Craft Activism

Tapper, J., Zucker, G., (2011)  Craft Activism, New York: Random House Inc

p5
"When I am asked to define craft, I don't and I won"t. I like to think of it as undefinable
 - with no rules - and that is why I was drawn to it in the first place.  Craft is a way to connect with people, a way to create a community that you are inspired by. I have come to realise that once one's hands are in motion, "making" is difficult to stop."

p6
"I came to realise that all kinds of crafts have moved from private passion to public statement."

"...we were stunned to realise how far reaching this new blend of craft and activism ......"craftivism" ...
 really is.  "

it's part of the DIY movement, which promots handmade objects ....over mass-produced articles.

p7
Profitability of the work of one's own hands and heart have been expanded by the most up to date technology, in particular the internet.

Thinking through craft

Adamson, G., (2007), Thinking through craft, Oxford, New York, BERG.

p11

"artworks are something made that have become more than something simply made".

craft does not function as a vehical of self doubt and rigorous internal analysis that art does-far from it. It is instead a supplement of the art work, .... A supplement is that which provides something necessary to another, "original" entity, but which is nonetheless considered to be extraneous (irrelevant) to that original....the supplement as pointing to a "lack", which might be present in a single work....

p12
"the guilt frame that surrounds a painting ...is not part of the artwork, but ...conveys the sense of the paintings importance, it props up the artwork".

p59
"the way in which something has been produced shows itself in te finished product. the way it shows itself is what we call facture".

p71
"it's not the technical side of it that matters: it's something beyond that".
The implication is that the proper response is not theoretical discussion, but shoulder-shrugging  amazement. when somebody's' got "it" ...we are usually content to admire, rather than analyze.

p74
"good workmanship is that which carries out or improves upon the intended design. Bad workmanship is what fails to do so and thwarts the design.

p74/75
...craft skill never comes free; it must be learned. ...skill is something that seems noteworthy only from the position of the unskilled.

p81
...any craft had inherent moral integrity as a creative experience, so it followed that every child should be educated to become 'self-expressive craftsmen...'.  The inclusion of artistic and vocational courses in school's curriculum was not a way to make education a more efficient way of building the economy, but rather a means of working towards "a sound society".

p83
...technigue applied through materials gives access to a universal whole.

p84
"The best education is one;s own experience.Experimenting surpasses studying".

p139
If modern art....is grounded in serching for self-awareness, then amerterism is a form of creativity that can never be intergrated into this model.In the popular imagination, hobby crafts ar on a par with such activities as stamp collecting and weekend sport - activities done in a spirit of self-gratification rather than critique.
p140
Sewing in the living room or woodworking in the garage are activities that reflect a culture of prosperous excess.
.....idle hands make for potentially revolutionary work.Similarly, the succassful displacement of unused time into harmless leisure activities has been vital to the project of capatalist expansion.
....there are huge profits to be gained by selling commodities (materials/equipment) to aspiring craftspeople, amaturs perform a valuable ....service to the economy.
Presicsely because they are made so lovingly, homemade crafts betray the degree to which their makers are integrated into the larger structure of capitalist ideology, in which commodidity forms are the primary carriers of meaning.
p152
Seek to be good but not to be great
A womans noblest station is retreat
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight.
Domestic worth still shuns too atrong a light.

p153
"Quality is something that a white Anglo-Saxon protestant man does .....Quality is expensive decoration for rich people who happen to be blind."
p155
rather than "untying the apron strings" the artists involved in womanhouse were "keeping the apron on, flaunting it , and turning it into art"

Craft in dialogue

Jonsson, L., (ED), (2005), Craft in dialogue. Six views on practice in change,Stockholm: IASPIS

Page 7

Crafts themselves are one of the areas in which the contemporary is exposed and discussed.

Page 12

In the classical episteme, things are separate from history. A thing is analyzed according to its visibility, measurability, and through various tests......in the modern episteme the internal relations among things are what is significant. The link to vision no longer plays the same crucial role, the function of things and their determination do.

Craft is undergoing a revival in the 21^st century, but the question is why. Is it simply nostalgic yearning for the human-made and the synthetic in between everyday life and art....

Page 31

Students now spurn the constraining focus on the physical workmanship of finished products and the need to concentrate on a particular material,  and are instead becoming more concerned with underlying ideas. ...There message is that if one resists getting locked to a specific material, the possibilities of expression are wider.

Page 39

“it is the uniformity of perfection that kills,”stated Bernard Leach  every thing is the same.

Page 64

“how can we remain indifferent to what is going on? Our art must necessarily be a reflection of that which surrounds us.”

Page 65

With the use of poignant motifs, the public should be made to react and then act by extension.

Page 68

To associate in groups and organizations is something that has once again started to become more frequent among the crafts practitioners, artists and designers in our time ...their association is based on mutually shared attitude towards the work, 

But is it art?

Freeland, C., (2001) But is it art?, New York: Oxford University Press.

The book gives an overview of the history of art and some of the theories in art. It is easy to read and understand. It has given me connections between past and present, from the Arts and Craft movement, right up to the technological age.

P11   Beautiful objects do not serve ordinary human purposes, as plates and spoons do. ... Something beautiful has ‘purposiveness without purpose’.

P60  stained glass, ... is now more associated with craft than art; and landscape gardening seems a hobby or design practice rather than ‘Art’.

P 117-‘  ...some art takes place outside ...using public or government funding. One example is the public art project culture in action. ... public projects like this one are successors of earlier efforts to bring art to the so-called masses, ... similarly, the arts and craft movement ... aimed to enhance peoples everyday experiences by bringing beauty to there usual aesthetic surroundings’.

P130   ‘Genius belongs to creators who employ their medium so that, all viewers can respond, with awe and admiration’.

Cradle to Cradle

Mc DonoughW., Barungart, M., (2002), Cradle to Cradle remaking the way we make things, New York : North Point Press.

Page 20

“Citys … are nothing less than overgrown prisons that shut out the world and all its beauties,” wrote the poet John Clare.

Page 23

Winston Chirchill refered to manufacturing as, “the arsenal of democracy.” Because the productive capacity was so huge, it could (as in world war two) Produce an undeniably potent response to war conditions.

The book is about recycling and it states why the way we recycle at the moment is not very good. This is due to the fact that we recycle at present are not designed to be recycled.  The book suggests the path of redesigning the goods we make. This will make recycling goods much more efficient, as they will be made completely from reusable components.

The Persistence of Craft

Greenhaig, p., (ED) (2002) The Persistence of Craft, London: A&C Black LTD.

1 Classification , 2 Economy,  3 Amatteuridm,   4 Techology,   5 Morality,   6 Ethnicity,   7 Place,          8 Domesticity,   9 Museolohy,   10 Gender,   11 History,   12 Modernity,   13 Quality.

Page 7

A key element of the idea of modern craft lies in these observations.  In an affirmation of process over product, amateur craft is to do with the need to physically engage with things ....it is not the same thing as the obsessive. Intense search that is central to the professional sphere.  The former is to do with the injection of the subjective self into objective phenomena the latter is to do with the objectification of the subjective.

Page 13

Works of art are not objects, works of art are relationships between people and oblects,.  If the relationship does not exist, neither does the work of art.

Art is primarily an ides. Remove the ides and only  social class and economics remain.

Page 20

The actual making of beautiful objects is only one aspect of the success or failure of a genre.

POWER OF MAKING

Charny, D., (2011), POWER OF MAKING the importance of being skilled, London: V&A Publishing and the Craft Council.

Page 43.   The role of making is ... to give life to things, but also to show evidence of life within us, perhaps also at a spiritual level.

The effect the industrial revolution has had on today’s craft movement. It also says where the craft movement may be moving in the future.

The Craft Reader

Adamson, G., (Ed), (2010), The Craft Reader, New York: Berg.

Page 2

With the onset of the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century craft began to suffer...the arts and craft movement , emerged to rescue it. .....First craft skill was ... not simply eroded as a result of industrialization. Rather, it has been continually transformed,

Describing craft as an art form,....disguises the otherwise obvious  ...  the potential radicality of craft’s non-art status.
craftivism 

Page 325

The focus of his critique shifted from machine as villain to the perversity of a system of manufacture that reduced the worker to an unthinking, unfeeling drone. For Ruskin, the principle error of contemporary society resided in its tacit presumption that the consuming pleasure of the few justified the dehumanisation of the many.

“Art is the operation of the hand and intelligence of man together.”

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together”

Page 326

“craft was something of a higher calling, for it was the real art of the people.” affordable

P 437

In the modernist view, design supersedes craft as a historical stage. Through informed effort and precise methodology design is able to guide mechanical work and render it superior even to handwork ... ‘art as a pure intellectual exercise.

Imperfections and deviations came to be seen as legitimating characteristics. The historical roles are reversed – perfect machine work is depicted as bad and imperfect handwork as good.

Craft is eventually cornered into a position of terminal nostalgia or, worse, of elitism. Via a notion of consumer exclusivity.expencive

Small-batch production and even one-offs are now feasible in many industrial settings ---(computer aided design etc..) bespoke 

P 330

“Craft is not primarily an individual experience, but a collective one.” community projects

P331

At heart, craft aims for a type of creativity that is universal and pervasive. ... the fact that craft has come to be seen as a mainly personal, even solitary, activity is perplexing indeed.

The old paradigm of mass production is on its way out: a new paradigm, the individuation of experience, arises in its place.

Some time way back around the sixteenth century, craft and industry were synonyms, both capable of denoting the idea of skill. Now that industry is in the process of reinventing itself, perhaps design and craft will become synonyms too: complementary aspects of the same ongoing process of shaping experience through the interaction between people and things.

P 389

“every kind of capitalist production....” writes Marx, “has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instrument of labour, but the instrument of labour that employs the workman. .....”

The hand....is made redundant by technological advances.unemployment

P390

The modern person only works at what can be abbreviated. mechanised ?

P392

Craft as mode of activity translates into craft as a power, an obscure power, nestling in the imaginatively conceived object. craftivism

social memory

Fentress.J. & Whickam.C., (1992) Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past. Oxford: Blackwell publishers.

Chapter 1 page 7

When we remember, we represent ourselves to ourselves and to those around us. To the extent that our ‘nature; - that which we truly are – can be revealed in articulation.

scary thought

Page 8

Memory has retreated for us more and more into the personal. It is a source of private, not social, knowledge.

no one knows what your thinking.

Page 17 &18

A ‘map’ in the sense that we are using the term, is a visual concept, a constructed or projected image, referring to and bearing information about something outside itself. It is a concept that supports the ‘memory of things’.

A mnemonic map is a visual image ... the visual expression of knowledge is more complex than the semantic.........the map would be a conceptualised image

this is the part of mapping that I find interesting.

Page 19

We are so accustomed to using words to support our ‘memory of things’ that we do not always notice that they are there. We fail to remember that we are using a medium at all.

I would not have thought of words as a medium,

Page 88

Memories tend to be remembered in the first place because of their power to legitimize the present, ..... Memories about the past can themselves change across time, but even when they do not, they will certainly be selected out of the potentially infinite set of possible memories.

selective memory.

Page 210

It is we who are remembering, and it is to us that the knowledge, emotions, and images ultimately refer.

personal memories.

We can neither know nor experience our memories unless we can first ‘think’them; and the moment we ‘think’ our memories, recalling and articulating them, they are no longer object; they become part of us.

Only by making memories part of us, first, can we share them with others.

Memory has an immense social role. It tells us who we are.

these images are untouched by the hand of any painter; these stories cannot bear a copyright.

story telling, recounting the past to the younger generation,

Page 202

Memories die, but only to be replaced by other memories.

I like thi.

Landscape phenomenology

Wylie, J., (2007), Landscape, Oxon, Routledge.

page 139.
Landscape phenomenology often lays stress upon some measure of direct, bodily contact with, and experience of landscape.

page 141
land art/ earth art, - movement began late 1960s, - aim to liberate art from confined, controlled settings e.g. galleries / museums. (spiral jetty).

page 143
landscape is conceptualised in terms of active, embodied and dynamic relations betweem people and land, between culture and nature more generally.
these relations are seen as ongoing and evolving rather than static. forever changing

page 144
landscape becomes the accomplice and expression. ?

p145
we define ourselves - we define the essence of what it is to exist as a human being - in terms of visual detachment. we define ourselves not as creatures in a world but as points of view upon it.

p146
thinking is thus the essence of being human, or, as Descarts puts it, I think therefore I am.

p149
"far from my body being for me no more than a fragment of space, there would be no space at all for me if I had no body" (ibid102).

p150
As I contemplate the blue of the sky I am not set over against it as an acosmic subject: I do not possess it in thought, or spread out toward it some idea of blue.....I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it thinks itself in me. (Merleau-Ponty, 1969, p214 Merleau - Ponty, 1969 quoted in Wylie, 2007, p150)) It's only when someone puts it into words.

p152
When I look, I see with landscape

p160
Landscape here understood , is not an amount of something, but a quality of feeling, in the end an emotional investment. I aggree.

p161
'through living in it, the landscape becomes a part of us, just as we are part of it' (ibid. p.191).

At its most intense, the boundaries between person and place, or between the self and the landscape, dissolve altogether. (ingold, 2000,p.56, original emphisis).

p.162
the landscape is not so much the object as 'the homeland of our thoughts'. (ingold, 2000,
I like this.
p176
Landscape is more than a way of seeing. Landscape is that with which we see, a perception - with - the - world. When I look I see with landscape.

p178
'my power of imagining is nothing but the persistence of the world around me'. Yes I only think about what I see and hear.

p182
Phenomonology originally takes shape as a lost quest for lost essences and ultimate foundations. ? Is this true?

TOPOPHILIA

Tuan, Y., (1990) Topophilia, A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Nee York, Columbia UniversitPress.

page 1
With out self-understanding we cannot hope for enduring solutions to environmental problems, which are fundamentally human problems. And human problems ...... hinge on the psycholohical pole of motivation.

p.53
Has the female a characteristic way of structuring the world that is different from the male?

In every known culture , male and female are assigned distinctive roles; they are taught in childhood to behave in differing ways, .... Dolls and guns.

p.55
When a girl designs an environment, it is usually that of a house interior, ..... in a girl's scene, people and animals are mostly within such an interior or enclosure, and they are primarily .. in a static position. Why static>

Along with tall structures boys play with the idea of collapse; ruins are exclusively male constructions. Does this include decay?

p99A man's belongings are an extension of his personality; to be deprived of them is to diminish, ...his worth as a human being. Capitalism, ...a person in the process of time invests bits of his emotional life in his home, and beyond the home in his neighborhood. ...which in its familiarity protects the human being from the bewilderment of the outside world

Walter Benjamin on Architecture

Harrison, C., & Wood, P., (ed), 2003, Art in Theory 1900-2000 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, USA: Blackwell Publishing. Page 525 -526.

Walter Benjamin.

‘Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art’.

‘A man who contemplates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into enters into this work of art....In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art’. 

‘Buildings have been man’s companions since primeval times.... the human need for shelter is lasting.

‘Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art’.  

my thoughts on the passage

Architecture is a simple way of bringing art to the masses, buildings are appreciated by two senses, touch and sight, the appreciation of the art of architecture is developed by habit, not attentive concentration or contemplation