A while ago I was contacted by Linh Le from Becoming Species since she and they were interested in my knotting practice. We meet and knotted together.
I could not be happier – now the knotting practice has a life of its own. If you are interested in the development of the knotting practice please follow the tag #coknotting
I have made this video “Knotting Ecosystems” for Becoming Species as an open source tutorial. The video contains images from “knotting ecosystems” events hosted by Becoming Species and Extinction Rebellion Denmark.
I hope you will be inspired to knot together with others and please feel free to share the video in your network.
In the video tutorial I use dummies as the ‘base’ for my knottings. But knottings in-process can be placed on tables, chairs and human bodies.
Remember my way of knotting only one of many. I invite you to develop your technique. Knotting can be done in multiple ways – the only limit is the imagination.
Entanglements is an artwork that I, as artist, suggest is placed in the borderland between textile object, spatial entity, and wearable art. I suggest that the artwork is an object with a performative human and more-than human material-spatial potential. Entanglements are exhibited at MATERIAL THINKING – 1st International Contemporary Material Art Biennale, Tsinghua University, China (02.12.2022–27.01.2023)
This artwork Entanglements build on Donna Haraway’s notion of ‘making kin’ and Jane Bennett’s concept of vibrant matter. ‘Making kin’ suggests that I, the artist, create a relationship to and with the materialities that I craft. When I craft a dynamic tension occurs between me and the vibrant materialities. Through crafting I must listen to and follow the complexity of the materialities. Therefore, I must be sensitive and openminded towards the materialites’ ‘voices’ and ‘wills’. I must listen to how the materialities including their colors wants to be combined and composed. When I craft, I drift and dwell with the materialites. I led them guide me and while crafting Entanglements I came in a mediative state.
At some point in the process and without realizing, my crafting had become quite specific. It was like that I, in my meditative state, began to control the materialities. It was like I forgot our vibrant relationship. I had to stop and re-create the dynamic tension between me and the materialities. I needed help and therefor I decided to invite colleagues like designers, dancers, and choreographers to join me to co-compose and co-embody the composition in multiple ways. In different sessions and with different colleagues, I and we explored other ways of ‘making kin’. We co-explored human-material-relationships, human-material-movements, and material-compositional-potentialities. Our embodied explorations expanded the meaning of ‘making kin’ and awoke my sensibility towards the materialities in unexpected ways. Co-crafting, co-embodying, and co-moving with the crafted materialities became ways of ’making kin’ – actions that left traces of human interaction. Traces of human bodies that have affected, informed, re-formed, composed and re-composed Entanglements. And now dear audience you meet Entanglements and I invite you to leave your traces – and I when I meet Entanglements again, I hope that there are new traces of other bodies.
At the immersive days in november 2022 composer Yann Coppier and I in our presentation “inside out – outside in” reflected on how world-costume and sound can co-create immersive experiences. One of our questions are how does Yann compose textile and how Charlotte designs sound – or – how does sound inform textile and how does textile inform sound?
In the presentation we immersed ourselves in word-costume or entalgled through spatial textiled-costume.
During the talk the audience engaged and tangled with us – which became playful embodied explorations.
I am so please to be selected to participate with the paper “Ethical Dilemmas of listening through and with costume” and the video “Costume connections” at Critical Costume 2022.
Video abstract: This Critical Costume exhibition presentation derives from the twelve-hour costume-based ‘performative-walk’ Community Walk (2020). The frame for Community Walk was a bright yellow costume that physically connected two wearers. In Community Walk I, the researcher and costume designer, placed myself ‘in the centre’ of the co-wearing entanglements. For twelve hours I co-wore the costume in the central area of Copenhagen, DK connected to twelve different co-wearers. One hour with each co-wearing participant. In the video I share some of the values that are the foundation for my artistic practice and research – hence, for this project. I unfold aspects of the co-wearing experience. For example, that the costume orientated the co-wearers towards each other and that they as a connected pair had to navigate and negotiate the costume, by-passing spectator(s), and urban environment.
At the PARSE conference I introduced the concept of co-costuming by inviting the participant to wear, explore and reflect on the bodily effects of costumes that connects two wearers. As researcher, I asked the participants to confront the ethically dimensions of the co-costumed experience (costumes that I produced and impose on wearers) that potentially was quite playful and, at the same time, bodily and socially restricted and/or exposeed the co-wearers.
July 30th I was invited to participate in Wa(l)king Copenhagen created and organized by Metropolis.
My contribution Community Walk became an wonderful experience of 12 hours of physical and verbal conversation about community (fællesskab), 12 hours of following and leading, 12 hours of being connected, 12 hours of being approached, ignored, commented on, yelled at and 12 hours of moving in and reacting on the city and the environment
Every hour we livestreamed on Wa(l)king Copenhagen’s facebook.
Camille Marchadour and myself
In the program (danish) I wrote the following:
I en tid hvor vi opfordres til at holde distance er Community Walk en undersøgelse af, hvordan vi skaber fysisk nærvær. Hvordan mødes vi, når vante ritualer som håndtryk og knus frarådes? Hvordan anerkender vi hinandens nærvær, når vi individuelt og kollektivt udføre social kontrol i angsten for en invaderende skjult fjende?
Over 12 timer undersøger jeg sammen med 12 gæster nærheden og distancen i fælleskaber, hvor 5 handliger og en klædning er vores fælles omdrejningpunkt. Hver time møder jeg en ny gæst i det centrale København, hvorfra vi forbundne vil vandre mod næste gæst. Hver gæsten inviteres til at fortolke de 5 handlinger.
En gul klædning forbinder mig og vandringsgæsten. Gennem klædning undersøger vi, hvordan vi kan mærke vi hinandens nærvær. Samtidig navigerer og forhandler vi i fællesskab, hvordan vi kan holde distance til hinanden og til andre. Foranlediget af steder og mennesker, vi passerer i byens rum, reflekterer vi fysisk og verbalt over begrebet fælleskab. Hvordan har fælleskabet det – har vores fælleskaber forandret sig?
Julienne Doko and myself
5 Community Walk handlinger:
Handling 1 – Velkomst-ritual; Hilsen i nærheden men på distance
Handling 2 – Afklædnings- og Iklædnings-ritual; Overdrager klædningen til den nyankomne
Handling 3 – Afskeds-ritual; Afsked med forrige gæst
Handling 4 – Vidnesbyrd-ritual; Som et vidensbyrd på samtalen og/eller af den fysiske oplevelse vandringen har afstedkomme, reflekterer den afskedstagende gæst over begrebet fællesskab.
Handling 5 – Vandrings-ritual; Forhandling og navigation gennem byen
Daniel Jeremiah PerssonElsa Krgh MadsenJeppe Worning
Community Walk foregår d. 30 juli kl 11-23 i det centrale København. Ruten repræsenterer steder jeg under lockdown mødte/gik tur med andre, hvor jeg savnede nærværet af andre og steder hvor byens rum pludselig var affolket. Publikum er velkomme til at møde og følge os på afstand.
AweAre – a movement quintet(June 27, 2020) was created and performed Ny Carlsbergfondet’s performance festival UP CLOSE, Det Classenske Bibliotek, Copenhagen, DK.
The performance was co-create with the dancers Alex Berg, Camille Marchadour, Daniel Jeremiah Persson and Josefine Ibsen. Performance soundscape composed by Victor Dahl
Festival context: In response to the pandemic lockdown in Denmark in 2020, the Carlsberg Foundation developed the performance festival UP CLOSE (curated by art historian Natalia Gutman), which over four days (two weekends) presented twelve different performances to an audience. Invited to each create a fifteen-minute performance (performed three times on a specific date) were, among others, the artistduo Hesselholdt & Mejlvang, composer Louise Alenius, choreographer Tim Matiakis & solodancer Astrid Elbo, performance artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and me as the only costume designer.
Værket ComPleat er optaget på KONTEMPO udstillingen “Is this Color?”. Udstillingen vises i Rundetårn 11 Maj – 23 Juni 2019.
ComPleatinvites the public to interact with the textile objects. It is an invitation to touch, to enter and rap the textile around the body or/and twist the objects so another side appears. While interacting, ComPleat wants to ask: “What colour is (your) skin? Please share your experience on social media #compleat_colour
ComPleatis two textile objects based on the idea of sloughing in biology. As a concept ComPleatis a (non-)living matter between being and not being. ComPleatis skin tissues; as representation of being in between living and dead – a metamorphosis for a transformation process, being in between past, present and future.
Projektet “AweAre” er optaget på den censurerede udstilling Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk & Design. Udstillingen vises på Nordatlantens Brygge i København 18. april – 5. maj 2019
AweAre – en leger med en betydning imellem “to wear” og to “be aware” – er en udforskning af fælleskaber. Hvad sker der når et hverdagsritual “at klæde sig på”, bliver til en kollektiv handling i et offentligt rum?
AweAre er en klædning, som forbinder fire personer (på og imellem kroppene). Da iklædning og bevægelse er afhængig af og påvirkes af med-bærerne, er det at bære AweAre ikke udelukkende en individuel men kollektiv kropslig oplevelse. AweAre udfordrer os til at turde udforske ideen om en kollektiv krop. AweAre tvinger os til dels at lytte og være lydhøre overfor andre, men udfordrer os samtidigt til at opdage vores eget bidrag til fællesskabet. Bliver den fælles oplevelse en leg, en forhandling, et ønske om kontrol, en kamp eller ….? Opstår der et fællesskab?
I udformningen er AweAre en abstrakt parafrase over funktionelt tøj fx. en krave og et ærme, der træde frem (det vedhæftede billedet er et formforsøg). Pasformen er afgørende, da AweAre dels kan passe forskellige kropstyper og dels skal kunne tages ovenpå det tøj, bærerne allerede er iklædt. AweAre er som kropsdele, hvor hver af de fire kropsdele vil være forskellige i sin udformning, dog fortrinsvist placeret på torso og arme. Der ud over vil forbindelseledene mellem kroppene placeres i foreskellige højder.
Med AweAre følger invitationen “please try me”. AweAre udfordre publikum til i udstillingsrummet modigt og aktivt at interargere og udforske, om der opstår (nye) fælleskaber med nogen, man kender, og andre, man ikke kender. Men “please try me” er også en invitation til at betragter på afstand – til at opleve om der opstår fælleskab mellem dem, som tør gå på opdagelse.
Projektet er pt. under udarbejdelse (derfor ingen foto dokumentation af det endelig værk) og vil bestå at to dele. Et udstillings objekt (som publikum kan iklæde sig) samt to videoer; en med performere i et mennesketomt offentlige rum og en med almindelige mennekser på en offentlig plads med andre mennesker (hvor lydsporet er refleksioner over oplevelsen) iklædt AweAre.
Værket Flesh er optaget på den internationale censurerede udstilling “From Lausanne to Beijing” som vises 15 okt – 15 nov 2018 på Tsinghua University Art Museum; The Gallery of Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing A.C. Art Museum
Flesh is inspired by classic Greek sculptures. Sculptures where only fragments of the original have been preserved. Flesh is paraphrase over fragments of the body (and the body’s skin) – a metamorphorus where the fragment has its own meaning.
