Artistic research by Charlotte Østergaard.

Main supervisor: Dr Sofie Pantouvaki. 

Second supervisor: Dr Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk.

Malmö Theatre Academy. Artistic Research in Performing Arts.

Director of Studies Professor Sven Bjerstedt.

Head of Subject Senoir Lecture Sofie Lebech.

Listenings

This research inscribed itself in current research discourses where listening is a tool to re-think relational practices within areas such as dramaturgy, sonic, somatic, post- and decolonial practices. In this research, listening connected with crafting explores how to re-balance hierarchies between humans and more-than-humans, by attuning the lydhørhed (link) towards other humans and towards more-than-humans such as textile materials and costume.

Costume as listening mediator

In the research I have suggested that in order to make textiles co-creating partners, the crafter must listen carefully to the dialogical interplay with the materials. However, it did not imply that I could predict or know what the costume would do or evoke. As I have explained, it is only by listening to the (human) co-creators’ experiences with the connecting costume that I became familiar with the costumes. It was also through the costume that I became familiar with the co-creators’ experiences and perspectives of the costume. 

To summarise the concept of listening in relation to the first artistic project, AweAre – a movement quintet, I realised that listening was crucial for establishing collective awareness between us. By exchanging individual experiences of the placement in the costume, we gained knowledge of the hierarchy embedded in the costume. This provoked us to explore collective and directional listenings. With the second project, Community Walk, it became apparent how easily our internal listenings were disturbed and distracted by external factors and demanded different listenings. In the re-orientations new (in)sights appeared that could have potentially remained out of our sight otherwise. With the third project, Conversation Costume, we had time to dwell on how we (individually and collectively) listened with the costume compositions that we co-crafted. In exchanging our listening cultures we (re)discovered some of the biases (assumptions and expectations) that are embedded in our practices and with the new (in)sight we expanded our listening abilities and vocabulary. 

What connected the three artistic projects was that the connecting costumes acted as more-than-human mediators demanding our attention. As mediators the costumes orientated us towards the compositional-spatial and textile-material specificities of our relational-dependent entanglements. What the projects had in common was that the spatial material-discursive entanglements affected us (humans), and by orientating our listenings towards our affectedness we gained (in)sights into how in similar and different ways we listen-with our entanglements. Thus, as co-creators we were dependent on learning with each other’s (in)sights of how we listened-with our affectedness, and in the co-learning we expanded and cultivated our listening abilities. What also connected the artistic projects was that especially the stretchability of the connecting costumes kept provoking us to stretch our listening abilities towards the other co-creators and towards our co-creative entangled relationships. In the stretch towards the relational entanglements the listening-with became more profound.

Cultivating listening cultures

The artistic projects revel that as we enter new collaborations, listening is an approach that we must co-creatively cultivate. In order to cultivate our collective listening abilities we must attend to the listening cultures (by attuning our lydhørheder) that are embedded in us through our practices. We must pay attention to what or whom (humans and/or more-than-humans) we listen to in order to explore if our listening cultures favour egocentric or human-centric visions and/or perspectives. In other words, we must co-creatively cultivate listenings beyond what is predefined within our practice, and beyond how in practice we categorise ourselves and each other. My claim is that we cannot listen beyond categories (of for example, designer, performer, costume or rehearsal) if we are not willing to critically explore the biases (assumptions and expectations) within our practice, such as exploring what kind of listening cultures our practices promote. 

I suggest that in order to cultivate our collective listening abilities we need mediators like the connection costumes to craft material-discursive spaces between us. With costume as our more-than-human mediator we can tune into nuances and details of how we relate and how we express our relationships with our co-creational entanglements. As such, the costume becomes the centre of our attention. I argue that listening with costume are acts of giving and taking where we (humans) must silence our urge to control the situation and allow the costume to orientate our attention towards our co-creative entanglements. Within the costume entanglements it is critical that we cultivate our listening abilities to be able to share affirmative and caring acts with our human and more-than-human co-creators. However, as my research also reveals, listening is to acknowledge that there are aspects of the co-creative costume entanglements that we do not hear, that we are unaware of or do not notice. Therefore, there is no guarantee that listening is affirmative or will meet the creative needs or dreams of co-creators. Even so, I argue that if we are open-minded and willing to stretch our listenings towards our engagement, we expand our listening orientations to include, embrace and approach the pleasures and troubles of co-creating or collaborating. 

CONCLUSION

As I started this artistic research the quest was to explore co-creative costume processes; I imagined defining differences between collaboration and co-creation. However, as soon as I had an outline of what defined co-creation and what made co-creation differ from collaboration, I became doubtful and skeptical. Over time, I realised that I was not (re)searching definitions. Exploring co-creative costume processes was a quest to create relational realms with and between people and textile materials/costume where humans and more-than-humans became co-creating partners in the shared or communal doings in the artistic projects. 

In the communal doings – exploring specific connecting costumes – we had to explore how the situatedness (the location and duration) of the projects crafted our relational realm. A common thread in the three artistic projects and that constitutes this research is interconnectedness between the co-creational and the relational. As such we co-creatively had to explore what kind of relational we’s we became with the connecting costumes.

Co-creating with (in)sight of pluralities

Throughout the research, pluralities – like listenings, creativities, possibilities, orientations and stretchabilities – have been a common thread. Employing pluralities – rather than single, more defined affirmative options – indicates that the (human) co-creators in the entangled positions did not feel, sense, see or hear and thus experience the same. That is because the entangled positions evoked different responses, reactions, actions, needs, wishes, imaginations, expectations and assumptions. What we (humans) shared in the projects was that the connecting costumes connected our bodies and made us dependent on each other. In the material-discursive and relational-dependent entanglements we had to negotiate how we could co-create our positions. Our positions were crafted by the costume and by the practice and cultures we brought, like our abilities (what we consider as skills and as being skilful within practice, for example) and perspectives (such as our assumptions of categories like performer, crafter, co-creator, material and costume and our expectations towards rehearsals or co-creation). 

The use of pluralities highlights that in communal doings our way of doing is informed by our practice(s) and thus there are always differences in how we do. My claim is that when we co-create – whoever we co-create with – it is the pluralities or our differences that make a difference. In co-creative costume entanglements our positions are never static and thus we can play-with, listen-with, learn-with and think-with our positions by which we become more than a predefined category with predefined abilities. If we are attentive and open towards our pluralities we can (re)discover and (re)orientate some of our biases. By co-creating with the (in)sight of our pluralities, we stir what we take for granted and if we are lydhøre and attentive, the stirring expands and cultivates our communal abilities. With the (in)sight of the pluralities, co-creating invites us to play with our positions and perspectives, which enables human and more-than-human collaborators to flourish co-creatively. The research reveals that the co-creating approach I am suggesting is demanding as well as playful, joyful, enlightening, confusing and tiring for the (human) co-creators that are involved. 

This research explores co-creative costume processes and proposes that co-creating involves hosting with communal hospitality, fostering a way for partners to listen through costume. The aim is for listening with costume and hosting with communal hospitality to become tools for designers to gain a deeper understanding of how costume affects performers. The broader scope of this research is to contribute to discussions on how designers, performers, and other performance-makers can collaborate with human and more-than-human creative partners in generous and inclusive manners. Focusing on crafting, the research also aims to engage in discussions about co-design and co-creation within craft and design. It highlights that co-design extends beyond human matter, requiring designers / crafters to listen carefully to materials: listening with materials. Moreover, my research emphasizes that co-design and co-creation demand attentiveness and a willingness to relinquish creative control to both human and more-than-human co-creators.

In this research, I have proposed that pluralities enable us to learn co-creatively. However, I have only briefly explored the potential of attuning to the (in)sights of pluralities for co-learning. For future research, I aim to expand the listening(s) and hosting strategies developed in this artistic research project into pedagogical approaches and pedagogical lydhørheder within education. This future work will investigate/research co-learning carrying (in)sight of pluralities, employing and integrating decolonial and intersectional educational theories with indigenous or traditional craft practices from the Scandinavian or Nordic region.

AweAre – a movement quintet:

The AweAre costume crafted a relational realm and a social dynamic. The dancers’ experience of the relational and co-creational we’s depended on their placement in the costume.

Crafting 

In the artistic projects I have insisted on unfolding how the costumes for each project were crafted to make my crafting intentions and values visible. As I was crafting the textile materials I simultaneously crafted my creative orientation, which became openings for nonverbal or embodied dialogues with the textiles. I have suggested that in crafting dialogues the crafter must listen carefully to and bounce dialogically with the material rather than trying to control it. If the crafter listens, the textile materials become vital partners or co-creators. As such, I argue that careful crafting listenings can (re)balance hierarchies between human and more-than-human matter. This kind of listening reveals that textile materials, as more-than-human co-creators, are as vibrant and intelligent as humans. In what follows I will approach several aspects that I suggest can awaken our human abilities to approach and experience textile and costume materials as vibrant and critical co-creators in co-creative processes.

Crafting labours

In the research I do not mention gender directly, but, identifying myself as a female (woman, she/her) artistic researcher, I find that it is important to shortly address gender. I would like to note that the Danish word køn does not distinguish between gender and sex. Thus, when I refer to gender, I do not place people in stereotypes or normative categories but appreciate however people situate their bodies. I have chosen to use the word crafting instead of, for example, designing. As I have explained, crafting orientate me towards the labour of women (1) and towards women that my practice builds on – which is arguably a gendered position. As mentioned above, to approach crafting with the sight of more-than-human co-creators, the materials become a mediator to re-think the balance between human and more-than-human matter/bodies and their positions. Therefore, crafting practice(s) are central to the research; this is a position that does not avoid nor focuses on judging or evaluating human co-creators’ experiences and expressions in relation to gender.

Even though the crafting is centrally placed in the research, in the artistic projects I never directly unfolded my crafting practice to the co-creators, for example uncovering my crafting labour by disclosing the number of hours I spent on crafting a specific costume. Firstly, as I have explained in my analysis of the artistic projects, with the costumes I was very visible. Drawing further attention to the costume could have indicated that I expected that the co-creators had to be attuned to my labour and thus the costumes in particular ways, that I knew better since I had crafted the costume and/or that the co-creators had to embody my vision for the costume. Secondly, I argue that crafting is a language and thus I did not have to explain, as the costumes spoke for themselves. 

With the research I suggest that costume makes the crafter/designer/researcher very visible, and if the researcher is not attentive they will occupy the entire space. As a way of offering space to co-creators, it is critical that the craft/design researcher shows that they value the labour that co-creators bring to the research. It is critical that the researcher acknowledges that with their craftship (2) the co-creators contribute, inform and affect the research. For example, artists like dancers are fellow crafters who have embodied skills, abilities and knowledge that make them sensitive towards costume material. Thus, by placing the crafting practice(s) centrally in the research, the researcher must be open towards crafting practices and perspectives that differ from their own.

Connecting costume 

In the research I crafted several connecting costumes. In the three artistic projects we have explored what these specific costumes enabled us to do. As the connecting costumes were different, they evoked or provoked different material-discursive spaces and explorative situations between us. In AweAre – a movement quintet the connecting costume evoked a collective costume body that evolved like an organism. In Community Walk the connecting costume became a spatial mediator that had an inward orientation, inviting us to explore the possibilities within the shared space, and had an outward orientation inviting us to explore the public/urban space with the costumes as a perspective through which to experience the space. In Conversation Costume the connecting costume was a fragmented assembly consisting of multiple textiles and costumes. Thus, the assembly became co-creating, co-crafting and co-composing factors. The similarities of the connecting costumes in the three artistic projects includes their spatial compositions and material stretchability, which evoked playful encounters between the co-creators. These playful encounters were characterised by being spontaneous, curious, at times childish and always with co-crafting and co-creating elements.

Hosting 

As I have explained earlier in the research analysis, hosting was an ambition to explore co-creative costume or material-discursive entanglements with the human and more-than-human co-creators by acting as participating host. I had no intention of being positioned hierarchically above any of the co-creators.

The invitation was to explore the connecting costumes, and the ambition was to discover what embodied dialogues the costume evoked. A common thread in the projects was offering time to share and exchange our perspectives on the embodied dialogues we had within the co-creative costume entanglements. In the research I named these exchanges sharing sessions, walking and talking and conversational dialogues. In the projects our exchanges – described as conversational dialogues – moved organically between being chatty and light, being deep and tuning into details and somewhere in between. In addition, some dialogues included other people who happened to be present. 

Hosting listening dialogues

I argue that embodied and conversational dialogues are closely related and yet they evoked different kinds of listenings. My claim is that in co-creative processes listening (as a dialogical theme) does not emerge without it being a hosting intention. The research reveals that, to manifest listening as more than an intention, the host must invite/enable dialogues where listening is a central theme and a dialogical instigator. In these dialogues the host must politely, sensitively and with genuine curiosity repeatedly ask the (human) co-creators to share how they listen with the connecting costume(s) within the co-creative entanglement(s). Additionally, the host must continually repeat the invitations to explore how they (the human co-creators) listen with the connecting costume(s) and how they listen with their affectedness within the costume entanglement(s). As such the host is responsible for orientating the co-creators towards listening, and accountable for making listening a shared or common direction, for example how welcoming the host is towards what the co-creators hear and how they listen. The accountability includes that the host must reveal and at the same time relinquish control in the dialogues by being lydhør towards the human and more-than-human co-creators. For example, by listening carefully to nuances and details in the co-creators’ expressions, the host can (re)attune and (re)orientate their hosting lydhørheder or listenings towards co-creators.

In the research, the stretchable costume materials became a co-host that demanded my attention. The demand of the materials was to stretch my listenings towards the human and more-than-human co-creators and asking me to (re)listen to nuances of their creative expressions. By stretching my listenings towards the co-creators I simultaneously orientated my listenings towards our communal doings. I argue that the dialogical pair enabled me to (re)orientate and (re)attune into specific details and to expand my perspective. As such, hosting with hospitality included bouncing between the co-creators’ individual creative expressions (their affectedness) and the communal doings. Thus, I argue that it is critical that the hosting becomes a matter of hosting with communal hospitality. By hosting with communal hospitality, the co-creators’ creativities become critical as their (in)sights expand and become co-authors of the communal doings. Additionally, by orientating towards the communal doings, the host learns-with the co-creators’ creativities. As such, hosting with communal hospitality invites multi-vocal expressions and polyphonic qualities of the costume entanglements to become visible and reveals that polyphonies are aspects of the co-creative research phenomenon. 

Hosting with sight of dilemmas

Being an accountable host is to admit that even with listening as a manifested hosting intention there are always aspects of the co-creative costume entanglements that the host cannot or will not hear, see or sense. Thus, several aspects will remain unnoticed or unknown to the host. Moreover, the host’s listenings are informed by their practice(s). Thus, the host must uncover the biases, such as assumptions and expectations, that are embedded in their listenings. My claim is that by hosting with communal hospitality the host can approach some of their biases in the dialogues with the co-creators by sharing how they listen or how they perceive what they listen. 

Hosting is also to embrace experiences of feeling creatively stuck, being doubtful, facing the fear of losing the ability to host and facing the reality of momentarily losing hosting direction. Hosting is daring to stay-with and linger-with the troublesome and allowing the troublesome to stir and shake what the host might otherwise take for granted. Thus, inherent in the troublesome are opportunities to (re)discover some biased perspectives. However, facing biases is not easy. It can cause doubt and vulnerability, like in the research, where I at time doubted the softness of my hosting attitude and wondered if I had to become a more leading or directorial host. With the research I suggest that by remaining in the troublesome the host can (re)discover their hosting values. 

Community Walk:

We were situated in the social realm of public space and the series of we’s,including the connecting costume, were crafted by how the we’s were orientated and affected by the social norms of the public and by the surroundings, as well as by the encounters with humans and more-than-humans that the we’s had in the public realm.

Click on icon to return to overview of content

Co-creating as processes of exploring relational we’s – not as static but as organic and sometime plural we’s.

Conversation Costume:

We co-created the social by exploring how we became we with the costume assembly. Even though we were a core group of three people, our relational and co-creational we(s) were affected by the colleagues who shortly participated in our entanglements.

A little hidden add-on 

Musik i tekstiler (music in textiles) a collaboration with the quartet NJYD. Image from a collaborative residency (2023) at AAben Scene, Godsbanen, Århus, Denmark. Photo: Charlotte Østergaard.

During the residency, I explored innovative methods for composing the textiles I crafted as part of this research – the crafting repetitions (link). Theses experiments not only deepende my understanding of material cycles but also laid the foundation for the exhibition I am preparing for the defence.