AweAre

Charlotte Østergaard

AweAre

Charlotte Østergaard

Denmark / Lund University, Sweden

The AweAre project explores the nature of community through the act of wearing.

AweAre is a tactile landscape that facilitates a corporal co-wearing experience for four individuals. While wearing and moving the wearers are interdependent and influenced by the co-wearers. Hence, AweAre challenges the wearers to co-exist since wearing is a collective rather than an individual experience. The act of wearing invites and sometimes even provokes the wearers to physically negotiate ‘can I, do I want to, or, do I dare to loose control’, ‘how do I respond to the collective’ and ’how do we act together’.

The AweAre project was an investigation of ‘the concept of power' derived from the meaning: the ability of a person or a social institution to achieve goals by controlling, imposing, manipulating, or otherwise influencing the behavior of others. In this central sense, ‘the concept of power’ is associated with a conscious ability to control, since power exists only where both the willpower (“the will to power”, Nietzsche) and the ability to get one's will are present.

In the making process I perceived ‘the concept of power’ as a dance between having and losing control as a non-verbal dialogue and negotiation between:

-     me, the maker, and the material. The act of making was in flux between an urge to have control and to give control to (by following) the material.

-     me, the maker, and textile techniques. As an encounter between sampling techniques, which included knit, weaving and braiding.

In the wearing experience ‘the concept of power’ is an indirect and non-verbal hierarchical negotiation between

-     me, the designer, and the wearers. As an act of control imposed by the design which creates movement structures and limitations for the wearers.

-     the wearers and the worn design. As an encounter between the structure of the design, and a negotiation in flux between the personal, and the collective experience of wearing and moving.

The AweAre project arose from the artistic research project ‘Textile Techniques as a Potential for Costume Design’ performed at The Danish National School of Performing Arts (2016/17). AweAre was in 2019 selected for the curated exhibition ‘The Biennale for Crafts and Design’, where it was nominated for the Biennale prize. In 2020 AweAre was selected to be performed at the curated performance festival UP CLOSE. 

Bio: Charlotte Østergaard

website: www.charlotteostergaardcopenhagen.dk

email: studio@charlotteostergaard.dk

instagram: unfoldingmyworld

facebook: www.facebook.com/charlotteostergaardcopengagen

vimeo: vimeo.com/usercharlotteostergaard

Charlotte Østergaard is a Danish costume, textile and fashion designer and she has over the last 25 years worked as an independent artist. The main focus in Charlotte’s artistic work is a fascination with the body as a cultural and artistic expression. Charlotte has received several grants from the Danish Art Foundation and has an extensive exhibition practice. Charlotte’s artworks have been exhibited at curated exhibitions in Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Russia, Ukraine and USA, and her designs is represented in the museum collection of Danish Design Museum and The National Gallery of Denmark.

In 2019 her designs were presented at The 14th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (Prague), Innovative Costume of the 21st Century: The Next Generation (Moscow) and at The Biennale for Craft and Design (Copenhagen) where her artwork was nominated for the Biennale prize. From 1999-2014 Charlotte designed the womenswear collection Charlotte Østergaard Copenhagen (CØC). In the period 2006-2014 CØC was located in her own studio store in the centre of Copenhagen. The collection was based on Charlotte’s passion for pleating techniques and consisted of thematic series grounded in the Danish crafts/design tradition where series of products are continuously developed. Charlotte has designed costumes for more than 65 contemporary dance performances for numerous contemporary dance companies and independent choreographers in Denmark and abroad, several of which have received theatre awards. Charlotte has designed costumes for, among others, the Danish Dance Company, Black Box Dance Company and Rambert Dance Company.

Charlotte Østergaard is an experienced teacher in fashion/costume processes and in textile form-fixation techniques. In 2011-2019 she was employed at the Danish National School of Performing Arts (DDSKS). At DDSKS Charlotte developed several artistic research projects on costume and site specific staging. Charlotte is currently performing artistic research as PhD fellow at Malmö Theater Academy, Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts at Lund University in Sweden.