Charlotte Østergaard 25% PhD seminar - Crafting material bodies. Feb 23

Participating:
Charlotte Østergaard, PhD student, Malmö Theatre Academy,
Karen Arnfred Vedel, associate professor, Københavns Universitet (opponent),
Esa Kirkkopelto, professor of artistic research, Malmö Theatre Academy (supervisor),
Sofia Pantouvaki, associate professor, Aalto University (second supervisor) 

About the event

My artistic research derives from years of design practice where pre-set institutional structures and hierarchal positions have often defined my individual design process and the collaborative processes. According to those structures and positions, the predetermined purpose of design is to serve visual expression. Practically this implies that the costume designer defines what a tailor produces and what a performer wears. 

The aim of my doctoral project is to re-negotiate the role of the costume designer. I will explore how, through a more openminded and playful approach towards my work, I can become a facilitator of heterogeneous co-creative costume processes between human participants and non-human materials. My intention is to open design processes, that I usually accomplish alone, by involving participants who, in more traditional settings, are excluded from the process. Inversely, I will study how participants inform and transform my design process and artistic practice.

At the seminar, I will present the overall design of my project.

This is an internal event for the Malmö Theatre Academy members of the Öresund Collegium for Artistic Research.
The event is also open for any member of the staff of Malmö Theatre Academy, or any student enrolled at the Malmö Theatre Academy.

Should you, as an external part, have any further interest in this particular event, please contact Prof. Esa Kirkkopelto at esa [dot] kirkkopelto [at] thm [dot] lu [dot] se

Short bio

Charlotte Østergaard’s artistic practice is between costume, textile and fashion design, and between actions of sketching, making, fitting, wearing and performing. Central in Charlotte’s practice is perceiving that ‘anything’ has potential as material. Charlotte has designed costumes more than 65 contemporary dance performances for numerous contemporary dance companies and independent choreographers, she has an extensive exhibition practice and for 15 years (1999-2014) she designed the collection Charlotte Østergaard Copenhagen. At The Danish National School of Arts Charlotte has performed two artistic research (KUV) projects on costume: In Dialogue with Material - on physicality in a design process (2018) and Textile techniques as potential for developing costume design (2016/17). In both projects’ participants (colleagues and students) with other professional perspectives were invited to actively participate and thereby inform the process itself. 

Intermediate seminars for artistic third-cycle education in theatre

Malmö Theatre Academy (THM), both for the doctoral students and as quality assurance of the department, University and discipline. The principal supervisor holds the primary responsibility for the ongoing review and follow-up of the doctoral student’s work. In order to examine the work and its openness for review from several different perspectives, and to ensure that the doctoral student’s activities are well-established at the department and in the artistic field, the work is to be presented in a wider context. At THM, PhD projects are presented in the form of open seminars on at least three occasions during the third-cycle programme. These are referred to as planning, midway and final seminars, and are scheduled to take place when approximately 25%, 50% and 75% of the third-cycle programme has been completed. At these seminars, the doctoral student can present different types of material, and artistic performance can be part of the presentation. 

Content and focus of the planning seminar (25%) 

Based on the artistic research project described in the doctoral student’s application, the material and the preliminary plan for the entire PhD project drawn up by the doctoral student during their first year on the programme are discussed. The doctoral student is expected to present a draft plan for how the artistic presentations relate to the reflective material and how this whole relates to the proposed research issue. The discussion should aim to provide a basis for the implementation of the entire PhD project. During the planning seminar, the design and feasibility of the project are discussed in relation to artistic practice, theoretical and artistic contextualisation, as well as methodological choices. The work presented should demonstrate a good overview of the artistic, methodological and presentational choices for which a foundation was established by the compulsory courses, among other things.