Costume Salons
At the level of practice, my ambitions are to develop and transform costume design processes into polyphonic co-creative performative workshops and/or events, called “Costume Salons”, that favour the multi-layered encounters of touch between human participants and non-human materials. The Costume Salons have four focal points: material sampling (sketching and making), fitting (fitting, dressing and wearing), conversation costume (prototyping and wearing) and co-habitation (to in-habit and to co-exist).
In the frame of the “Costume Salons”‘, I will invite different numbers of participants to engage with me and others actively. In the process, participants will respond to me, the others, the Salon frame, and reflect on the setup, the interaction, and the specific salon theme. The ambition is that the participants become actual co-creators in co-creative processes. During the costume salons, my position varies between initiator, facilitator, and participant. Connected to each Salon, I will write, co-write and re-write statements I call ‘manifestos’ with the intention to democratize, liberate, create transparency and initiating dialogues and negotiations in the “Costume Salon” processes, and create transparency for my perspective and, at the same time, scrutinize my position as designer and researcher.
Charlotte Østergaard and Camille Marchadour, Community Walk, festival Walking Copenhagen, 2020, photo by Daniel Jeremiah Persson.