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