On January 15, 2025 at Bryggeriteatern, Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University, Sweden I had my doctoral defence. At the defence I had made an exhibition in the theatre space with the connecting costume and the knotted textiles that I had made during the research periode.
Photo: Sergio Gianoli
I wanted my textile companions to surround me – to be present as they speak for themselves – as well as that I wanted the audience to enter my textile world.
As part of my defence I had invited the dancers Alex Berg, Camille Marchadour, Daniel Jeremiah Persson and Josefine Ibsen to perform an improvised version of AweAre – a movement quintet.
Opponent: Dr. Donatella Barbieri, University of the Arts London. Chair (Ordförande): professor Sven Bjernstedt, Teaterhögskolan i Malmö. Committee (Betygsnämnd): professor Henrik Frisk, dr Anne Louise Bang, dr Rachel Hann and dr Madeline Taylor.
As written on Lund University’s webpage I am the first person to recieve a doctor degree within the subject of costume. Read more here
Main supervisor: Dr Sofia Pantouvaki – scenographer and Professor of Costume Design at Aalto University, Finland. Second supervisor: Dr Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk – dramaturgue and Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway.
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.
I 2017 arbejde jeg på projektet ”Tekstilteknikker som kostumeformgivningspoentiale”,som er et kunstnerisk udviklingsprojekt i samarbejde med Den Danske Scenekunstskoles skræddersal. Projektet tager udgangspunkt i en undersøge tekstilet som formgivningspoentiale i en scenekunstnerisk kontekst.
