Towards a post-consumer subjectivity: a future for the crafts in the twenty first century?

Towards a post-consumer subjectivity: a future for the crafts in the twenty first century?

By Peter Hughes

‘Craftivism’ in action: Marianne Joergensen’s Pink M.24 Chaffee is a collaborative project incorporating knitted squares from hundreds of contributors. craft+design enquiry journal issue 3, 2011

A shorter version of this paper was presented at the international conference Making Futures: the Crafts in the Context of Emerging Global Sustainability Agendas at the Plymouth College of Art and Design, UK, September 2009 and published on the conference website at http://makingfutures.plymouth.ac.uk/journalvol1/papers.php#critical-perspectives.

Peter Hughes has been Curator of Decorative Arts, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery since 1999. He received a Bachelor of Education (Art) from the City Art Institute (now COFA/UNSW) in 1986 and subsequently studied furniture design (Centre for the Arts, University of Tasmania). In 1995 he received a Master of Art (Research) in Art Theory from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University for a thesis interpreting John Ruskin’s writing about design, society and the natural world from a unifying ecological perspective. Peter continues to be interested in links between ecological philosophy, our relationship with ‘objects’ generally and the crafts as a political and social as well as artistic field of practice.

Abstract: The crafts movement has a long history of engagement with both environmental and ethical issues. In recent years, several movements have emerged—in response to environmental issues and in opposition to the dominance of the monoculture produced by globalising capitalism— that have powerful resonances with some of the crafts movement’s early political and ethical heritage. As environmental issues move into the mainstream, a rising tide of concern presents an opportunity for the crafts movement to renew its engagement with social, political and philosophical issues and to contribute both to the debate and to the formation of a sustainable material and creative culture of the future. Read complete paper

Abstract of Towards a post-consumer subjectivity: a future for the crafts in the twenty first century? by Peter Huges

Full paper published in craft + design enquiry; Issue 3, 2011 Sustainability in craft and design

Image caption: ‘Craftivism’ in action: Marianne Joergensen’s Pink M.24 Chaffee is a collaborative project incorporating knitted squares from hundreds of contributors. As a protest against the Danish (and the American and British) involvement in the war in Iraq, a World War II tank was covered from canon to caterpillar tracks with squares of knitted and crocheted pink yarn. The 15 x 15 cm squares were knitted by people from many European countries and the USA. The process of covering the tank was documented in a video shown at the Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark as part of the exhibition “TIME” from April 27 to June 4 2006.