My PhD research called Crafting Material Bodies – exploring co-creative costume processes was made at Malmö Theatre Academy, Faculty of Fine and performing Arts, Lund University, Sweden. Read the thesis

Abstract 

At the heart of this research are relational encounters between people and textile materials. As the title, Crafting Material Bodies, indicates, the research explores how human bodies are crafted by material bodies (costume) and vice versa. In the research textile materials and people are my co-creators and as co-creators they are invited to relate to, affect and become affected by other human bodies and more-than-human materials. As the subtitle, exploring co-creative costume processes, indicate the main quest is to explore how we (humans) co-create with textile and costume materials and to explore how textile and costume materials become equal co-creating partners.

In the artistic projects I invite fellow artists, like performers and designers, to explore specific connecting costumes (that connect two or more people) with me. As co-creators I invite them to engage, respond, inform, influence and/or interrupt our costume explorations in ways that matter to them and to critically reflect on our explorations. In the projects I study how listening become instances of relational acts or entanglements between humans and more-than-humans that evoke curious embodied and conversational dialogues. Such dialogues are invitations to listen with the textile and costume materials, with our bodies, to share embodied experiences, to co-create and to elaborate on the various creative perspectives. During the artistic projects I act as more than an observing designer/researcher. I am the host that have crafted the costumes in collaboration with the textile materials and as host I also actively take part in exploring what the costumes evoke. The goal is to explore how being a participating host affects the explorative costume situations. 

The research has four focal themes – crafting, listening, hosting and co-creating – which are explored though three artistic projects. The artistic project AweAre, a movement quintet, explores the act of listening, Community Walk explores the act of hosting and Conversation Costume explores the act of co-creating, while all three projects explore different aspects of crafting. As the themes are entangled, all three projects contain aspects of the four themes.

With this research I suggest that it is critical that we, in co-creative situations, cultivate our abilities to listen with human and more-than-human others, and I argue that textile and costume materials are mediums that enable us to do so. With this research my ambition is to formulate ideas on co-creative methods that value material-discursive listening and where the hosting attitude is orientated towards the communal doings. The aim is that llistening with costume and hosting with communal hospitality towards our listenings become tools for designers to gain a deeper understanding of how costume affects performers, and the boarder scope is that the research contributes to discussions on how teams can collaborate with humans and more-than-humans in more generous and inclusive manners. One example is that we acknowledge that our different disciplinary perspectives are creative possibilities in our common doing and that we recognise that how we share and exchange our differences has an impact on how we flourish co-creatively with our human and more-than-human co-creators.

Keywords: costume, crafting, listening with costume, listening, hosting, hosting with communal hospitality, artistic research, co-creating, co-creation