Politics of Craft

Thematic Project, trimester 3, 2013/14

tutor: Florian Cramer

Summary

The concept of 'crafts' has lately experienced a renaissance. We encounter it, most obviously, in DIY handmade film labs, hacker spaces, Fab Labs, printmaker workspaces, but also in socio-cultural initiatives and upper middle class-oriented lifestyle retail. (In Rotterdam and nearby, we find examples of all of the above: filmwerkplaats, RevSpace and PUSCII, PrintRoom and Mesh Print Club, Rotterdam Vakmanstad, Swan Market, to name only a few.)

Sociologist Richard Sennett wrote in 2008 that "craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor; it serves the computer programmer, the doctor, and the artist; parenting improves when it is practiced as a skilled craft, as does citizenship" (The Craftsman, 9). In this definition, "craftsmanship" does not simply mean practical making, but leaves behind the classical Western dualisms of theory and practice, thinking and doing, the conceptual and the applied.

In our Thematic Project, we will research the history and the politics of this notion of crafts from the 19th century to today: in the socialist Arts and Crafts movement and in Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology, in the radical politics of Russian constructivism and Bauhaus, as a political undercurrent in Fluxus and the Situationist International, its reinvention as 'Do-it-yourself' movements in post-1960s countercultures including punk, riot grrrl, hacker culture and media experimentalist subcultures.

This Thematic Project is not at all about the nostalgia for craftsmanship that currently abounds in the Netherlands and elsewhere, but a re-reading of post-industrial and ultimately post-digital craftsmanship as (left- as well as right-wing) avant-garde politics that does away with the oppositions that still define contemporary art and design (including the very differentiation between art and design).

The Project will leave room to focus on specific subject matters depending on students' preference. We could, for example, give particular attention to artist-run film cooperative movement and, on conversely, to Marianne van Boomen's fresh research on metaphors in contemporary media and how to hack them. Most likely, we will also make good use of the two consecutive events "Off the Press" and "zine camp" in Rotterdam on May 22nd-25th.

The Thematic Project will conclude with some still-to-be-determined form of public presentation at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in the last three weeks of June.

1. Introduction and planning: Thurs. April 3rd: 2 hours 11:00 - 13:00
2. Thurs. April 10: Discussion Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Part one, chapter 1, The Troubled Craftsman, 19-53; please collect and bring along examples of art/design/media/other work to discuss in this context.
3. Thurs. April 17th: Discussion John Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art (Addendum 8) & William Morris, News from Nowhere (chapter XV); please collect and bring along examples of art/design/media/other work to discuss in this context.
4. (April 30th: May break)
5. Wed. May 7th: Discussion Asger Jorn, George Maciunas, Henry Flynt + optionally Piet Zwart, Bauhaus and Russian constructivism.
6. Mon. May 12th: Discussion of ideas for the V2_ show
7. Thurs. May 15th: Further discussion V2_ show + collective research on punk DIY culture: Jamie Reid, Linder, Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, Riot Grrrl culture in the 1990s + Henry Flynt
8. Wed. May 21st : Presentation of the Serving Library by Angie Keefer, wrap-up of V2_ show concept & authoring of an announcement text
9. Wed. May 28th : Discussion Oulipo: Raymond Queneau, Potential Literature + Various texts
10. Wed. June 4th
11. Wed. June 11th
12. Wed. June 18th, individual tutoring on projects
13. (build-up V2 show)
14. Tue. June 24th, show opening at V2_
15. (Wed. June 25th, assessments)
16. Sunday June 29th, last day of V2_ show

Preliminary reading list

• Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2008.
• Ruskin, John. The Political Economy of Art, Addendum 8: "Silk and Purple", in: Ruskin. "Unto this Last": Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy. Smith, Elder and Company, 1862. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36541/36541-h/36541-h.htm#Page_107
• Morris, William. News from nowhere. Broadview Press, 2002 (1890). http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261 ; Chapter XV: On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society"
• Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Arts and crafts essays. Rivington, Percivāl, & Company, 1893. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36250/36250-h/36250-h.htm
• Gropius, Walter. "The Bauhaus Manifesto." The Administration of the National Bauhaus at Weimar (1919). http://www.thelearninglab.nl/resources/Bauhaus-manifesto.pdf
• Zwart, Piet. "Het onderwijs aan de academies voor beeldende kunsten", in: Het Vaderland, September 8, 1928:

Met betrekking tot de 'schilderkunst' zal het onderwijs zeer ingrijpend gewijzigd moeten worden. Feitelijk zal de schilderkunstafdeling geheel moeten vervallen, indien men daardoor wenst te verstaan de primitieve methode waarbij met een bosje varkensharen, die aan een stokje gebonden zijn, kleurige materien op linnen worden uitgeborsteld. Daarvoor in de plaats zou veel aandacht besteed moeten worden aan synthetisch en beeldend tekenen, reclame, moderne reproductiemethoden, typografie, fotografie en haar beeldingsmogelijkheden; film, kleurgeving in de architectuur en in het stadsbeeld.

De rubrieken decoratieve kunst, kunstnijverheid en beeldhouwen kunnen op de wijze waarop ze plegen behandeld te worden, van geen belang voor de nieuwe levensidee geacht worden.

Er voor in de plaats moet een afdeling komen, waarin de industriële vormgevin­gen worden gedoceerd. Bestudering van moderne materialen in verband met industrië­le voortbrenging en de daaruit voorkomende vormconsequenties. Vooral aan de toepasbaarheid van deze materialen op meubels zal grote aandacht moeten worden geschonken. Laboratorium en modern geoutilleerde werkplaats zijn in verband daarmee noodzakelijk.

Parallel aan dit practische programma zal het theoretisch onderwijs moeten gegeven worden met uitsluiting van die rubrieken, welke als overblijfselen van een oud formalistisch leerprogram zich hardnekkig trachten te rechtvaardigen.

Bijzondere aandacht zal geschonken moeten worden aan de opvoeding der oude leerkrachten, voorzover die niet vervangen kunnen worden. Doel van deze opvoeding zou moeten zijn hen er van te doordringen, dat een 'kunst'akademie een instituut dient te zijn ter opbouw van de elementaire vormgevingen in deze en komende tijd; geen doorgangshuis voor aftandse kennis en onbelangrijke vaardigheid.

Het jonge geslacht heeft er recht op dat het opgevoed wordt voor de toekomst; wij hebben te voorkomen dat het behangen wordt met de maskers van het verleden.

• Heidegger, Martin. The Thing. 1950. In: Hofstadter, Albert. "Poetry, Language, Thought." (1971): 149.
• Harman, Graham. Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. Open Court, 2013 (2002).
• Jorn, Asger. Notes on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus. 1957. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/bauhaus.htm
• Flynt, Henry. My New Concept of a General Acognitive Cultre. 1962. http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/acogcult.html
• Maciunas, George. Fluxmanifesto (1963) and Fluxmanifesto on Fluxamusement (1965). http://fluxusfoundation.com/?page_id=480 , http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/gmaciunas-artartamusement.html
• Spencer, Amy. DIY - The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture. Marion Boyars Publishers. 2008.
• Van den Boomen, Marianne. Transcoding the Digital: How Metaphors Matter in New Media. Institute of Network Cultures, 2014. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publication/no-14-transcoding-the-digital/; chapters: Chapter 2: Material Metaphors & Conclusion: A Manifesto for Hacking Metaphors.
• Vesić, Jelena. Administration of Aesthetics or On Undercurrents of Negotiating Artistic Jobs – Between Love and Money, Between Money and Love... (lecture at Piet Zwart Institute, April 14th 2014, partial summary here)

With some grains of salt

• Bierens, Cornel, De handgezaagde ziel. Mondriaan Fonds, 2013
• Gauntlett, David. Making is connecting. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. http://www.makingisconnecting.org/

Show at V2_

Official blurb

Politics of Craft

William Morris' "News from Nowhere", a key text of the Arts and Crafts movement, contains a surprisingly up-to-date critique of capitalist globalization and the precarious state of artists' labour. It is, paradoxically enough, an avant-garde text of an otherwise nostalgic movement.

Eleven first-year student of the Master Media Design will show their interpretations of "News from Nowhere" in the form of eleven media projects. The show will be accompanied with lectures and discussions.

Related projects

5 ½ Proposals to Work and Live in the Current Millennium, Rotterdam, May 23rd & 24th

Idea development

politics_of_craft/ideas First ideas for the project presention

Info on individual project (title, blurb, sentence from the text)

• DESIGN LIST
• Please confirm your names on the previous emails to avoid stress after the printing
• we need to define floor plan
• Please confirm dates, times, address and what else is needed in the poster
• would be wise to have a final word about what should be printed and designed for the zine floorplan
• images for background are finished
• Design for screen print layer is almost ready next meeting we finish, thursday we print
• webdesign for digital flyer will be online on next meeting
• Digital image for facebook as well
• ...

Artyom Kocharyan

title: Earth's little ones

blurb: Mixed-media installation with wallpaper and artificial head-wreath (Doesn't need this more explanation such as: William Morris' aesthetics translated into 2014 - a mixed-media installation consisting of wallpaper and an artificial head-wreath.  ? Florian)

sentence from the text: (i'm using a visual reference to Morris instead of a text)

Ana Luísa Moura

title: Craft and The Ideology of Self-Empowerment

blurb: Arts & Crafts in its relation to cycles of financial and political crisis - a documentary installation

(read more)

quote: "Therefore, though they knew that the only reasonable aim for those who would better the world was a condition of equality; in their impatience and despair they managed to convince themselves that if they could by hook or by crook get the machinery of production and the management of property so altered that the ‘lower classes’ (so the horrible word ran) might have their slavery somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready to fit into this machinery, and would use it for bettering their condition still more and still more, until at last the result would be a practical equality (they were very fond of using the word ‘practical’), because ‘the rich’ would be forced to pay so much for keeping ‘the poor’ in a tolerable condition that the condition of riches would become no longer valuable and would gradually die out. Do you follow me?” (...) “Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but ‘practically,’ it turned out a failure.” (News from Nowhere, in CHAPTER XVII: HOW THE CHANGE CAME)

Junyu Chen

Title: Circling Blurb: A reflection of Eastern craftsmanship in a short documentary installation on how to draw a perfect circle. It recalls a spirit of working hard practicing one's skill, and training one's mind. Quote: " All work is now pleasurable."

Read me (Thanks for the correction!)

Mihail Bakalov

TITLE: YouLoop

BLURB: The project is a social video platform and a social experiment. Visitors are invited to document an event in their own video recordings. They get a choice between free and paid labor. Two screens document how these choices do - or do not - affect the resulting videos.

QUOTE: How you get people to work when there is no reward of labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?” “No reward of labour?” said Hammond, gravely. “The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?” “But no reward for especially good work,” quoth I. “Plenty of reward,” said he—“the reward of creation. The wages which God gets, as people might have said time agone.

Lucia Dossin

TITLE: Print Cake

BLURB: On-demand print cakes: you choose a color and a word and get a customized cake with a snippet of William Morris' text printed on it.

QUOTE: "Why, then, since they had forced themselves to stagger along under this horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than one--to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible. To this 'cheapening of production', as it was called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education--his life, in short--did not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of 'cheap production' of things, a great part of which were not worth producing at all."

Max Dovey

TITLE : The Bank Of Broken Dreams (TBC) -- ??? -- where did the "C" come from? :]

BLURB : No ideas go to waste and now every creative project that fails to meet its funding target becomes printed currency in The Bank Of Broken Dreams. Unsuccessful projects are taken from crowd-funding websites and traded between people on the value of the original idea. please note - all refreshments in the exhibition will be payed for with ideas.

[spelling error: payed -> paid. Maybe simplify the text. Suggestion: No ideas to waste! If your creative project failed to meets its funding target, it can still become printed currency in The Bank of Broken Dreams. The Bank of Broken Dreams collects failed projects from crowd-funding websites. People can trade the value of their original idea.

Please note: all drinks in the exhibition need to be paid for with ideas.

QUOTE: "All Work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or else because it has grown into a pleasurable habit, as in the case with what you may call mechanical work; and lastly (and most of our work is of this kind) because there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the work itself; it is done, that is , by artists"

Antoon Theodorus Hageman

Title: The reward of creation

Quote: 'the material surroundings of life should be pleasant, generous, and beautiful; that is a large claim, but if it cannot be satisfied, if every civilized community cannot provide such surroundings for all its members, I do not want the world to go on'

Blurb: Machines which are wonders of invention, skill, and patience.

(correction: Machines that are wonders of invention, skill and patience. -Florian)

Lídia Pereira

Title: Immaterial Labor Union

Blurb: The Immaterial Labor Union is an attempt to unite the scattered multitude of cultural agents within participatory culture. (Highly idiomatic/jargon language! Proposal: The Immaterial Labor Union will unite the scattered cultural workers of today's creative class." -Florian)

Quote: "Now, surely you can see that under these circumstances all the work that we do is an exercise of the mind and body more or less pleasant to be done: so that instead of avoiding work everybody seeks it: and, since people have got defter in doing the work generation after generation, it has become so easy to do, that it seems as if there were less done, though probably more is produced."