Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore the potentials of handicraft making as knowledge constructer. I use the method ethnography of skill to search different meanings related to materiality and ´mistake making´ in museum knitwear and contemporary knitting.

Paper long abstract:

Skills are learned culturally in interaction with the social and ecological environment. Craft skills are largely based on experiment and sensory based tacit knowledge which can be observed in the process of making, as well as in the end products. Museum artefacts act as silent witnesses of their maker’s craft skill and creativity. I argue, that the materiality of artefacts carry also information of the values and creativity of their production time. My aim is to search those values and creative material practices from knitted artefacts from late 19th and the early 20th century.

I am interested in how handicraft works as knowledge generator. I use the method ethnography of skill. It combines tacit, experimental, material and verbal knowledge of the research data, the researcher and interaction between them. The leading questions are: What does practice reveal from museum artefacts, their making and from contemporary knitting? and Were ´the mistakes’ we notice in handicraft today, seen as such during the time they were created?

Paper short abstract:

Practicing the craft of natural textile dyeing allows for a more successful study of the meaning of colors, providing knowledge about obtaining a particular color, the color palette, etc. The author has used her dyer knowledge to study various ethnographic sources of the 18th to 20th centuries.

Paper long abstract:

One of the areas of traditional craft, which also includes a great potential for creativity, is textile dyeing with natural dyes. It is still practiced in Latvia today. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was the only way to obtain colored clothes and other textiles. Later, in war and other crises, these skills became a creative way to maintain the quality of everyday life. Nowadays, practicing the craft of dyeing is not only a creative self-expression and a field of traditional crafts, but it allows for a more successful study of the meaning of colors, providing undocumented, accurate knowledge about the complexity or simplicity of obtaining a particular color, the available color palette, etc. Only by being familiar with the dyeing process is it possible to adequately evaluate the written sources of different periods about textile colors, including interpreting the records of ancient technologies and dyeing methods.

The report will give an insight into the development of the tradition of dyeing textiles with natural dyes in Latvia, paying attention to the conditions (crises) that contributed to the preservation of this tradition in the long term. Also, with examples of individual cases, it will be shown how practical dyeing skills are used in research work. The author of the paper has used her dyer knowledge and skills to study various ethnographic sources of the 18th to 20th centuries.

Paper short abstract:

I propose approaching the topic of the panel from the perspective of dialogic meaning-making, offering reflection and interpretations grounded in my research collaboration with highly knowledgable craft specialists, especielly a potter from a village in Mazuria region in the North of Poland.

Paper long abstract:

Already for over a decade I have been engaged in research of embodied/tacit knowledge involving craft, especially ceramics [eg. Klekot 2020; Klekot2021]. In my contribution to this panel I would like to propose approaching the topic from the perspective of dialogic meaning-making. A substantial part of my research has been based on collaboration with highly knowlegdable craftspeople: a contemporary village potter, highly qualified workers in a porcelain factory, designer-cum-craftspeople with their own practices and studios. I have been also using my own experiences in ceramic making, aquired under the tuition of some of my reasearch collaborators. Currently, I am developing a book project tentatively called "Pottery Dialogues", mostly in collaboration with a potter from Mazuria region in the North of Poland whom I met in the course of my reseach. Presenting the way we collaborate on the project, with references to my previous craft research experiences (resulting in both anthropological writing, as well as exhibition curating and filmmaking), I would like to reflect on the process of making/negotiating senses and meanings of craft within the framework of "living (with) uncertainty".

[Klekot 2020: Ewa Klekot, The Craft of Factory Labor, “Journal of American Folklore”, Spring 2020, vol. 133, no. 528, pp. 205-227.

Klekot 2021: Ewa Klekot, Acquiring mētis in ceramic Production: Patterned changes and peripheral participation, in Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits, F. Martinez, L. Di Puppo, M. Demant Frederiksen eds., London and New York: Routledge 2021, pp. 81-93. ]

Paper short abstract:

As an artist-anthropologist who studies “making,” through apprenticeship I have discovered that craft production in the Mexican copper-smithing community Santa Clara del Cobre is a practice of care and a kind of love.

Paper long abstract:

As an artist-anthropologist who studies “making,” I have researched how craft production in the Mexican copper-smithing community Santa Clara del Cobre, is a practice of care. This inversion of careful and caring labor required to create the well-made copper piece also encompasses qualities and skills that queer societal stereotypes of binaric gender-lines. Artisanal bodies of knowledge generate both reproductive and productive labor anchored in the forge through care, perspicacity and attention. Like all nurturing activities given freely, artisanal reproductivity cannot be adequately measured as wage labor. This is not to say that this generous work should be unpaid. But rather to suggest, that what is desired of craft is precisely this non-enumerative quotient of care. My research was based in apprenticeship to Maestro Jesus Pérez Ornelas, an independent coppersmith artisan, successful enough to be free to follow his vision and imagination, to create things with care. Maestro Jesús would say: “If I counted all the blows of my hammer I would go crazy! And besides, no client would be able to afford to buy my work!” It is this boundless giftedness that makes up the imaginary of craft, its tropes, and aura: its generosity. Like women’s “reproductive” work of family, the work of the artisan is also “reproductive.” Both demand a “maternal” nurturance, unquantifiable attention and care. This quotient of care is pure gift without reciprocity. This non-enumerative labor

a kind of love.

Paper short abstract:

Folklore’s Not Dead is a movement to question the current state of folklore focusing on cultural & environmental sustainability. The movement started in Czechia by rescuing the everyday folk dress from the garbage & finding ways to reconnect it to daily life — since then the movement has grown.

Paper long abstract:

Folklore’s Not Dead (FND) is a movement to question the current state of folklore focusing on cultural & environmental sustainability. The movement started over five years ago in South Moravia with participatory-based artist & art sociologist Sonya Darrow along with Nadace Veronica (oldest environmental foundation in Brno, CZ) & Jihomoravská komunitní nadace (rural folklore community foundation). FND started by rescuing what is known as the everyday folk dress from the garbage before it was forgotten, while at the same time finding ways to reconnect it back to daily life. FND has spread outside of Czechia, inspiring other communities to start a dialogue on folklore through different perspectives & engagements.

The movement is an opportunity for all generations to question & start a dialogue on the current state of folklore practices and the way it moves with the rhythm of life — more importantly with today’s life. The folk practices need to breath with our daily life, not to be disconnected or used only in moments, but to go back to the embrace of a slower process to make objects & to find different meanings behind the traditions/rituals. In order to preserve culture for future generations it is important to develop traditions/practices along with a vision that focuses on environmental issues such as materials used for folklore. We connect folklore with the protection of nature and landscape. Therefore, seeking ways on how environmental concerns within specific regions intersects with cultural sustainability— for example: connecting environmentalists with folk artists (folk practitioners).

Paper short abstract:

How can sewing, embroidery and teaching theory and criticism classes in higher education come together in a political climate where uncertainty on many levels has seeped through our lives while prevailing authoritarian tendencies govern our communication and force us to practice self-censorship.

Paper long abstract:

My background is in art history, aesthetics and media theory, so I’ve always thought of myself as a person of criticism and never as someone who herself visualizes social or political content for others to judge.

However, during the summer of 2019 I started to hand-sew together scraps of hand-me-down fabrics and a year later – after much deliberation – I bought a sewing machine and somewhat industrialized my production line.

This 2023 Spring semester will be the third semester that I use my crafting experience in my classes at ELTE University, Budapest.

The two major issues I’d like to address in my talk are as follows.

1., Uncertainty is something I believe to be at the core of teaching even if higher education policies claim to be the exact opposite. Uncertainty makes you vulnerable in traditionally hierarchical situations but who says teaching has to be about hierarchy. Uncertainty also makes you resourceful; learning should be about acquiring skills to survive so to say.

2., My creations have often been categorized as „art”, including the straight-up commentary that „I should sell them on Etsy, in market places and every possible social media platform.” Which I’ve always categorically declined and instead used my platforms to offer them as free gifts. The question is if I remove the market and the exchange of money from this equation, what is left. Can we still call my creations art objects? Why do people still think it is important to call anything handmade profitable art?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we discuss the do-it-yourself practices in the context of astronomy and everyday life at the observatory in Tuorla, Finland. We understand the tradition of craftsmanship as a living heritage process which has taken specific shapes at the observatory over the decades.

Paper long abstract:

Tuorla Observatory (1950–2018) was a well-known astronomical and geodetic research centre of the University of Turku in Piikkiö, Finland. In the recent years the observatory has changed into a public science centre and the observatory museum will open up in the beginning of the summer 2023. The documentation of the observatory and its history, its buildings and equipment as well as stories and memories, has been going on since 2018. During the documentation process, we have noticed that among the researchers at the observatory there has been a tradition of craftsmanship that has lasted for decades. Researchers themselves have invented and built the equipment they have used. There was always a lack of resources and researchers had to come up with creative and inexpensive solutions. All the available materials were recycled. Especially grinding the optics has been a world-renowned skill in Tuorla.

In this paper we will discuss the context and meanings of the do-it-yourself practices at the Observatory of Tuorla. What kind of knowledge there is hidden in silent objects? How is it possible to understand and interpret the tacit knowledge of the craftmanship? The art of doing yourself is a process of trial, failure and unusual success cycles. In the context of “hard science” this tradition of craftsmanship takes on new, interesting perspectives and interpretations.

Paper short abstract:

For uncertain customers fungi hold promise as a raw material for a polluting garment industry. It is difficult to establish to what extend they fulfill expectations. Practical knowledge is being collected by crafting with fungi to understand their performance for clothes in a variety of ways.

Paper long abstract:

Ever more apparent unsustainable and unethical effects of the garment industry place consumers in the dilemma of their interest in consumption conflicting with responsible action. One of the ways to console these are new materials for production, e.g. made from fungi. Fungi are being imbued with almost mythical attributes as a beneficial organism with transformative powers in many narratives – including ones from the fashion industry. Products are being promoted as if they were already widely available. However, the physical materials raise some doubt as to their market readiness and/or their overall sustainable effect. For this paper, I will analyse the materials, the narrative, but also refer to an experimental fungus growing lab, I have set up. Here, fungi are used in a variety of ways to grow into or out of clothes. The leading questions for the crafting experiment are: In which way do these fungi inform aesthetics, function and meaning of the garments? The aim is to learn about the distance between these fungi as raw natural material and the fungi used in garments.

Paper short abstract:

How can intangible heritage practice be seen as a lens through which we explore different claims on sustainability? By bringing together heritage ecology and social and environmental justice, the paper seeks to question the underpinning frameworks of safeguarding heritage and nature conservation.

Paper long abstract:

How can craft practice be seen as a lens through which we explore different claims on sustainability? This paper draws on ethnographic research of basket-makers harvesting plants for their craft in the Mediterranean wetlands. The artisans consider themselves the caretakers and gardeners of the lagoons. However, the threat of coastal erosion and climate change leads to new environmental policies restricting their access to the waterscapes. In Europe and Ramsar wetlands worldwide, intangible cultural heritage has become an area of conflict between social and environmental justice. Craft articulates material knowledge and contrasting claims about preserving traditions or conserving ecosystems.

The paper argues that the focus on wetlands offers an opportunity to rethink and reframe our understanding of heritage. By bringing together heritage ecology and social and environmental justice, the paper seeks to question the underpinning, static categories of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) studies and the binary frameworks of safeguarding ICH and environmental conservation. The paper explores the craft as a multispecies entanglement in which the creative use of materials supports the community of practice and the environment. It highlights the value of ethnographic research on the material processes involved in making to shed new light on craft, not simply as a heritage activity but prefigurative practice to weave new pathways to sustainable futures.

Paper short abstract:

With the rise of the so-called "Metaverse", Virtual Reality (VR) holds the promise of being the ultimate empathy machine. This ethnography analyses how an art-science collective has been prototyping and researching empathetic VR methodologies for over ten years through different hacking practices.

Paper long abstract:

Apart from being a software and cybersecurity practice, hacking can also be a method of challenging and revealing facts through collaborative practices. This type of hacker figure attempts to eliminate hierarchies and show how vital collaborative learning methods are for mastering complex, ever-changing infrastructures and social processes to achieve change (Knox, 2021).

The proposed ethnography elaborates on the possibilities of interdisciplinary practices between neuroscientific research and artistic exploration to generate new forms of knowledge production regarding empathy. The members of the studied community hack together laboratory methods, artistic performance, documentary practices and computer science. In this setting, crafting and experimenting with virtual reality software and hardware enables unprecedented material and bodily assemblages through which a particular epistemology of otherness arises, a way of knowing otherwise that is not achievable in institutionalised settings.

In this context, cognitive theories and data are equalised to subjective experiences. Hacking empathy mobilises bodies and emotions, catalysing affect as a productive force to generate new links with present lives and envision possible futures. The outcomes are frequently unpredictable and erratic but impressively effective in triggering a peculiar curiosity and sensitivity toward the other’s perspective, feelings and body.

Paper short abstract:

Examples of drystone construction can be seen across Scotland and structures dating as far back as the neolithic period are iconic in the landscape. This paper suggests that considering this craft in a wider modern context could create new sustainable opportunities in Scotland's rural communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the cultural significance of drystone construction in Scottish rural communities. Framing traditional crafts as Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), it explores the potential for drystone to play a sigificant role in in sustainable development in rural contexts.

Drystane Dyking or Drystone Construction refers here to 'making stone constructions by stacking stones upon each other, without using any other materials except sometimes dry soil'. It is an ancient method which has been repurposed at various points throughout Scottish history. The need for drystane dykes as part of the agricultural landscape is redundant in the age of cheaply available, mass produced fencing, however the craft continues to thrive as a hobbyist activity and there is still demand for professionally qualified tradesmen.

Drystane dyking can be viewed as an exemplary practice with regards to sustainability and in more than one sense of the word; It’s culturally sustaining in the way it keeps a traditional craft and local knowledge alive and passed down through generations, financially sustainable if local training and job opportunities can be provided and environmentally sustainable if more people are skilled and therefore able to use this method using local stone rather than some of the other catastrophic building methods which involve importing materials to rural locations.

I believe this paper could be a positive addition to the panel as it considers the cultural significance of this craft both in relation to its historical use as well as in new, innovative ways which contribute to a sustainable future.