). Kritik af kritik af Ovartaci & Galskabens Kunst – og hvad et museum potentielt kan bruge kunstkritik til. Periskop – Forum for Kunsthistorisk Debat, 2019(21), p. 118–121.

Borello, Matthias Hvass (2017). Ovartaci og institutionens (over)magt, anmeldelse, kunst.dk. 

Scott, Joyca Wallace (2016). Entwined – sisters and secrets in the silent world of artist Judith Scott, Boston Massachusetts: Beacon Press. 

Sedgwick, Eva Kosofsky (2003). Touching Feeling – affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press.

Rhiannon, Lucy (2021). 'I was blown away by the work I saw': the Turner prize and the rise of nerodiverse art, The Guardian, December 23, 2021. 

Other references – Danish television programs

Originalerne, Danmarks Radio (2023) 

Kulturelt: Fri sex til de udviklingshæmmede, Danmarks Radio september 25, 2022

Temalørdag – gal eller genial, Danmarks Radio (2018)  

The Danish word lydhørhed

The Danish word lydhørhed, which translates to responsiveness (6) (the act of reacting and responding to someone or something), somehow loses its meaning in the translation. In Danish lydhørhed (7) means that a person is welcoming, present, attentive (for example observant, cordial and caring), flexible (for example compromise-seeking or cooperative), benevolent (for example considerate, helpful, tolerant, positive, kind and straightforward), responsive and good at perceiving small nuances. 

The Danish word lydhørhed combines the morphemes lyd meaning sound, the imperative hør meaning to hear and -hed which denotes something or someone, for example an action, a situation or a person that has a certain characteristic. The interlinking of the words addresses a situation where a listener actively or consciously chooses to listen to a sound that has certain characteristics. Thus, lydhørhed contains more than “just” being responsive. Inherent in the word is an attunement that enables relational exchanges with humans and/or more-than-human others and between someone and something. Lydhørhed (singular) addresses the personal ability to listen to others that includes oneself. Lydhørheder (plural) is a reciprocal listening ability. 

This text is an attempt to address the view that we (humans) have different lydhørheder in the sense that we are sensitive to different verbal and non-verbal languages. I suggest that if we attune our lydhørhed(er) we can explore how we (humans) relate and respond to the world differently as well as that we can express what we experience in different ways. What I like to approach is that we can orientate our lydhørheder in polyphonic ways. I argue that by attuning our lydhørheder towards languages that may at first seem foreign, unfamiliar or unknown to us we open our senses to, for example, non-linguistic ways of communicating. In the open-mindedness towards our different expressions and thus different ways of communicating, our creative exchanges and dialogues most likely become rewarding in unexpected and/or surprising ways. 

As relational (human) beings, I argue that it matters how we attune our lydhørhed(er), since the attunement has an impact on how we sense-listen and relate to and with others – and to and with the world. In the following I invite you on a short journey though reflections on how categories and abilities or norms and expectations influence our lydhørheder. I will end this introduction with reflections that relate to the research. 

Open(ing) categories

In the interview by Brad Evens titled Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm (8), Erin Manning (9) says that 

neurodiversity is a movement that celebrates difference. […]  The “neuro” in neurodiversity has opened up the conversation about the category of neurotypicality and the largely unspoken criteria that support and reinforce the definition of what it means to be human, to be intelligent, to be of value to society. (Evens 2018)

Manning suggests that categories like “neuro” force us to discuss norms of, for example, who (people) we consider to be valuable in Western societies. Manning advocates that by opening categories we can include and value experiences of “diverse” (contrasting with “typical”) or different others that at the same time provokes us to look at ourselves and question what we experience as typical or normal. 

Manning argues that we do not need 

more categories but more sensitivity to difference and a more acute attunement to qualities of experience. This would allow us to see that knowledge circulates and it is through this circulation that learning happens: language and other forms of expression move through us and it is through this movement that we learn. […] To make this claim is to open language beyond linguistics to value modes of expression that functions across and beneath in excess of words (including, of course all that beyonding that takes place through the linguistic itself). (Evens 2018)

Manning beautifully addresses how we must attune our sensitivity towards the qualities of our experience (10) and how we must learn from the richness of how we experience experience. Moreover, Manning reminds us that we express our experiences beyond linguistics. By opening categories of language we can explore different ways of expressing experience and we can learn from expressions that we normally categorise and/or stigmatise. In opening the categories of expression we can value the movements of knowledge that circulate between our expressive bodies.

In the context of my research this implies that we – my co-creators and I – cannot expect that what someone categorised as a dancer experiences and expresses is like what someone categorised as a designer experiences and expresses. Moreover, the categorisation of someone (for example as dancer) somehow categorises how someone else (categorised as designer) expects that they (the dancer) will express their experiences. Opening categories of expressions suggests that we must be open-minded towards ourselves and each other by attuning our lydhørheder 1) beyond the explicit and implicit expectations (11) that we have and 2) towards bodily expressions that are beyond and beneath the linguistic. In the open categories we must co-creatively embrace and explore the diverse and polyphonic nature of expression. 

Lydhørheder

The above-mentioned situates values that are fundamental to me: beyond categories, everyone is able. I suggest that the prerequisite is that we must attune our lydhørheder towards the unique abilities that everyone has when they express themselves – abilities that are not defined by strict disciplinary perspectives but have plural understandings of abilities.

In collaboration we (as a general we) tend to categorise our collaborators. Somehow the categorisation makes us judge and evaluate whether our (own and others’) abilities are valuable and/or normal within the categorisation. When we enter collaborative situations from the categorisation perspective the category often defines who we are and what we must do (produce and perform) in the situation – which can be productive but potentially also limits what we are able to do individually and collectively. For example, in performance contexts I have often been hired because I am able to design and produce costume. In these productions, categorisation often implied that I was expected to fulfil a choreographer’s vison and that the dancer was expected to embody my design (20).

I assume that if we expect that collaborators must embody specific categories and perform specific abilities, we potentially prevent them from expressing their abilities in unexpected ways. At the same time, we prevent ourselves from experiencing how everyone has abilities beyond and beneath the category in which we have placed them. By categorising others, we also categorise ourselves and we potentially limit our lydhørhed towards more unexpected expressions. We also categorise who is valuable and thus invited to discuss the experiences and expressions that we produce together.   

Manning reminds me that I am always more than one category – I am a daughter, a crafter, a sister, a single and childless woman, a native white Danish person, an artistic researcher, a costume designer, a textile artist, a friend, a self-chosen aunt and much more. When I collaborate, I am always all these categories simultaneously as my co-creators are all their categories. In situations where I am invited to perform more than one category, I experience how the intersections between categories allow me to explore, expand and express my abilities in multiple or polyphonic ways. At the same time, the intersection of categories challenges me to be open-minded towards my collaborators beyond what I expect as typical abilities (skills) for their category (discipline). To open categories and abilities is a call to be attentive to how my lydhørhed bodily situates and orientates me, including the imperative that I must attune my lydhørhed to include and embrace expressions that are (and can be radically) different from mine. 

I have used the examples of Judith Scott and my sister Camilla’s art/craftworks to illustrate that crafting textile materials crafts languages beyond the linguistic. I suggest that their crafting language(s) is intuitively rather intellectually (analytically, conceptually and/or linguistically) expressed as well as that their crafting expressions are valid ways of communicating to and with others. Moreover, the artworks of Scott and Camilla show that if we attune our lydhørhed beyond categories (for example the category of being disabled), we allow other (unexpected) abilities and expressions to flourish. I suggest this approach applies to co-creative situations, especially if we are willing to move between what we expect and what is unexpected, between what we know and what is unknown. 

Furthermore, I have unfolded how lydhørhed is a two (or more) directional intertwined relationship: it circumscribes situations where a sound source expresses an experience and a hearing source listens to what is expressed. I suggest that crafting, like other non-linguistic language sources, expresses mattering (for example experiences and relationships with the world) that cannot be expressed in words. The same might apply to the listening source: the listener may experience that linguistics cannot express what the listener hears from the sound or crafting source. 

Beyond categories I expect that we always enter collaborative situations with expectations. In the context of my research, I suggest that it is productive – however familiar my co-creators are to me – that I meet my co-creators as familiar foreigners. As familiar foreign co-creators, I expect that we have different abilities, that we experience the world differently and that we express our experiences differently. In the research situations I must attune my lydhørhed in relation to my co-creators and to the situations that are between us.

In co-creative situations we must collectively explore and develop our lydhørhed beyond, beneath or behind linguistics, for example by including materially-crafted and bodily-crafted expressions. When we enter co-creative situations, we might expect that materially- or bodily-crafted expressions must be performed in specific ways that follow specific rules. For example that a dancer must perform a ballet pirouette in a specific way or that a crafter must knit a specific pattern. Therefore, when we start co-creative explorations, we must (individually and collectively) attune our lydhørhed as an attempt to understand what the crafted bodies (human-bodies or material-bodies) express. The crafted expressions might be unexpected or unknown to us since the crafted language(s) might not follow expected, normal or normative rules and/or categories. Thus, we might experience that some expressions will be foreign, unknown and/or surprising to us. At the same time, the expansion of language categories allows us to learn from and be inspired by other expressions and expand our expressions in polyphonic ways.

In collaboration I suggest that crafting language(s) is something that we craft together. The collective language of crafting are fluid and organic processes that implies that we must constantly navigate and negotiate. If we do not focus on categorisations and we do not evaluate specific abilities, we might learn from the otherness – for example other non-linguistic languages – that I suggest are always present between us whether we acknowledge this or not.

From the exhibition En tekstil dialog – en udstilling af søstrene Camilla og Charlotte Østergaard (Translated: A textile dialogues – an exhibition by the sisters Camilla and Charlotte Østergaard). Photographer: Bahadir Badi Berber
The exhibition was a part of the festival PÅ TVÆRS 12–13 April 2024 at Dansekapellet, Copenhagen, Denmark. We were invited to exhibit at the festival by the Janne W Kristesen the artistic director of Foreningen for integreret moderne dans i Danmark/ Integrated Dance DK.

At the exhibition, we showcased crafting samplings. The images feature Camilla's samplings of a secondhand embroidery of unknown origin, which I had left in her drawer, hoping she would incorporate it into her craftwork. In preparation for the exhibition, I added to the craft-sampling by incorporating crochet elements.

The artist researcher’s embodied mind-fullness

The researcher’s position and embodied archive 

In the artistic projects I positioned myself as the host that participated and co-create alongside fellow co-creators. In The Body as the Matter of Costume: A Phenomenological Practice Donatella Barbieri proposes “the designer’s own ‘mind-full’ body as critical to a costume-practice-led methodology” (5) (Barbieri 2021, 320). For example, to explore the effects of costume with ones own body is “learning by doing, undoing and redoing” (Barbieri 2007, 6). As mind-full or phenomenal bodies, our criticality relies on our intuitive, imaginative, sensitive, reflective, responsive, thinking, listening, sensing, tasting, touching and digesting abilities and our willingness to discover that we are mind-full in different ways. As such, as participating host my mind-full body has been a critical tool with which to learn and re-learn through and with our shared material-discursive doings. Moreover, during the research I realised that part of being a mind-full body was that many research situations were stored as vivid embodied memories. 

In Body Archive Susanne Franco and Gaia Clotilde Chernetich write that 

the metaphor of the “body as archive” or the “body archive” refers to the idea that the body can be understood as a “storage place” of corporeal documents and therefore of incorporated knowledge. Through this lens, the body retains sensory, emotional and cognitive experiences that are accessed as movements, gestures, patterns and rhythms. (Oline refence link) 

Body archiving is mainly addressed with dance practices and/or research. Laura Griffiths writes that the dancing body is a site “where knowledge that can be considered as ‘archival’ is stored as a result of dance-making processes and experience” (Grifits 2024, 4). I do not suggest that my research has produced dance-making process like those that Griffiths studies and unfolds in her PhD thesis. However, being mind-full and bodily engaged in the three artistic projects I argue that I can draw and rely on the memories that are archived in my body. Not in the sense of that I can repeat or recall specific movement scores or patterns, however I clearly recall situations and dialogues that I had with specific co-creators. Thus, serval situations are archived as embodied memories of specific encounters (6). 

As such I suggest that a part of the artistic research practice or method includes relying on embodied or archived memories. In the interview situations – with the co-creators – our different embodied memories were an active recourse between us. As such, through and with the embodied memories I could (re)discover and (re)learn how the participating co-creators remembered and perceived our costume explorations in similar and different manners to mine.

As such I agree when Østern et al. suggest that “the researcher position is one of material-discursive entanglement, and the affected researcher body is a necessity and resource for understanding. The researcher body becomes a friend instead of an obstacle” (Østern et al. 2021, 281). 

As I was preparing the last project – Conversation Costume – I intuitively knew that I needed to challenge the perception I had of connecting costume in the two first projects. For example that the wearable part of the costumes had specific bodily placements and distributed rather fixed positions in the costume. As it turned out, I crafted nine knotted pieces that became a part of what I called the costume assembly. As we started the Conversation Costume explorations, I was unsure whether these knotted pieces could be called connecting costumes and/or whether they would be perceived as costume or were rather some kind of textile objects. During the two weeks of the Conversation Costume explorative process we co-crafted multiple compositions with the costume assembly and as such the assembly had open-ended connecting costume potentials.

The overall dramaturgy of the three artistic projects

Phase one – preparing
In the opening phase I prepared and framed the specific artistic project. I crafted the costume and I invited (and informed them of the framing) participants (performers, designers and other artist) to join the project as co-creators.

Phrase two – exploring
The second phase was the actual artistic project: the shared exploration of the costume with the co-creators. During our explorations with the costume we had conversational dialogues where we shared and listened to how we were affected by our entangled explorations. In the dialogues we discussed how to progress and thus co-authored the explorations in the projects.
As a closure of each of the three artistic projects I asked the co-creators for advice and/or for creative suggestions. For example how to develop the explorations, the framing, the listening and/or new versions of connecting costume. These reflections (8) were valuable in the development of the next artistic project and the co-creators’ reflections have lingered in my mind-full body and have pushed my thinking forwards.

Phrase thee – interviewing
In the third phase I conducted semi-structured interviews with the co-creators. I asked about their embodied memories of the costume, the relational aspects of our explorations and I asked them to critically reflect on our shared doings, the framings and my hostings.
During and after transcribing the interviews I searched for overall and/or sub-themes, for similarities and/or differences between the co-creators’ statements/reflections and noted down my first thoughts and reflections. After a while I returned to the interview material – I re-listened to the interviews and re-read the transcriptions – and I often discovered additional aspects that led to me re-interviewing several of the participants.
During this phase I also edited and re-edited the video documentation of the artistic projects and edited some to the interviews to use them as sound in the videos. Even though the participants had consented that I could use the documentation material, I like to mention that I contacted the participants to again ask for their approval to do so.

Phase four – extracting
In this phase and as part of further developing the research I wrote articles and presented the research at international conferences and at local seminars.
At some of the conferences I also explored how I could present my research in performative ways, for example by testing different ways of including the connecting costume in a presentation. For instance, my contribution to the PARSE conference in Sweden (2022) was a workshop with the costumes and in the keynote at the NOFOD conference (2022) I included a short explorative intervention/session where I invited the audience to explore different version of connecting costume. These and other manifestations allowed me to re-explore the connecting costume in other contexts, which has been a rewarding understanding, re-discovering and re-questioning of the connecting costume concept.
In the articles “Kostume-drevne performances – kostumers generative og performative potentialer” (2022) and “Listening through and with Costume” (2023) I explored aspects of the artistic project AweAre - a movement quintet. In the articles “Performing Ethical dilemmas of stretching towards Others in fitting situations” (2022) and “Creative work in Public” (2024) I explored different aspects of Community Walk. As such, writing these articles have pushed my thinking forward.
As mentioned in crafting repetitions, a part of my research method has been continually (meditative) crafting, resulting in manifestations that emerged as reflections on the artistic projects. For instance, during a two-week residency at the Inter Arts Center in Sweden (November 2021) I invited different people to craft and explore costume/material with me, which allowed me to re-test and develop my thinking on and around the artistic project Conversation Costume, as well as the co-crafting event Knotting Connection (link) (2023), which I hosted at the performance festival Working the fields at Gylleboverket, Sweden, which also expanded my thinking on connections between co-creating and (co-)crafting.
Even though the abovementioned manifestations are not directly and formally artistic data that I use, address and unfold in this research. However, the manifestations – like conference presentations, articles, craftings and the explorative events – have been crucial for the development of this research. To offer an overview I have created a research timeline that, apart from the three artistic projects and the intermediate seminars, also contains the different manifestations that were critical for the development of this research.

Bibliography 

References

Ahmed, Sara (2017), Living a Feminist Life, Duke University Press, Kindle Edition.

Barbieri, Donatella (2021), The Body as the Matter of Costume: a Phenomenological Practice, In (Eds.) Pantouvaki, Sofia & McNeil, Peter, Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods. Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 197– 212.

Barbieri, Donatella (2013) Costume Re–Considered – from the scenographic modelbox, to the scenographic body, devising a practice based design methodology that re-focuses performance onto costume. In: “Endyesthai" Conference Proceedings. Hellenic Costume Society, Athens.

Franco, Susanne & Chernetich, Gaia Clotilde. Body Archive in (eds.) Ariadne Miko, Dancing Museums Glossary, Dancing Museums. 

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. 

Griffiths, Laura (2014). Dance and The Archival Body: Knowledge, memory and Experience in Dance Revival Processes. PhD thesis, University of Leeds. 

Le Grange, Lesly (2018). What is (post)qualitative research?, South African journal of higher education, 32(5), 1–14. 

Østern, Tone Pernille; Jusslin, Sofia; Knudsen, Kristian Nødtvedt; Maapalo, Pauliina & Bjørkkøy (2021). A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry, Qualitative Research, 23(2), 272–289.

Additional references

Baarts, Charlotte (2015). Introduktion til Etnografisk metode, Syddansk Universitetsforlag. 

Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E.  & Bochner, Arthur P. (2011). Autoethnography: an overview, Forum Qualitative Social Forschung, 12(1).

Kozel, Susan (2017). The Archival Body: Re-enactment, affective doubling and surrogacy. 

Madison, D. Soyini (2020). Critical Ethnography – method, ethics and performance. SAGE. Publications. Kindle Edition.

Pierre, E.A.S., (2014). A brief and personal history of qualitative research, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30(2), 2–19.

Pierre, E.A.S. (2017). Writing post qualitative inquiry, Qualitative inquire 00(0), 1–6.

Method

Positioning this artistic research

Performative post-qualitative inquiry

My artistic PhD research is inspired by post-qualitative research. In A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry Østern et al. suggest “that settling artistic research within a performative research paradigm would ease and facilitate the struggle, releasing the performative potential of artistic modes of enquiring” (1) (Østern et al. 2021, 276). They continue that “with a performative research paradigm, the research focus shifts from what a research phenomenon ‘is’ to what it ‘does’ […] from being to becoming” (Østern et al. 2021, 6). In the context of costume, artistic research is to study the phenomenon of costume through the friction of explorative doing – not by enclosing costume in what it is – by studying what the costume phenomenon enables the artistic researcher to do and explore the different becomings or matterings that emerge in the doing. 

In What is (post)qualitative research? Lesley Le Grange proposes that “(post)qualitative research [that is] informed by an immanent ethics opens up pathways for all those involved in research to increase their power of acting, to express their generosity, and love the world (all of life) – it is an invitation to dance (just do)” (Le Grange 2018, 9). This suggests that artistic research is generously opening the doing – the costume explorations – to those who are involved as participants or co-creators. In the shared or communal doings and in becoming-with co-creators the artistic researcher can study specific costume phenomena. 

Østerne et al. continue that the performative paradigm 

moves from trying to stabilise knowledge towards emphasising knowledge as fluid and complex knowledge-creation; from language to languaging, from meaning to meaning-making, from text to body, affects and materialities; from subject, identity and being to relations, entanglement and becomings; from something pre-existing to something being enacted. (Østern et al. 2021, 283)

This implies that the artistic researcher – in the inquiry of specific costume phenomenon – must navigate the different artistic and embodied expressions of the participating co-creators. Moreover, it is through the shared or communal doings with the participating co-creators that the researcher must navigate the different embodied perspectives of the costume expressions. As such, it is through the entangled relationships that the research situations foster that temporal explorative costume communities in-becoming are crafted. In the entangled costume communities language(s) are co-created that did not pre-exist but that emerge in the entangled process of becoming together. 

Ethical consideration in artistic research 

In Perspectives on Ethics in Performance Practice Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk (2) writes that  

a central aspect of artistic research ethics concerns orientation and transparency related to aesthetic choices and preferences. When art practice turns into artistic research, there is a need for the artist to consciously situate herself in regard to her practice and her materials. […] Ethics is a question of relations and power of definition, of our understanding of self and others; thus it pertains to the encounters we have with and in the world, and questions of how we act – and react – in specific situations. (Eeg-Tverbakk 2021, 1)

Eeg-Tverbakk suggests that when art practices become artistic research the artist researcher must critically reflect on the ethical implication of their aesthetic choices. For example, the researcher must be critical towards the cultures and values that are embedded in their practice and detect whether their aesthetic choices promote certain hierarchies between collaborating people and/or between people and materials. As such, ethics is the demand of the artistic research to reveal the dilemmas that emerge during the research.  

Eeg-Tverbakk introduces the concept of ethics of the unknown, that suggests that the artistic researcher must embrace that there are always aspects of the research that are unknown to them, and which resonates with Haraway’s notion of situatedness (unfolded in Four Core Contepts) that advocates that the researcher’s sight and perspective is partial. 

Informed by Haraway and Eeg-Tverbakk, this research is conducted from my partial perspective of my practice. In the research I will enter the dilemmas of artistic research practice and “stay with the trouble” (Haraway 2016, 31) by navigating and negotiating the temporal communities that I form with people and textile materials/costume in the three artistic projects. 

Video: Lingering crafting entanglings

Crafting as a research method

Crafting repetitions – crafting entanglements of theory and practice 

This artistic research stems from my artistic practice and as I unfold in the artistic projects, in the slow process of crafting textile materials become more-than-human co-creators. Even though the last artistic projects in this research were conducted in 2021 I continued to craft new versions of connecting costumes which I explored in different settings with different people/audiences. I crafted as pauses or getaways from the theoretical readings. However, the crafting provoked me to linger with the theoretical readings that I was doing. Craftings became intuitive-intellectual exercises of listening-with theories through the craftings (3) — or perhaps it was vice versa. Either way, craftings became ways of approaching theoretical concepts and thus the continual craftings became critical for the development or movement of the research. 

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed writes that 

a movement comes into existence to transform what is in existence. A movement needs to take place somewhere. A movement is not just or only a movement; there is something that needs to be kept still, given a place, if we are moved to transform what is. (Ahmed 2017, 3)

Ahmed points at feminist movements that ripple like waves that transforms us. At the same time, Ahmed argues that to explore what moves and transforms us we need to keep still. We need to be attentive to the matter that moves us, and potentially what moves and transforms our practices. In this research I do not explore feministic movements per se. However, I argue that during the research craftings acts like Ahmed’s “place”. Craftings’ places or situations enable me to explore which theoretical concepts resonated as co-creating partners that moved, evoked and provoked my thinking and my language.

Thus, through craftings I have, for example, explored that kin-making (Haraway) are acts of listening with textile materialities. I realised that craftings orientate (Ahmed) me towards textiles and techniques and towards people, places and perspectives. I have explored that crafting entanglements (Barad) include much more than textiles and me. Craftings (re)awoke and (re)attuned my sensitivity of the vibrant matter(s) (Bennett) in the artistic projects.  

In this research crafting(s) practice has expanded to become a method with a double (4) transformative effect: the literal where specific textile materials are transformed into a product, in the projected where we co-created and co-crafted with the connecting costumes; and the metaphorical where craftings became methods to develop my thinking and language. As such, craftings became embodied acts of thinking-with the research material and that opened new perspectives and new (in)sights into the research material. 

Thus, in the research I have continued to craft and re-craft and have invited others to craft with me. The act of crafting(s) became an artistic method to listen-with and think-with the craftings that fostered the view that the specific theoretical concepts – the four core concepts – offered vocabularies and conceptual lenses with which to re-explore and re-discover the four focal themes – crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating. As such, through and with craftings I found connections or entanglements between theories and practice(s). 

I wanted to pursue this inquiry of how connecting costume creates affects and relationships between people. However, in the second project – Community Walk – I wanted to pursue the inquiry from a different perspective. My aim was to ‘reverse’ the roles and explore how a connecting costume affected me. Thus, I placed myself at the centre of a twelve-hour costume exploration and invited twelve co-creators to partake for one hour each. With each of the twelve co-creators, we – as a connected pair – walked, talked and explored the costume in the urban landscape of central Copenhagen. My aim was to explore how the twelve guesting co-creators orientated our explorations, how we co-creatively negotiated through the costume in the urban environment. The intention – that was also the challenge I gave myself – was to explore whether it was possible to enter this new unpredictable landscape and at the same time act as an inviting, listening and responsible host.

Therefore, in the first project – AweAre – a movement quintet – my ambition was to listen to and learn from and with the four dancers’ who were connected through and with the AweAre costume. In the project I drew on experiences from artistic projects/collaborations (7) where the costume material and/or the collaborating people were offered an extended or leading role. Thus, in AweAre – a movement quintet I placed the AweAre costume and the four dancers’ experiences at the centre of the inquiry. The aim was to explore what relationship(s) emerged between the dancers and the costume. In the process I acted as the host that hosted sharing sessions where I listened to and learned from the dancers’ individual and collective experiences of their relations to and with the costume. Thus, the listening was the method and/or the force that drove our co-creative process forward. Additionally, we co-created a short performance that to us represented our co-creative process. With the first artistic project I realised that it was rewarding to listen, and it was enlightening to explore how the costume affected the dancers. 

The progression of the research 

The progression of the three artistic projects

The three artistic projects that I have conducted in the research have informed each another. The first artistic project derived from experiences I, as hired costume designer, had in the performance productions within contemporary dance. In these productions there was rarely time allocated to explore the costumes, for example as a movement generating source. In the often rather short encounters I had with the dancers during the productions I experienced their sensitivity towards textiles/costumes and I dreamt of having time to listen to and learn from their embodied experiences of specific costume. 

Research timeline

How to navigate the research timeline

• Mouse right and left + up and down to explore the differnt events and outcomes of the research.
• Mouseover photos for more information and click on the images for bigger versions. Play video.
• Click on the hightlighed text to acces links to for example conference videos/presenations and conterence websites.

ARTICLES
ARTISTIC PROJECTS 

INTERMEDIATE SEMINARS

CONFERENCES (peer-reviewed)

OTHER PRESENTATIONS

ARTISTIC EVENTS

Artistic project

AweAre – a movement quintet 

The progression of the intermediate seminars 

A part of the doctoral study at Lund University is three intermediate seminars. Each seminar  – that is open for colleagues and others – aims to ensure a progression of the artistic research and to do so an external opponent is invited to evaluate and discuss the research with the doctoral student. The intermediate seminars follow the guidelines of Malmö Theatre Academy, Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University. As written on the website: 

Review of ongoing PhD projects is a key component of the third-cycle education, both for the doctoral students and as quality assurance of the department, University and discipline. […] At these seminars, the doctoral student can present different types of material, and artistic performance can be part of the presentation. […] The seminars are designed on the basis of the nature of the specific project and are intended to support the doctoral students in their continued work. 

Below, the guidelines for the three seminars are addressed in note form and I will shortly unfold what I produced for the specific seminars. For all the seminars I handed in written material that responded to the guidelines and that represented where I was in the research process. As the written material for the intermediate seminars is not required to be publicly accessible, I have only shared the material with the opponent, my supervisors and a few local colleagues. The writings for the three intermediate seminars are part of my research data and the material can be accessed upon request. Below I mention some of the theoretical references that I used in the texts for the first and second intermediate seminars, and here (link) is a full list of references. 

23.02.2021: 25% seminar, online (Zoom attendance). 

Opponent Dr. Karen Arnfred Vedel, Copenhagen University, Denmark. 

Guidelines for the seminar: Preliminary plan for the entire project, research design and feasibility in relation of artistic practice, theoretical and artistic contextualisation.

Writing: As I started the research co-creation was the central theme. To approach co-creation I dived into how design has developed since I was educated in the 1990s. For example, how methods like design thinking and co-design have become business strategies and concepts that appear in various academic fields. I also explored what co-creative processes might be or imply in the context of my research. To do so I used examples from research on co-design within the fields of design (e.g., Elizabeth Sanders 2014, Sanders & Stappers 2014) and craft (Groth et al. 2020), I reflected on collaborative atmospheres (e.g., Marylin Stember 1991, Gernot Böhme 2017, Rikke Lund Heinsen 2020) and I addressed ethical dilemmas (Eva Skærbæk 2001, 2009, 2011) of co-creating. I sketched a research design that combined ideas for artistic salons (e.g., Dena Goodman 1989, Étienne Wenger 1998, Clair Bishop 2012, Sara Ahmed 2017) and artistic manifestos (e.g., Martin Puncher 2019, Lidewij Edelkoort 2015, Bruce Mau 1998, Rachel Hann 2019, Sara Ahmed 2017). I unfolded this salon/manifesto research design that included material, bodies and crafting (with reference to, e.g., Donna Haraway 2016, Jane Bennett 2010, Keld Fredens 2018). Even though I did not address it directly in the 25% text, the four focal themes – crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating – were emerging. Apart from this text I also wrote a text that is a first draft on the artistic project AweAre – a movement quintet – which is more descriptive than reflective.

The artistic part of the seminar: In the months leading up to the seminar I crafted several new connecting costume versions that I intended to present as an example of how I explored costume in the artistic project. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic the seminar became digital, and thus the physical or interventional part of my presentation became impossible. Still, it was crucial to me to present how I collaborated/co-created with others. I therefore made a video that contained, among other things, an extract of a material-sampling session that I made (especially for the video for the seminar) with three participants. Access to the video presentation is upon request. 

16.05.2022: 50% seminar, online (Zoom attendance) and some local colleagues were present in-person. 

Opponent Dr. Suzanne Osmond, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia. Osmond attended online.

Guidelines for the seminar: The development of the project in relation to artistic, methodological, theoretical and ethical choices.

Writing: At the time of this seminar the manifesto research design had transformed into hosting and listening. In this text I situate (Donna Haraway 1988) and contextualize the research in relation to costume thinking (Sofia Pantouvaki 2020), co-creation (relating to theatre contexts: Ben Walmsley 2013 and Tanja Beer 2021; additional references like Tim Ingold 2016, Karen Barad 2007, Astrida Neimanis 2012) relational thinking (e.g., Lene Tanggaard 2013, Karen Barad 2021) and prototyping (e.g., Madeline Taylor 2021, Suzanne Osmond 2021, Sally Dean 2021, Sanders & Stappers 2014). I have a chapter called Material Improvisations where I introduce play (Susan Marshall 2021) and the designer’s mind-full body (Donatella Barbieri 2021), I dive into listening as improvision techniques (e.g., Karmenlara Ely 2015, Robert T. Valgenti 2022) and I unfold how listening is part of my artistic practice. Additionally, I introduce the three artistic projects. In the appendix I offer – what I called – glimpses into the projects. The glimpses were re-writings of parts of published articles and at the time a not yet published chapter in an anthology. As such, these glimpses were – as I wrote in the text – thoughts in-process on the artistic projects. 

The artistic part of the seminar: The 50% seminar was partially online and partially with people physically present. As I knew the seminar was approaching, I began to prepare an exhibition to give those that attended in-person a physical experience of my research – representing where I was at the time with the research. My vision was to make an exhibition that artistically reflected on crafting and on the multi-vocal qualities of the three artistic projects. As a reflection on crafting I drew a few full-size drawings of myself that focused on my main tools – my hands – and thus the only part that was drawn proportionally and in detail was my hands. Moreover, while transcribing the interviews the richness of this data became apparent, for example, the multi-vocal qualities of the participants and their perspectives on the projects. As a way of lingering with this data I made pop-up illustrations of the three projects. However, in the practical planning of the seminar it became apparent that there was not a space available that enabled me to make the exhibition that I had envisioned. As it turned out I placed the pop-up illustrations and a few other things like mappings of key concepts in the three artistic projects on tables in the space where the seminar took place. 

Even though I do not consider mapping a key method in my research, I like to address that mapping is a part of my design toolbox. Thus, throughout the research it has been natural to map people, concepts, words (for example the meaning of words in Danish and English) and other key components of the research. Mapping was a way of lingering with specificities of the research. In the mappings that I placed on the tables the four focal themes were apparent, however yet not directly pinpointed. 

28.02.2024: 75% seminar. In-person and attractance via Zoom was possible. 

Opponent Dr. Rachel Hann, Northumbria University, UK. Hann attended in-person.

Guidelines for the seminar: Presentation of the entire project (more or less complete) in relation to how the chosen theories and methods interact with the artistic content of the project.

Writing – the first draft of the dissertation on Research Catalogue: In the period between the 50% and the 75% intermediate seminars I realised that crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating are the four central themes for how I explore costume as a co-creative phenomenon (the subtitle of the research is exploring co-creative costume processes) and that four core theoretical concepts connected with the themes. It was as if the four focal themes and the four core concepts had been waiting like seeds in the soil and the interconnectedness between them enabled me to re-explore and dive further into the three artistic projects. 

For the seminar I made a draft of the entire artistic research on Research Catalogue – this version is not public and can only be accessed upon request – that includes texts, videos, sound files and photos. The draft was in three sections: theoretical framework (in the final FRAMEWORKS), artistic projects (in the final PROJECTS) and findings/perspectivation (in the final CONCLUSION). 

The theoretical framework contained a theoretical framing in the context of costume, an introduction to the four core concepts (Bennett’s vibrant matter, Haraway’s making-kin, Ahmed’s orientation and Barad’s entanglement), an introduction to the four focal themes and a draft of this text on method. In the artistic projects I paired the core concepts and the focal themes in the three projects, which have not changed. In the reflections I discuss the focal themes and at the time I had not drawn the final conclusions or articulated the main findings. The draft that I wrote for the 75% intermediate seminar on Research Catalogue is the foundation for the final thesis. After the last seminar the textual parts were further developed, several videos and sounds have been re-edited and the graphical design of the Research Catalogue page has evolved to become less linear and more in line with the co-creative approach I practiced during the research. 

The artistic part of the seminar: For the seminar I had the opportunity to make an exhibition. As I argue in Lydhørheder – language(s) beyond the linguistic (link) textile is a language and I had an ambition that this language as an exhibition must be part of my defence. Thus, the seminar was a perfect opportunity to test ideas of how to do so. I envisioned a spatial composition of all the connecting costume versions and all the knotted pieces in-process I have crafted during the research. As people – the opponent, colleagues and a few friends – entered the space, I invited them to place themselves anywhere and if they felt like it, they could more freely in the space during the seminar. As it turned out, it felt that the seminar was situated in the midst of my artistic practice – and as people entered the space, they touched the textiles and they had placed themselves close by or in between the textile objects in ways that were beyond my imagination.

Critical Costume 2020.

^{Paper (video presentation): The Fitting Room – Communities of practice and the ambiguity of  touch}

Artistic project

_{25%  intermediate seminar –} opponent: Karen Arnferd Vedel, University of Copenhagen, DK

Two week residency at Inter Arts Center where I had invited different guest to join my textile/costume explorations.

2021

_{Critical Costume panel discussion #2 (online)}

^{Moderator: Rachel Hann.}

Panel: Tanja Beer and Charlotte Østergaard

Artistic project

Full list of references for the 25% seminar

Full list of references for the 50% seminar

AweAre workshop at PARSE conference, Universify of Gothenburg, SE.

50%  intermediate seminar – opponent: Suzanne Osmond, National Institute of Dramatic Art, AU

2022

IFTR conference, University of Iceland, IC.

Publications 2022:

Charlotte Østergaard (2022). Kostume-drevne performances – kostumers generative og performative potentiale, Dansk(?)teater– dansk teaters 300års jubilæum, særnummer 2022, Peripeti – tidskrift for dramaturgiske studier. 40–55.

Charlotte Østergaard (2022). Ethical dilemmas of stretching towards Others in fitting situations, Russian Fashion Theory special issue on performance and clothing, 66(3). 35–51.

Keynote speaker at NOFOD conference.

^{The Danish National School of Performing  Art.}

Immersive Days, Inter Arts Center, SE.

_{^{Performative presentation with Yann Coppier.}}

References – the 50% intermediate seminar 

Ahmed S. (2010). Orientation matters, In (eds.) Coole D. & Frost S. (2010) New materialism – ontology, agency, and politics, Durham & London: Duke University Press. 234–257.

Arrigoni G., Schofield T., Almeida T., Chatting D., Freeth B., Haas A., and Diego Trujillo-Pisanty D. (2014). Betagrams: Maker culture and the aesthetics of prototyping, In Brunnell K., & Marshall J (Eds,), (2014). All makers now? Craft values in 21^st century production, Conference journal 1, Falmouth University, July 10–11 2014. 9–16.

Aston, J. & Odorico S. (2018). The poetics and politics of polyphony: towards a research method for interactive documentary, Alphaville: Journal of film and screen media, 15. 63–93.

Barbieri, D. (2007). Proposing an interdisciplinary, movement-based approach to teaching and learning as applied to design for performance related areas, Working papers, Prague Quadrennial, Prague June 14–27 2007. 3–23.

Barbieri, D.  (2017),.Costume in performance: materiality, culture and the body, London: Bloomsbury publishing.

Barbieri D. & Crawley G., (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.

Barbieri D. & Pantouvaki S. (2020). Costume and ethics: reflection on part, present and future entanglements, Studies in costume and performance, 5(1). 3–11.

Barbieri, D. (2021). The Body as the Matter of Costume: A Phenomenological Practice, In Pantouvaki, S. & McNeil, P. (Eds): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (2021), Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle Edition. 197–212.

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

Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: cutting together-apart, Parallax, 20(3), London: Routledge. 168–187.

Barad, K. (2010).Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today, 3(2). 240–268.

Beer, T. (2016). Ecomaterialism in scenography, Theatre and performance design, 2(1–2). 161–172 

Beer, T. (2021). Ecoscenography – an introduction to ecological design for performance, Palve Macmillan.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter–a political ecology of things, Durham London: Durk University Press.

Bertinetto, A, & Ruta, M. (2022). Introduction, In Bertinetto, A, & Ruta, M. (Eds) (2022), The Routledge handbook of philosophy and improvisation in the arts, Routledge. 1–18.

Bugg, J. (2021). The Body as Site: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dress in/as Performance, In Pantouvaki, S. & McNeil, P. (Eds.): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Method, Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle Edition. 213–228.

Dean, S. E (2014). Somatic costumes™: traversing multi-sensorial landscapes, Scene, 2(1–2). 81–87.

Dean, S. E. (2016). Where is the body in the costume design process?, Studies in costume & performance, 1(1). 97–111.

Dean, S. E.  (2021). ‘Aware-Wearing’: A Somatic Costume Design Methodology for Performance, In Pantouvaki, S. & Peter McNeil, P. (Eds.): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (2021), Kindle Edition: Bloomsbury Publishing. 229–244.

Dean, S. E. & Østergaard, C. (2018). Traces of tissues at PQ: interweaving costume, somatic choreography and site, Blue Pages – journal for the society of British theatre designers, 2, 2018. 16–18.

Ely K. (2015). Yielding to the Unknown: actor training as intensification of the sense, In (Eds) Camilla Egg-Tverbakk & Karmenlara Ely (2015), Responsive listening –theater training for contemporary spaces, New York: Brooklyn Arts Press. 15–33.

Egg-Tverbakk C. & Ely K. (2015), Introduction, Responsive listening. Theater training for contemporary spaces, New York: Brooklyn Arts Press. 11–15.

Hann, R. & Elnile, R (2021). Rachel Hann and Rosie Elnile, 'Decolonizing Scenography: A case study on Rosie Elnile's Prayer', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ZdB6jY_Zk

Hann, R. (2019). Beyond Scenography, London, New York: Routledge.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege if partial perspective, Feminist Studies, 14(3). 575­–599.

Haraway, D. (2016) .Staying with the Trouble – making kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press.

Prentis Hemphill, P. (2022). interview in Brené Brown’s HBO series Atlas of the Heart. Episode 5: Places We Go With Others - And The Framework for Meaningful Connection.

Ingold, T. (2013). Making – Anthropology, archaeology, art, and architecture, Abingdon: Routledge.

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

Juelskjær, M. (2019). At tænke med agential realisme, Nyt fra samfundsvidenskaberne.

Kirkeby, O.F. (2016). Protreptik – selvindsigt og samtalepraksis, Samfundslitteratur. 

Lägerström, C. (2019). Konsten att gå: Övninger i uppmärksamt gående, Gidlunds förlag.

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. 165–170.

Le Grange, L. (2018). What is (post)qualitative research?, South African journal of higher education, 32(5). 1-14.

Listening Biennial 

Manning E., Massumi B., Brunner C. (2019). Immediation – Erin Manning and Brian Massumi in discussion with Christoph Brunner, In Erin Manning E., Anna Munster A. & Thomsen B.M.S. (Eds.), Immediation I (2019), London: Open humanities press. 275–293.

Marshall, Susan (2021). Insubordinate costume (phd thesis), Goldsmiths, University of London.

Neimanis, A. (2012). On collaboration (for Barbara Godard), NORA – Nordic journal of feminist and gender research, 20(3). 215–221.

Osmond, S. (2021). Fitting Threads: Embodied Conversations in the Costume Design Process, in Sofia Pantouvaki; Peter McNeil (Eds): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Method (2021), Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle edition.277–294. 

Pantouvaki, S. (2020). ‘Costume thinking’ as a strategy for critical thinking, Paper presentation at Critical Costume 2020 conference (online), 

Pantouvaki S. & McNeil P. (2021). Introduction Activating Costume: A New Approach to Costume for Performance, In Sofia Pantouvaki, S. & McNeil, P. (Eds), Performance Costume ­– new perspectives and methods, Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle edition. 1–4. 

Pantouvaki S., Fossheim, I, & Suurla S. (2021). Thinking with costume and material: a critical approach to (new) costume ecologies, Theatre and performance design, 7(3­–4). 188–219, 

Pierre, E. A. S., (2014). A brief and personal history of qualitative research, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30(2). 2–19.

Pierre, A.A.S. (2017). Writing post qualitative inquiry, Qualitative Inquiry 24, SAGE journals publishing. 603–608.

Ruta, M. (2022). Improvisation and orientation, In Bertinetto, A, & Ruta, M. (Eds) (2022), The Routledge handbook of philosophy and improvisation in the arts, Routledge. 85–99.

Sanders, B.-N. E & Stappers P.J. (2014). Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making codesigning, CoDesign, 10(1). 5–15. 

Schneider, L. & Zerfass, A. (2018). Polyphony in corporate and an organizational communications: exploring the roots and characteristic of a new paradigm, Communication management review, 3(2). 6–29.

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

Smith, L. (2021). Who is choreographing the costume performance – a discussion on shared agency, Paper presentation at Critical Costume 2020 conference (online), Paper presentation at Critical Costume 2020 conference (online).

Smith, L. (2018). The costumorgapher: Revolutions in performance pedagogy, Studies in costume and performance, 3(2). 179–198.

Tanggard, L. (2013). The sociomateriality of creativity in everyday life, Culture & Psychology, 19(1). 20–32.

Taylor, M. (2021). Building Costumes, Building Language in the Costume Workshop, In Pantouvaki, S. & Peter McNeil, P. (Eds.): Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Method, Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 263–276.

Trimingham, Melissa (2017). Agency and empathy: artists touch the body, In Barbieri, D. Costume in performance – materiality, culture, and the body (2017), London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 137–166

Valgenti, R.T. (2022). Material and improvisation in the formative process, In Bertinetto, A, & Ruta, M. (Eds) (2022), The Routledge handbook of philosophy and improvisation in the arts, Routledge. 60–72.

Walmsley, B.A. (2013). Co-creating theatre: authentic engagement or inter-legitimation?, Cultural tends, 22(2). 108–118, 

Wear S., Haider JL, Stålhammar S. & Woroniecki S, (2021). Putting relational thinking to work in sustainability science – reply to Raymond et al. , Ecosystems and People, 17(1). 108–113, 

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

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

Digital references:

Community Walk 

Metropolis festival Wa(l)king Copenhagen 

Metropolis

Communality & the Arts: Place, Sustainability and Heritage seminar, Inter Arts Center, SE.

Watch the exhibition video of my work

Presentation at Critical Costume conference 2022.

Presenstion at the CROCUS network meeting, Inter Arts Center, Malmö, SE.

2023

Publication 2023:

Charlotte Østergaard (2023). Listening through and with costume, Nordic Journal of Dance Volume. 14(1). 90–99.

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

Community Walk, PQ performance program at the 15th Prague Quadrennial for Performance design and Space, CZ.

PQ talks, the 15th Prague Quadrennial for Performance design and Space, CZ.

Knotting Connections (co-crafting event) part of Gylleboverket's performance festival 2023.

75%  intermediate seminar – opponent: Rachel Hann, Northumbria University, UK.

SWOP-festival, Aaben Dans, Denmark. Festival contribution: Connect 

Festival PÅ TVÆRS, Exhibition: En tekstil dialog – en udstilling med søstrene Camilla og Charlotte Østergaard.

2024

Art-based research PhD course, Aarhus University, Denmark. Workshop “Costume and embodiment”.

Publication 2024:

Charlotte Østergaard (2024). Performing Creative Work in Public, In (Eds) Andersson Cederholm, E.; Lindgvist, K.; de Wit Sandström, I. & Warkander, P, Creative Work: Conditions, Context and Practice, Routledge. 172–189.

Charlotte Østergaard (2024). Listeing with costume – a material-discursive practive. in (Eds) Marshall, Susan, Insurbordinate Costume – inspiring performance. Routledge. 119–128.

Charlotte Østergaard (2024), Archiving practice(s) – sharing and caring, In (Eds) Larsen, Bente & Danig Susanne, Document! Share! Reactivate!, BIRCA. 73–78.

References – the 25% intermediate seminar 

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life, Duke University Press, Kindle Edition.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter–a political ecology of things, Durham, London– Durk University Press.

Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells –– participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso.

Bolt, M. (2019). Avantgarde manifester, Klim.

Böhme, G. (2017).  Atmospheric Architectures (The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces), Bloomsbury Academic.

Bugg. J. (2009). Fashion at the interface: Designer –– Wearer –– Viewer Fashion Practice, Fashion Practice, 1(1). 9–32.

Charalambides, S. (2020). When the common ground seems shattered, Peripeti– tidskrift for dramaturgiske studier, 17(31). 70–82. 

Design in Practice seminar (Design i Praksis seminar). Livestreamed from Design School Kolding on November 18th, 2020, 

Edelkoort, L. (2020), The world of hope forum manifesto, published online at Dezeen.com (as part of The Virtual Design Festival).

Edelkoort, L. (2015), Anti_Fashion manifesto. 

Elo, M. (2018). Light Touches: A Media Aesthetic Mapping of Touch, In Elo, M & Luoto, M. (Eds.), Figures of Touch, The Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki. 33–58.

Fredens K. (2018). Læring med kroppen forrest, Hans Fritzels Forlag

Gil, J. (1988). Metamorphoses of the Body, University of Minnesota Press.

Goodman D. (1989). Enlightenment salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 22(3), Special issue: The French Revolution in Culture. (Spring, 1989). 329–350.

Groth C., Pevere M., Niinimäki K., & Kääriäinen P. (2020). Conditions for experiential knowledge exchange in collaborative research across the sciences and creative practice, International journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 11(3-4), published online Sep. 17, 2020. 

Hann, R. (2019). E5 Body Assemblage/Beyond Scenography, Rachell Hann YouTube channel.

Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press. 

Heinsen, R.L. (2020). Brev til morgendagens kunstskole (Letter to Performing Arts School of Tomorrow), Peripeti – tidskrift for dramaturgiske studier, 17(31). 226–231. 

Luoto, M. (2018). Approaching the Untouchable: From Husserl to Merleau-Ponty, In Elo, M & Luoto, M. (Eds.), Figures of Touch, The Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki. 91–120.

Mau, B. (1998). The incomplete manifesto for growth. 

Pantouvaki, S. (2020). ’Costume Thinking’ as a strategy for critical thinking, Costume Agency – Critical Costume 2020.

Puncher, M. (2002). Manifesto = Theater, Theatre Journal, 54(3) October, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. 449–465.

Sanders, E.B.-N., (2014). Co-designing can seed the landscape for radical innovation and sustainable change. In Christensen, P.R. & Junginger, S. (Eds.), The Highways and Byways to Radical Innovation – Design Perspectives. 131–150.

Sanders, L. & Stappers, P. (2014).  From designing to co-designing to collective dreaming: Three slide in time, ACM Interactions, November-December 2014.

Smith, L. (2020). Who is choreographing the costume performance? A discussion on shared Agency, Critical Conference (2020), online publication.

Stember, M. (1991). Advancing the social sciences through the interdisciplinary enterprise, The social science journal, 28(1). 1–14.

Storni, C., Binder, T., Linde, P. & Stuedahl, D. (2015), Designing things together: intersections of co-design and actor-network theory, CoDesign, International journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 11 (3-4). 149–151.

Skærbæk, E. (2011). Navigating in the landscape of care: a critical reflection on theory and practice of care and ethics, in Journal of health care analysis, Online Oct. 2010, in journal June 2011.

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

Skærbæk, E. (2002), Who Care – ethical interaction and sexual difference, Høgskolen I Østfold, Norway.

Sørensen, K.B. (2020). Employability – using design activities to enhance students’ reflection in value and meaning, Paper presented at TAL 2019 – Teaching for Active Learning, Odense, Denmark, November 14^th, 2010.

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

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

Online reference:

Costume and Collaboration, PQ 2019 talk hosted by Sofia Pantouvaki, accessed via private link supported by Pantouvaki.

De Lutrede (2002). Danish Documentary, Jesper Jargil Film in co-production with dr.dk

Idioterne der startede festen (2020). DR-kultur og samfund, 

Kunstsalonen 

Salon Valerie Galner 

Mediernes udvikling (2020). (report and statistics on the development of Danish media)

Additional references:

Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh University Press.

Andersen, L.B., Danholt, P., Halskov K., Hansen N.B. & Lauritsen P. (2015). Participation as a matter of concern in participatory design, CoDesign, International journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 11(3–4). 250–261.

Barbieri, D. (2017). Costume in Performance ––materiality, culture and the body, Bloomsbury Academic.

Barbieri, D. (2007). Proposing an interdisciplinary movement-based approach to teaching and learning as applied to design for performance related areas, University of the Arts London: working papers, first published by The Prague Quadrennial, June 15–24, 2007. 4–24.

Barbieri, D & Pantouvaki, S. (2016). Towards a philosophy of costume, Studies in Costume & Performance, 1(1).  3–7.

Böhme, G. (1993). Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetic, Thesis Eleven 36. 113–126.

Bugg, J. (2013). Drawing with the body and cloth. 

Buxton, B. (2007). Sketching user experience: getting the design right and the right design (interactive technologies), Morgan Kaufmann. 

Dean S. E. (2016). Where is the body in the costume design process?, Studies in Costume & Performance, 1(1). 97–111.

Drain, A. & Sanders, E.B.-N., (2019). A collaboration System Model for Planning and Evaluating Participatory Design Projects, International Journal of Design, 13(3). http://www.ijdesign.org/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/3486/870

Evans, M., & Terrey, N. (2016). In G. Stoker, & M. Evans (Eds.) Co-design with citizens and stakeholders, Evidence-Based Policy Making in the Social Sciences: Methods that matter.  243–262.

Evans M. (2015). Seeing like a Citizen: Is Co-Design the best way to support vulnerable people?, The Policy Space, https://www.thepolicyspace.com.au/2015/30/27-seeing-like-a-citizen-is-co-design-the-best-way-to-support-vulnerable-people 

Fleming, O., (2013). Gertrud Stein-s salons makes a 21^st century comeback as New York’s intimate – and secret – art gatherings open up to the public, Mail Online, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2461952/Gertrude-Steins-salon-makes-21st-century-comeback.html 

Gilbert, C. (2013). You must design design, co-design included. In Mareis, C., Held, M., and Joost, G. (Eds): Wer gestaltet die gestaltung? Praxis, Theorie und Geschichte des partizipatorischen Designs, Bielefeld: Transcript. 181–205.

Groth, C., Berg, A. (2018). Co-creating in professional craft practice, Design Research Society Conference Proceedings, University of Limerick June 25^th-28^th 2018.

Hann, R. (2019). Beyond Scenography, Abingdon: Routledge.

Heinsen, R.L., (2017). Tværæstetiske projekter––muligheder og udfordring i processer og samarbejde, København: Den Danske Scenekunstskole.

Hertz D. (1987).  Women, salons and social stratification in seventeenth-century France (book review), Journal of Social History, Winther 1978‚ 12(2). 327–331.

Ingold, T. (2013). Making – Anthropology, archaeology, art, and architecture, Abingdon: Routledge 

Jensenius, A. R., (2012). Disciplinarities: intra, cross, multi, inter, trans, Jensenius Research blog, https://www.arj.no/tag/interdisciplinary/ 

Lane, K. (2019). Trinity: Visual dramaturgy, the body as scenographer, Studies in Costume & Performance, 4(2). 207–228.

Madison, D.S. (2005), Critical ethnography: method, ethics, and performance, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. 

Monks, A. (2010). The Actor in Costume, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pantouvaki, S. (2019). Extreme costume: a conversation with Simona Rybáková, Studies in Costume & Performance, 4(1), 85–108.

Pantouvaki, S. (2016). Narratives of clothing: concentration camp dress as a companion to survival, Studies in Costume & Performance, 1(1). 19–37.

Sanders E.B-N-, Brandt, E. & Binder, T. (2010). A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design, PDC '10: Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, November 2010, 195–198.

Singh, S., Lotz, N. & Sanders, E.B.-N. (2018). Envisioning Futures of Design Education, Dialectic, 2(1). 19–46.

Smith, L. (2018). the costumographers: revolutions in performance pedagogy, Studies in Costume & Performance, 3(2). 179–196.

Sørensen K.B (2020). A renewed understanding of creativity is paramount prior to introducing students to a life design attitude, Oulu, Finland: The Sixth International Conference of Design Creativity (ICDC2020), August 26^th- 28^th, 2020.

Sørensen K. B. & Davidsen H. M. (2017). A Holistic Design Perspective on Entrepreneurship Education, Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5(10). 1818–1826.

Taylor, M. (2017). Shopping their wardrobe: changing costume practice in Australian theater, Behind the scenes: Journal of Theatre Production Practice, 1(1),.16–32.

Tronegård-Madsen, L.T. (2020). Den kollektive læsnings anarki, Peripeti – tidskrift for dramaturgiske studier, 17(31), 130–139. 

Additional online reference:

Behind the scenes; Hussein Chalayan at Sadler’s Well (Gravity Fatigue), Part 2 & 3, Sadler’s Well (2015)

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A0geK.ggQ8pfJAMAlj5XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?p=salders+wells+hussein+chalyan&fr2=piv-web&fr=aaplw#id=5&vid=14f26b72b068c914aa9c39b082af7399&action=view 

Book review: The Age of Conversation, Waugh T., New York: New York Review Books, https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-age-of-conversation-paperback?variant=1094928465 

Kunstsalon Vision

Litteratursalon

Politisk Salon 

Danish design tradition

Design: https://www.etymonline.com/word/design 

Design School Kolding. 

Kultur Kanon (2015), (Danish culture canon). 

Meyer, C. (2004), The New Nordic Food Manifesto. 

Mme Necker  

Walmsley, BA. (2013). Co-creating theater: Authentic engagement or inter-legitimation?, Cultural Trends, 22(2), 108–188.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social Systems, The Systems Thinkers, 9(5), June, Pegasus Communications, https://thesystemsthinker.com/communities-of-practice-learning-as-a-social-system/ 

Wenger & Trayner website on communities of practice.

Lund University Future Days. Presentation: Costume as partner in play and creativity

Symposium "Fremtidens ledende fælleskaber" (Leading Communities of the Future) organized by Kitchen Collective. Presentation: Værtskabets betydning for ledelse – skab dit eget værtskab (The importance of hosting – the values of how you host). 

Doctoral defence – opponent: Donatella Barbieri, London Collage of Fashion/ University of the Arts London, UK.

2025