Les Tricoteuses: The plain and purl of solidarity and protest

Les Tricoteuses: The plain and purl of solidarity and protest

Liz Stops

 KNAG banner

Photo: Clare Twomey 2013

Abstract This paper focuses on the use of knitting as a protest tool by the Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG), a group formed to combat the development of Unconventional Gas Mining (UGM) in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. KNAG is socially and politically motivated, but not aligned to any political party. The group’s ‘Nannafesto’ emphasises care for community and country while protesting against corporate greed. I situate KNAG within a broad historical and contemporary framework of similarly motivated movements that have used knitting as a tool for social, cultural and ideological influence. I also elaborate on the act of knitting as a form of witness bearing, a means to facilitate calm persistence, a strategy for processing ideas and an instrument for reinforcing the threads connecting community. Read full paper

Abstract from: Les Tricoteuses: The plain and purl of solidarity and protest

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry: issue 6 Issue 6 2014, Craft.Material.Memory

Knitting nannas, political, CSG, craft, activism

Unfinished business: Craft and revivification

Unfinished business: Craft and revivification

Mae Finlayson and Karen Hall

Mae Finlayson, All my love, Anon. (stretched doily) (detail), 2013, yarn, pins and embroidery hoop, dimensions variable

Photo: Mae Finlayson

Abstract Reactivating incomplete and discarded domestic craft projects is an exploration of how such objects can mediate between presence and absence. Contemporary creative work that gathers and reclaims the unfinished projects acknowledges, extends and plays with their rich materiality as well as the dormant stories embedded within them. Using unfinished objects can be a way of speaking to loss and absence, and an assertion of the presence of other voices in the act of repurposing. A material dialogue, created through the trace of the hand and the repetitive labour of crafting, emphasises the potential within these discarded objects. The tension between the implied presence of the first maker and the displacement of the past through revivification is the entry point to nostalgia, a label that implies both being out of place as well as out of time. While nostalgia is often seen as an innately conservative practice, functioning as a reductive stand-in for the richness of the past, we take up Svetlana Boym’s (2001) argument that the impossible longing of reflective nostalgia can be productive, humorous and utopian. This essay explores the interplay of past and present in the process of finding, remaking and repurposing. Read full paper

Abstract from: Unfinished business: Craft and revivification

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry: issue 6 Issue 6 2014, Craft.Material.Memory

 

craft, unfinished, trace, materials, nostalgia  

Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery

Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery
Sabine Pagan 

Sabine Pagan, Site #2, ring, 2009, 9k yellow gold cube (handmade), surgical steel mount (rapidprototyped), 35 x 35 x 12 mm

Photo: Emily Snadden

Abstract The body occupies a significant place in both contemporary jewellery and architectural practice. The wearable object is made for the body and, therefore, invites the presence of a wearer, even if only metaphorically. Similarly, our built environment is constructed in relation to the scale of the human body and to accommodate our actions as users of architecture. Yet, important to both practices is the relationship between the object — jewellery or architecture — and the body beyond its physicality.

This paper examines embodiment from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Drawing on Jack Cunningham’s model (2005) maker–wearer–viewer as a framework, I propose an extended schema that integrates the object within the relational dynamics, with the aim to investigate the embodied relationship between object and wearer.

Underpinning the research is a case study that I conducted on the sensorial qualities of Peter Zumthor’s architecture, in particular Therme Vals. The study demonstrates that the embodied experience of the architecture by the user contributes to the development of these qualities.

In this paper, I argue that the transposition and testing of this concept in jewellery generates new relational variables, from which a new methodology of practice in jewellery informed by architecture emerges. Read full paper

Abstract from: Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry: issue 6 Issue 6 2014, Craft.Material.Memory

jewellery, architecture, cross-disciplinary, wearing, senses, Therme Vals