This lecture was presented at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the series From Trash to Spectacle: Materiality in Contemporary Art Production on April 1st, 2009.
An enhanced podcast can fond at http://saic-trashspectacle.blogspot.com/
I’m going to preface this lecture with a brief introduction. What I am about to deliver is an essay, in the formal sense of the word: to attempt, an effort. It is an effort at seeking new ways to talk about Craft as an operation, and in doing so, working towards an active discourse for Craft that might parallel what exists for ‘art.’ I am concerned with the possibility of abandoning a separate discourse for Craft, but recognize that an evolution in language must occur that offers a strong assertive stance for what is being done when Craft is at play.
To be clear, when I talk about evolving the language for Craft, it is not at the expense of any art discourse that might also serve Craft objects. It is also not a language strictly intended to serve the traditional Craft mediums, but might be to the advantage of a painter as much as weaver. Furthermore, this lecture is not a historical analysis, but both Craft’s ancient history in guilds, workshops and the domestic sphere and it's more recent political ties to socialism and feminism are at the root of these words, even if they are not referenced explicitly.
To wit, the following lecture is about: symbolic Craft in art, particularly the use of sloppy Craft in recent unmonumentalism and a refusal to declare this representative of Craft, followed by a call for a new rhetoric of Craft that holds in high regard the performance of Craft and the meaning therein, the doing rather than the done.
Also, at the outset: this a joint effort. I am speaking in part on behalf of myself, but also on behalf of my ‘thinking partner’ Judith Leemann. Further to that, these ideas we are working out have been worked out in conversations with other artists, writers and curators, many of them our students and colleagues.
The re-imaging of a new rhetoric for Craft is an active process for Leemann and I. Like the practices around which we are forming this language, it is moving. Although there is an implied shame to not having your rhetoric squared away with neatly tucked hospital corners, ours is un-tucked, even open-source, and unguarded. Like the metallurgist assaying his gold, we are weighing our words, to see where they land, if they have or could give traction.
Dirty, sexy craft.
In what seems a contradiction, a long time distrust of both pleasure and labor has kept Craft at the margins of art discourse, or at the very least, at the margins of a critical discourse that requires the impact of repulsion, disruption and disembodied exaltation in order to endorse an object or practice as not only serious, but art. Craft, it would seem, is on one hand too seductive and too consumable, and on the other, too laborious, to be adequately demanding on the viewer. In other words, it is presumed that Craft is understood.
For too long, Craft has been devalued for its association with the body and function and for its possession of a tacit knowledge that eludes the critical and metaphysical language that shores up art. On one hand, the anti-pleasure paradigm has kept Craft at bay lest anyone indulge too much in the sensuality of transforming material or veer too close to the immorality of ornament. On the other, an association with manual labor was demeaning for its proximity to a class of maker deemed un-self-critical. Yet at the same time, art does open its frame to Craft when Craft is self-consciously re-contextualized as a metaphor for the personal, pathetic, abject or low, otherwise, as a process, rich in implications of struggle, commitment, endurance, dialog, collaboration, and care, the frame remains closed.
Craft as process, whether the traditional craft fields, trades or simply an artist’s virtuosic skill, have been regarded with continued suspicion. This suspicion has traditionally been illustrated by the increasingly de riguer practice of out-sourcing production or operating a shop of assistants in order to fabricate, if not manufacture, well-made or high craft art-commodities. Even artists who explore Craft in their personal practice often deny Craft’s relevance, avoiding any discussion of or association to it, lest the very word cast a shadow of doubt upon the conceptual or immaterial underpinnings of their practice.
Perhaps a push to resolve the mind/body split, that after postmodernism seems elitist and dated, has inspired a rereading of modern art and a new desperate raiding of craft materials for some hallmark of authentic union. Regardless, without a true recognition of Craft process, as a dialog between maker and material where the medium and the methodology are always partners in intention, this resolution remains a shallow one, where Craft is a resource only to be exploited symbolically.
I.
Everything is either spectacle or trash.
That was the starting point for this series: a reflection on both the current material trends in art (noble versus poor materials) but also the self-conscious quality of its construction (virtuosic versus slipshod). Materiality and construction being within the domain of craft, its natural we would bring this conversation into the Fiber & Material Studies department for reflection.
In the case of what has now been termed unmonumental sculpture, much could be said. It does, as Richard Flood has written (for the exhibition catalog), “insinuate itself into the world” either by quietly assembling its presence from the discarded parts of the everyday or by virtue of its slipshod construction, barely asserting a presence that would distinguish itself as something so vain as art.
The slip-shod announces a ‘presence of hand’ and stresses the immediacy of the body making genuine arrangements, unmediated choices and exploring material possibility. It resonates as personal and bodily, almost private and totemic. It is positively romantic, with the artist back in the studio, and the fabricators out of work. Through material play, collage and fraternization, it incorporates both found materials and handicraft gestures. But this presence of hand and handicraft should not be confused with a true ‘presence of craft.’
In an either/or dichotomy of trash or spectacle, the unheroic artwork that refuses to be an object, is made from humble materials and cobbled together suggests an opposition to so-called ‘noble’ materials, virtuosity, stability and of course, the commodity that craft is often accused of being. In other words, while bodily and material, the unmonumental engages a rhetoric of anti-craft. So despite all that the unmonumental might have to recommend it, it is dangerous territory for Craft. It stands to return Craft as a practice to the margins, while it holds onto and uses rough-hewn lumps of clay and crocheted bits of cloth as symbolic detritus.
It says quite a lot about how craftedness is understood that the preferred location for ‘presence-of-hand’ is in that which is self-consciously sloppy. Accordingly, this preference implies that there is an ‘absence-of-hand’ in anything that appears mass-produced, machined or mediated or is in fact made in multiple, even if done so by real, skilled, human hands. In light of the perfection of machine-driven fabrication, works of spectacular skill lack ‘presence of hand’ to our eyes, leaving the slip-shod to appear hand-made and assumed ‘authentic.’ This authenticity however is hackneyed, merely extending the dated perception that the unsophisticated, or the ugly, is de facto critical.
Confusing the surface quality of an object (slickness, perfection, vertuositic production skill) as being indicative of a lack of criticality also contributes to a trivialization Craft, continuing the denial of Craft as a meaningful site for the radical by perpetuating the believed association between level of finish and commodity. This serves to continue a marginalization of those who work with skilled bodies and tacit knowledge, by colluding the product of their labors with spectacle, rather than imagining a third way where the doing is given as much or more credence than the done.
In the case of artwork termed trash or spectacle sticking to an analysis of what those objects mean is one thing, interpreting them through their qualities of craftedness is another. These adjectives are better paired with making – what does it mean to ‘make’ – which is to bring into being – with discarded materials or slipshod construction versus diamonds and high production values. If we use the word make in this context, Craft’s unique enterprise is not in danger of being tied to an old antagonism between art and craft, that continually casts craft out of art’s social universe should it exhibit a questionable level of virtuosic skill or beauty, but retains it should it remain symbolic of the low or abject. And, perhaps to a lesser extent, although equally important, we relieve those who refuse association with Craft, of the embarrassment of such an affiliation.
II.
The Embarrassment of Craft
That Craft has become, and with plenty of nudging by Craft theorists and artists themselves, a mere ampersand between art and design, a function of their deployment that is refused an identity of its own, has begun the final erasure of ‘craft.’ Through the desire to ‘elevate’ craft to ‘art status,’ Craft and all its attendant materials have been subsumed inside the voracious art discourse, leaving a few stragglers to be picked up by design.
It was almost in passing that Glenn Adamson referred to the embarrassment of craft in his lecture here at the School last month. Truly a modern affliction, this embarrassment has given us (Judy and I), pause as it is this very discomfort that has continued to push us to find and use a new language to talk about working in Craft rather than accept a hierarchy where certain materials and methodologies have to beg for an increasingly bankrupt elevation.
So what are we running from? What is this residual ‘shame’ that continues to dog Craft, causing it to take cover in or disguise itself as art or design, whether as symbolic referents or as a means-to-a-spectacular-ends? Is the job embarrassing? Is the object? Why the need to disassociate from Craft?
The list of supposed humiliations seems impossibly long: the association with decorative commodities yet also, with functionality; its cousin ‘handicraft’ that suggests the work of the amateur; that cousin’s friendship with the ‘hobby’ – a site for the dreaded pleasure, leisure and excess of a (prosperous) middle class; the proximity of the decorative and functional to the domestic, a place that forever remains an illegitimate site for artistic production or aesthetic reflection; and then of course the rather irksome combination of tradition and community. Oddly, all these humiliations have been systematically deconstructed and critiqued by art practices –at least within the last 40 years.
So is it these old fashioned humiliations that keep artists from associating with the term Craft, or is it something more external? Craft is tactile, tacit, bodily – messy, even sexy. It is a physical dialog, one that doesn’t lend itself well to objective observation, which is perhaps why the language that speaks for it is never adequate. So perhaps it is the discourse itself around Craft that leads to disassociation. As Janet Kopolos asks in “What’s Crafts Criticism Anyway:” if craft has its own character, why shouldn’t it have its own form of response? The way we understand and talk about what it means to work in Craft has to be radically over-hauled in order to see the potential for and meaning of this choice and manner of undertaking.
If there is an urgency by some to foreclose on the idea of craft as a ‘movement,’ I won’t disagree. Describing Craft as a ‘movement’ suggests that craft is aimed at an end, is temporary, and certainly Craft, which was defined in the English language in the 13th century, is anything but. To refer back to Adamson’s lecture again, while foreclosing on the premise of a craft as a movement, he proposed a re-definition of craft as ‘resource,’ something deployed by users (artists and designers in particular) as ammunition. Defined as resource, craft becomes strictly a noun. ‘Resource’ suggests that craft is ‘used’ – whether the labor or the objects – objectified and employed by others. As a resource, Craft is reduced to a symbolic ‘commodity’ that is obtained or laid claim to and exchanged until its value is exhausted. Without a strong discourse of its own, Craft remains unprotected, and thus is vulnerable to the erasure I brought up earlier.
We prefer to suggest this: Craft is ongoing, always moving and acting. It is, after all, also a transitory verb, and at present it is undergoing a tactical shift. This tactical shift might be described as a maneuver, a reading and responding to terrain, that isn’t aimed at an end – like a ‘movement,’ so much as it is about a constant negotiation of position, purpose and social value.
In the hands of makers who are not embarrassed by Craft and gladly identify – and that identity is important – as craftspersons equally with that as artist, Craft is a maneuver that is pregnant with ideology, as opposed to being a mute, mere resource to be mined.
III
The Doing rather than The Done
What might the ideology of a transitory verb look like?
To craft is not the same as to make, which is the real ampersand connecting art and design. But it remains a difficult term, as I know we all who work or have been trained in traditional craft disciplines have come to understand and deeply internalize.
First, the noun craft is an object. Articles made by craftspeople who have skill in the manual arts. By this definition a violin made by a luthier, a sculpture made by Tim Hawkinson, a blanket made by an unknown Peruvian weaver, and a marble bust fabricated for Jeff Koons are all ‘crafted objects’.
But Craft is also a noun that describes an occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity – a definition which Richard Sennet takes to heart in the Craftsman when he applies the designation of craftsman broadly, from glassblowers to surgeons to brick-makers. For Sennet, occupations that build tacit knowledge are Craft, and this tacit knowledge has social value that is far richer than, as he says, “Western culture’s long-standing ambivalence about man-made things.” (294)
For one, this tacit knowledge is a process, a maturing of skill over slow time, and a process that is experienced over the course of what Sennet loosely describes as problem finding, problem solving, new problem finding, repeat. It is during this process that ethical enquiry ensues, a “looking forward” (296) that suggests that the craftsman is forever embedded in a shared project of pursuing knowledge gradually and collectively.
Finally, Craft is a transitory verb: to make or produce with care, skill or ingenuity. This is the definition we are most interested in and have been working with as we explore the possibility of a new rhetoric for Craft. Transitive verbs show action, and it is through this idea of an active, meaningful gesture that ‘acts upon,’ implying movement, change, passage and transmission that we see the importance of craft as a way of being in its own right. Craft is something we do. It is active, it is acting, it does. It is a choice of presence and action that has important meaning apart from, and not to be confused with, the symbolic qualities of an object’s apparent materiality or construction. This activation is what gives Craft license to a unique language and set of concerns, as opposed to consenting to its obliteration by external discourses.
As something we do, Craft begins to wield itself as a powerful gesture. What is it? It is slow. It is a process. It matures. Craft is ever-moving, but it is never temporary. Its movement touches and transmits, acts upon. Craft is searching, researching, learning, teaching, knowing, endeavoring, discovering, failing and thriving. If it is simply ‘tried on,’ referred to through static, reductive signs like Mike Kelly’s now classic crocheted afghans and handmade toys, it is merely an index of craft, but not Craft itself.
As index it is a reminder of functionality, commodity, the amateur, pleasure, pain, leisure, the personal, the domestic, tradition and community, whether as a humiliation or a distinction. To escape Craft as merely an index, and go deeper into the wealth of tacit knowing that Craft carries with it, the kind of knowing that although valuable, escapes language or picturing, Craft must be literally practiced out-loud.
Taken figuratively, one might craft out-loud by being openly comfortable with being identified as craftsperson, or using craft methodologies that engage skill to a level of such extreme virtuosity that it is unmistaken. Those are the more traditional examples. But at present I want to identify those who are literally crafting-out-loud, or as we have come to term, performing Craft, either publicly or leaving Craft as a marker of presence.
In this category are itinerant craft practices like Carole Lung’s Frau Fiber (her Redressing Nola project), Travis Joseph Meinholf’s Action Weaver (at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Weaving Place with Kai Altoff) and Gabriel Craig’s Collegiate & Pro-Bono Jeweler performances; the phenomenon of knit bombing, perhaps initiated in the 90s by Canadian artist Janet Morton (FemmeBomb from 2004, at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s School of Human Ecology) , but continued in installation practices like Robyn Love’s (The Knitted Mile performance in Dallas, TX), The International Fiber Collaborative (The Gas Station Project, covering an abandoned gas station in central NY State in 2007) and the anonymous group Knitta and dialogical or collaborative projects like Sherri Wood’s Passage Quilts (quilters working on Passage Quilts with Sherri Wood, a project where participants work with Wood on quilting as a process of transition, particularly at times of grieving).
All of these artists are taking Craft outside of the settings that have institutionalized it, whether the domestic sphere or the museum, and often through using a vernacular of amateurism, demonstrating how Craft is more than just a way to engage idle hands, but a powerful site of connection and communication.
In these examples, materiality is present, but secondary to what is being acted out, as though prefacing the materiality with an introduction. The itinerant practices take labor to the streets, demonstrating the body in action and inviting a re-engagement with what it means to labor autonomously. The knit bombers leave material in place. In doing so, this process jams public space, and through the use of Craft – something that at once suggests labor and the domestic – brings the indoor out, the domestic and personal to the public and anonymous, and challenges discomfort with pleasure and intimacy, by loudly leaving an object of desire in place. Finally, the dialogical Craft is unashamed of empowering Craft action with actual objectives for change.
In all cases, by putting practice on display and inviting participation, the artists create a
a physical form of discourse that demonstrates the often undefinable nature of craft – the struggle, commitment, endurance, dialog, collaboration, and care mentioned earlier – and galvanizes a new Craft language. In all of these examples it is the action behind the material remnants that are evocative, with the remnants evocative of the action and process itself. All suggest that Craft is open and something to actively think with.
As Umberto Eco writes in The Poetics of Open Work: “the Poetics of ‘work in movement’…sets in motion a new cycle of relations between the artist and his audience, a new mechanics of aesthetic perception, a different status for the artistic product in society. It opens a new page in sociology and in pedagogy, as well as a new chapter in the history of art. It poses new practical problems by organizing new communicative situations. In short it installs a new relationship between the contemplation and the utlization of a work of art.”
The sheer volume of craft practices that have emerged as public, performative and activist begs the question: what is it about Craft that makes it a fertile site for a community and activist message, and why is this motivation so urgent today? I would argue that rather than dismissing DIY, activist or performative Craft as simply being pastiche or a recapitulation of a ‘seasonal’ motivation to declare craft oppositional, that we look closely at how body art, institutional critique, so-called relational aesthetics, dialogical and social art practices have met up with Craft (and all of its embedded politics of body, identity and labor) to reconsider what it means to make radical art.
If Craft has been seen in the past as too seductive and too consumable, it is perhaps these stereotypes that have made it functionally accessible and able to inspire participation whereas repulsion and disruption are no longer reliable strategies for unsettling apathy and invigorating criticality, given that popular culture has more than accessed these qualities at the service of entertainment and marketing.
Craft as an operation of care, ingenuity and skill makes it a more fluent site for a discourse on current issues like sustainability and globalism as they are caused by or affect communities of real hungry, sick, struggling or laboring bodies. James Sanders, in “Moving Beyond the Binery” points out that it is through embodied knowing, craft/art viewers may come to appreciate the humanity we share, embrace the plurality of expressions that surround us and the traditions from which they emerge. Politics simply cannot be addressed adequately, from an objective distance. Craft, with its “rich experience of human need and desire” is the subjective intimacy we need now.
To go back full-circle to unmonumental sculpture, it is interesting to take under consideration the uncertainty of objects as a whole. These works give us sculpture in a state of transition: unstable both in structure, materials, and identity. In the face of this crumbling conviction in art as monumental, there is a re-return to the body and labor. The millennial body in performative Craft refixes the body, its labor and actions – moving from the politics of representation that defined the body in 90s art, to a politics of consequence that interrogates the results and effects of human action by modeling responsibility and engagement.
These performative practices trade on the meaning implied in ‘the doing’ of craft, on labor and skill building as site for meaning. Perhaps it is Craft’s dual narrative of creation and function that has made it an attractive locality for visualizing responsibility, and in turn: building, interacting, participating, teaching, learning and helping. A re-return of the dignity in labor to effect change by real action as opposed to immaterial propositions. Craft can actually demonstrate, as opposed to only illustrate.
If the unmonumental is the move from permanence into transience objectified, Craft as a performative practice is this transit in action. If the unmonumental is a sculpture of proximity, performative Craft is proximity at large. If the unmonumental gives us trash, dirt, mess and the unrefined objectified, performative Craft brings what is dirty, messy, unrefined about the body-in-action to action. Performative Craft works to actuate and turn the focus away from dead-material to live-operations.
As Richard Sennet so eloquently put it in The Craftsman:
"History has drawn fault lines dividing practice and theory, technique and expression, craftsman and artist, maker and user; modern society suffers from this historical inheritance. But the past life of craft and craftsmen also suggests ways of using tools, organizing bodily movements, thinking about materials that remain alternative, viable proposals about how to conduct life with skill."