Towards a post-consumer subjectivity: a future for the crafts in the twenty first century?
By Peter Hughes
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| ‘Craftivism’ in action: Marianne Joergensen’s Pink M.24 Chaffee is a collaborative project incorporating knitted squares from hundreds of contributors. craft+design enquiry journal issue 3, 2011 |
A shorter version of this paper was presented at the international conference Making Futures: the Crafts in the Context of Emerging Global Sustainability Agendas
at the Plymouth College of Art and Design, UK, September 2009 and
published on the conference website at
http://makingfutures.plymouth.ac.uk/journalvol1/papers.php#critical-perspectives.
Peter Hughes
has been Curator of Decorative Arts, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
since 1999. He received a Bachelor of Education (Art) from the City Art
Institute (now COFA/UNSW) in 1986 and subsequently studied furniture
design (Centre for the Arts, University of Tasmania). In 1995 he
received a Master of Art (Research) in Art Theory from the Canberra
School of Art, Australian National University for a thesis interpreting
John Ruskin’s writing about design, society and the natural world from a
unifying ecological perspective. Peter continues to be interested in
links between ecological philosophy, our relationship with ‘objects’
generally and the crafts as a political and social as well as artistic
field of practice.
Abstract: The crafts movement has a long
history of engagement with both environmental and ethical issues. In
recent years, several movements have emerged—in response to
environmental issues and in opposition to the dominance of the
monoculture produced by globalising capitalism— that have powerful
resonances with some of the crafts movement’s early political and
ethical heritage. As environmental issues move into the mainstream, a
rising tide of concern presents an opportunity for the crafts movement
to renew its engagement with social, political and philosophical issues
and to contribute both to the debate and to the formation of a
sustainable material and creative culture of the future. Read complete paper
Abstract of Towards a post-consumer subjectivity: a future for the crafts in the twenty first century? by Peter Huges
Full paper published in craft + design enquiry; Issue 3, 2011 Sustainability in craft and design
Image caption: ‘Craftivism’ in action: Marianne Joergensen’s Pink M.24 Chaffee
is a collaborative project incorporating knitted squares from hundreds
of contributors. As a protest against the Danish (and the American and
British) involvement in the war in Iraq, a World War II tank was covered
from canon to caterpillar tracks with squares of knitted and crocheted
pink yarn. The 15 x 15 cm squares were knitted by people from many
European countries and the USA. The process of covering the tank was
documented in a video shown at the Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art
Center, Denmark as part of the exhibition “TIME” from April 27 to June 4
2006.
