Articles - 25 June 2005

Interact: contemporary craft in a digital future

Review by Ann McMahon

The need to redefine and critically position craft, particularly in relation to new technologies, inspired an on-line forum. Interact was launched in June 2004 by Craft Australia and eight key articles were commissioned to promote discussion around gritty issues facing craft and craft practitioners. Comment was sought through the Interact website and Interact: contemporary craft in a digital future, now in hard copy, records the essays along with cogent threads teased from tangled online conversations. In her forward, Professor Kay Lawrence, President of Craft Australia, sums up the publication's importance when she states, "For Craft Australia this document presents concrete research gathered from the sector that can be used to inform Government in areas of policy that are relevant to the sector."

The essays have been contributed by prominent craft theorists including Grace Cochrane, Senior Curator of Australian Decorative Art and Design at the Powerhouse Museum. Her paper, 'Handmade at the heart of things,' an overview of the development of the craft sector, draws on earlier writings to present a wonderfully insightful and concise picture. It is an article I consumed with relish when it appeared in Object Magazine and the meaty historical grounding it provides for the other texts adds to the collection's value as a snapshot of the craft sector. Jane Andrew's 'Translating Concepts into Applied Ideas: Linking design, manufacture and markets' explores ideas about 'creative industries' and uses Craftsouth's Applied Ideas program as a model for integrating skilled craftworkers into the design end of industrial manufacturing. This strategy addresses the generally low incomes that are an economic reality facing most practitioners. Moreover she argues that it provides a means by which the technical and intuitive understanding developed through craft can facilitate improvements in manufacturing processes and raise design standards.

In 'The argument against design', Peter Hughes reiterates these outcomes that derive from a craft approach but also points out that as crafts are, 'subsumed into design, 'the actual objects cease to be important' and are in danger of 'disappear(ing) into their sophisticated packaging.' He pessimistically predicts that, 'A change of name might buy some time but it will not, in the end, save The Practices Formerly Known as the Crafts.' Hughes argues for values measured not against bottom lines, but in human terms, a revaluing of craft. So too does Margie West in 'Cesi n'est pas un 'basket',' she describes the marginalization of fibre work in Arnhem Land that results, she argues, from artificial gendered divisions between male 'art' and female 'craft.' This western perspective fails to recognize that a basket is not just a basket. A basket is also a sacred temporal object metaphorically linking ancestral stories to the everyday. Craft is living heritage.

The use of tools has always extended human capabilities and Susan Ostling, ceramicist and Senior lecturer in Fine Art, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University; pursues the cyborg theory, that human evolution is inseparable from technology. Craft practitioners, furthermore adopt technology with alacrity, it gives a competitive edge in an environment of innovation and change. This thread is also taken up by Gilbert Riedelbauch in a discussion about the proliferation of new media arts programs in tertiary institutions. While study in this area provides students with improved employment prospects and has been cast as a re-skilling, it arguably contributes to de-skilling in hands on areas of practice. The issues facing craft can be argued from different perspectives and makes the discussion complex and divisive. The issue that attracted most online comment concerned the naming of craft.

Emotions and hackles rose as the relative merits and functions of identifiers and designations were thrashed out. In 'Untitled,' Suzi Attiwill poses the question, 'What gathers around and connects with a name?' She points out that the meanings invoked by a name create relationships that involve power and cites Deleuze when she describes the relation between seeing and saying as "an audio visual battlefield." She appeals for "relations of creative potential" as opposed to "ones of hierarchy and authority." Robert Cook deconstructs the craft writer's authority in his cynical and entertaining 'Zero to one thousand to nothing.' He questioned his own value as a critic connoisseur, imagining himself as "a guy with a velvet jacket for the city and flannels for the weekend," who simply "extended the pillow of administrative culture across practices in an attempt to smother them like an unwanted kitten beneath the brute force of interpretive meanderings."

Cook appeals for: writing about craft that is about the craft and the practitioners; writing that is open and tentatively explores Attiwill's relations of creative potential; writing that is not hijacked by dominant fashions derived from fine art criticism that are hierarchical and exclusive. He concludes wistfully, "So I guess after writing nothing for so long I may as well continue. It's just now that I can see that there's a better kind of nothing to attain to, a nothing that might do justice to the labyrinthine phenomena of the crafts in all its complexity, at all its levels." This "better kind of nothing," as suggested in online responses, might engage with the physicality that is integral to food writing and sports journalism. Could a similar style better convey the sensuality of objects and the drama of crafting, while advocating to a broader audience?

This is a significant issue as consumers, increasingly, do not know the difference between crafted and mass produced things and have no idea, or interest in, how things are made. Milk does come from cartons after all. Are we, as Forum manager Kate M Murphy provocatively suggested, 'used to settling for less?' It is a credit to editors, Murphy and Catrina Vignando, General Manager of Craft Australia, that Interact responses have been crafted into a conversation that is coherent and readable. Conversations tend to wander, in fact the live discussions generated by the forum seemed to go round in circles, they were at times contradictory, layered and were nuanced by differences in meaning and understanding, which can derive from distinct and divergent professional methodologies. For instance, quality, in reference to the crafts implies a judgment of the fineness of material, technique, finish and design. But in management terminology quality is an equation which balances material and manufacturing expenses to achieve an optimal market mix, meaning appropriate market placement and pricing.

Craft outcomes, for practitioners, are driven by intentions ranging from the quest for a functional design solution to a desire to make social comment and a need for aesthetic self expression. In many cases distinctions are inappropriate as makers' aim for a combination of these objectives. This is reflected in the amount of Interact comment on the term 'designer maker.' For some practitioners, the nomenclature adequately defines what they do, but for others, the word design is "not enough." Craft does not only represent traditions and histories of making, or even practices relating to contemporary technology and society. Craft represents an attitude, one invoked by many of the Interact respondents, but also, movingly by Ann Dybka in her Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech at the Adelaide GAS conference. She urged makers to consider the legacy of objects that they leave and above all to "care" about the making. The craft attitude is a pride: in the pursuit of excellence; in one's own ability and worth; in the time invested in acquiring knowledge and skill; and in the integrity of products and their intergenerational value.

Interact: contemporary craft in a digital future has been an ambitious project and as the interactive exchange showed, craft is an evolving sector. The collected essays are effective in exploring differing perspectives and theoretical issues and their relevance and immediacy is supported by respondent comments. The extracted threads of web discussion are included under the thematic headings: Naming Craft, Craft and Digital Technologies, Branding, New Craft Values and Writing about craft. Arresting images add further interest and are scattered through the pages, adding visual comment and opportunities to pause look and reflect during the reading. Designer Erica Seccombe uses colour as a punctuating device, differentiating each essay and topic of conversation. The choice of image on the front cover, complimentary orange on blue suggests the knitting together of some contradictory perspectives and the search for a balance between the covers. For those with an interest in the craft sector, Craft Australia's Interact: contemporary craft in a digital future should be in your collection.

Ann McMahon is the contributing craft editor for Artlook Magazine in the ACT. She writes extensively on contemporary craft practice. Ann has a background in textiles.