Download or read book The Politics of Contemporary Craft Culture written by Jen Anisef and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While once considered the domain of grandmothers and school children, crafts have become a trendy cultural practice among North American youth. The popularity of craft among young people has inspired on- and off-line communities in which craft is understood to have important social and political implications. Layering data from my ethnographic investigation of contemporary craft culture with Foucauldian and feminist theory I examine some of the ways in which young people employ craft as a tool of political resistance. After laying down a foundational model of politics rooted in Foucault's theory of power/knowledge I investigate crafters' contestation of dominant discourses connected to consumerism and gender roles. Crafters are producers in a culture of consumption, seeking fulfilling and ethical alternatives to the alienating life modes that surround them. In this thesis I demonstrate that contemporary craft is a meaningful social and political practice and that an analysis of this mode of resistance generates insights into the nature of the present-day political landscape. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).
Download or read book The New Politics of the Handmade written by Anthea Black and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy. The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.
Download or read book Craft Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics 19th 20th Century written by Janice Helland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Craft practice has a rich history and remains vibrant, sustaining communities while negotiating cultures within local or international contexts. More than two centuries of industrialization have not extinguished handmade goods; rather, the broader force of industrialization has redefined and continues to define the context of creation, deployment and use of craft objects. With object study at the core, this book brings together a collection of essays that address the past and present of craft production, its use and meaning within a range of community settings from the Huron Wendat of colonial Quebec to the Girls? Friendly Society of twentieth-century England. The making of handcrafted objects has and continues to flourish despite the powerful juggernaut of global industrialization, whether inspired by a calculated refutation of industrial sameness, an essential means to sustain a cultural community under threat, or a rejection of the imposed definitions by a dominant culture. The broader effects of urbanizing, imperial and globalizing projects shape the multiple contexts of interaction and resistance that can define craft ventures through place and time. By attending to the political histories of craft objects and their makers, over the last few centuries, these essays reveal the creative persistence of various hand mediums and the material debates they represented.
Download or read book Extra Ordinary written by Maria Elena Buszek and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVCollection of essays that examine the aesthetics and politics of craft culture in the contemporary art world./div
Download or read book Extra Ordinary written by Maria Elena Buszek and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting.
Download or read book Craft is Political written by D Wood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the 21st century, various craft practices have drawn the attention of academics and the general public in the West. In Craft is Political, D Wood has gathered a collection of essays to argue that this attention is a direct response to and critique of the particular economic, social and technological contexts in which we live. Just as Ruskin and Morris viewed craft and its ethos in the 1800s as a kind of political opposition to the Industrial Revolution, Wood and her authors contend that current craft activities are politically saturated when perspectives from the Global South, Indigenous ideology and even Western government policy are examined. Craft is Political argues that a holistic perspective on craft, in light of colonialism, post-colonialism, critical race theory and globalisation, is overdue. A great diversity of case studies is included, from craft and design in Turkey and craft markets in New Zealand to Indigenous practitioners in Taiwan and Finnish craft education. Craft is Political brings together authors from a variety of disciplines and nations to consider politicised craft.
Download or read book Reinventing Craft in China written by Geoffrey Gowlland and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating journey into a world of craftwork that has undergone seismic change since the era of Chairman Mao. This is a highly significant book for all scholars of craft and material culture.
Download or read book The Politics of Vietnamese Craft written by Jennifer Way and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer Way's study The Politics of Vietnamese Craft uncovers a little-known chapter in the history of American cultural diplomacy, in which Vietnamese craft production was encouraged and shaped by the US State Department as an object for consumption by middle class America. Way explores how American business and commerce, department stores, the art world and national museums variously guided the marketing and meanings of Vietnamese craft in order to advance American diplomatic and domestic interests. Conversely, American uses of Vietnamese craft provide an example of how the United States aimed to absorb post-colonial South Vietnam into the 'Free World', in a Cold War context of American anxiety about communism spreading throughout Southeast Asia. Way focuses in particular on the part played by the renowned American designer Russel Wright, contracted by the US International Cooperation Administration's aid programs for South Vietnam to survey the craft industry in South Vietnam and manage its production, distribution and consumption abroad and at home. Way shows how Wright and his staff brought American ideas about Vietnamese history and culture to bear in managing the making of Vietnamese craft.
Download or read book Crafting Identity written by Pavel Shlossberg and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crafting Identity goes far beyond folklore in its ethnographic exploration of mask making in central Mexico. In addition to examining larger theoretical issues about indigenous and mestizo identity and cultural citizenship as represented through masks and festivals, the book also examines how dominant institutions of cultural production (art, media, and tourism) mediate Mexican “arte popular,” which makes Mexican indigeneity “digestible” from the standpoint of elite and popular Mexican nationalism and American and global markets for folklore. The first ethnographic study of its kind, the book examines how indigenous and mestizo mask makers, both popular and elite, view and contest relations of power and inequality through their craft. Using data from his interviews with mask makers, collectors, museum curators, editors, and others, Pavel Shlossberg places the artisans within the larger context of their relationships with the nation-state and Mexican elites, as well as with the production cultures that inform international arts and crafts markets. In exploring the connection of mask making to capitalism, the book examines the symbolic and material pressures brought to bear on Mexican artisans to embody and enact self-racializing stereotypes and the performance of stigmatized indigenous identities. Shlossberg’s weaving of ethnographic data and cultural theory demystifies the way mask makers ascribe meaning to their practices and illuminates how these practices are influenced by state and cultural institutions. Demonstrating how the practice of mask making negotiates ethnoracial identity with regard to the Mexican state and the United States, Shlossberg shows how it derives meaning, value, and economic worth in the eyes of the state and cultural institutions that mediate between the mask maker and the market.
Download or read book Exploring Contemporary Craft written by Jean Johnson and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 1998-09-19 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The craft of craft, the art of craft – here in Canada we're just starting to really talk about these things. In March 1999, Jean Johnson, who runs Toronto's Craft Studio at Harbourfront Centre, organized a wildly successful symposium on the state of craft in Canada. Curators, writers, critics, academics and craftspeople spoke about all aspects of craft: history, practice, theory, criticism. Taken together, these papers create a clear picture of the vibrant crafts scene in Canada. The symposium was a groundbreaking event, a first in Canada, offering to the crafts community a new depth of consideration. The book, too, is a Canadian first, and it will allow a dialogue about the academic side of the craft movement to continue. Each of the book's three sections, History, Theory and Critical Writing, contains a keynote paper and essays by experts in each field, including Mark Kingwell writing 'On Style,' Blake Gopnik on 'Reviewing Craft Exhibitions for the Art Pages,' and Robin Metcalfe addressing 'Teacup Readings: Contextualizing Craft in the Art Gallery.'
Download or read book Makers Crafters Educators written by Elizabeth Garber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Makers, Crafters, Educators brings the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos of maker and crafter movements into educational environments, and examines the politics of cultural change that undergird them. Addressing making and crafting in relation to community and schooling practices, culture, and place, this edited collection positions making as an agent of change in education. In the volume’s five sections—Play and Hacking, Access and Equity, Interdependence and Interdisciplinarity, Cultural and Environmental Sustainability, and Labor and Leisure—authors from around the world present a collage of issues and practices connecting object making, participatory culture, and socio-cultural transformation. Offering gateways into cultural practices from six continents, this volume explores the participatory culture of maker and crafter spaces in education and reveals how community sites hold the promise of such socio-cultural transformation.
Download or read book Objects and Meaning written by M. Anna Fariello and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the 20th century, there were increasing numbers of artists who chose to work within a fine art aesthetic (i.e., expressive, communicative, innovative, unique) while simultaneously embracing qualities associated with craft production (i.e., intimacy, materiality, labor, ritual). At the periphery of their world loomed issues of status, gender, community, and economics. This fluid situation made for an exciting mix of ideas that helped perpetuate an ongoing debate within an art world no longer as monothematic as it appeared in print. Objects and Meaning expands upon a national conversation questioning how various academic disciplines and cultural institutions approach and assign meaning to artist-made objects in postmodern North America. Although most of the discourse since the mid 20th century revolved around the split between art and craft, the contributors to this collection of essays take a broader view, examining the historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives that defined the parameters of that conversation. Their focus is on issues concerning works that appeared to 'cross over' from mainstream art to an amorphous and pluralistic aesthetic milieu that has yet to be defined. The essays collected for this volume, loosely organized into three groupings_Historical Contexts, Cultural Systems, and Theoretical Frames_contribute to a deeper understanding of the meaning of objects and how that meaning comes to be defined. Although the style of writing in this collection ranges from passionate conviction to cool observation with points of view from different professional backgrounds, each essay reflects original ideas introduced into the cultural dialogue during this period.
Download or read book Dark Matter written by Gregory Sholette and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalized artists, the "dark matter" of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it. Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector shut off from prestigious galleries and champagne receptions. This broader creative culture feeds the mainstream with new forms and styles that can be commodified and used to sustain the few artists admitted into the elite. This dependency, and the advent of inexpensive communication, audio and video technology, has allowed this "dark matter" of the alternative art world to increasingly subvert the mainstream and intervene politically as both new and old forms of non-capitalist, public art. This book is essential for anyone interested in interventionist art, collectivism, and the political economy of the art world.
Download or read book Craft and the Creative Economy written by S. Luckman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft and making in the contemporary cultural economy, with a distinctive focus on the ways in which this creative sector is growing exponentially as a result of online shopfronts and home-based micro-enterprise, 'mumpreneurialism' and downshifting, and renewed demand for the handmade.
Download or read book Gathering written by Marian Pastor-Roces and published by National University of Singapore Press. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fray written by Julia Bryan-Wilson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1974, women in a feminist consciousness-raising group in Eugene, Oregon, formed a mock organization called the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society. Emblazoning its logo onto t-shirts, the group wryly envisioned female collective textile making as a practice that could upend conventions, threaten state structures, and wreak political havoc. Elaborating on this example as a prehistory to the more recent phenomenon of “craftivism”—the politics and social practices associated with handmaking—Fray explores textiles and their role at the forefront of debates about process, materiality, gender, and race in times of economic upheaval. Closely examining how amateurs and fine artists in the United States and Chile turned to sewing, braiding, knotting, and quilting amid the rise of global manufacturing, Julia Bryan-Wilson argues that textiles unravel the high/low divide and urges us to think flexibly about what the politics of textiles might be. Her case studies from the 1970s through the 1990s—including the improvised costumes of the theater troupe the Cockettes, the braided rag rugs of US artist Harmony Hammond, the thread-based sculptures of Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña, the small hand-sewn tapestries depicting Pinochet’s torture, and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt—are often taken as evidence of the inherently progressive nature of handcrafted textiles. Fray, however, shows that such methods are recruited to often ambivalent ends, leaving textiles very much “in the fray” of debates about feminized labor, protest cultures, and queer identities; the malleability of cloth and fiber means that textiles can be activated, or stretched, in many ideological directions. The first contemporary art history book to discuss both fine art and amateur registers of handmaking at such an expansive scale, Fray unveils crucial insights into how textiles inhabit the broad space between artistic and political poles—high and low, untrained and highly skilled, conformist and disobedient, craft and art.
Download or read book Unpacking the Collection written by Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, Or.) and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1937, the Museum is one of the oldest organizations dedicated to craft in the United States. This book presents a selection of works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft. The first publication to document the Museum's collection and its connections to dramatic changes in artistic practice over the past 70 years, Unpacking the Collection introduces this vital regional center for craft through photographs of work, essays, texts, archival photographs, decade-by-decade accounts of the institution's links to modern craft history and an abbreviated exhibition chronology. The book also reveals connections between the collection and the Museum's exhibition history, links between craft and visual culture, and the importance of recognizing regional specificity and identity in the age of globalization.
