Contribution short abstract:

What can safe-guarding of crafts mean in the context of post-disciplinary hybrid art-craft-design practices today? And how can safe-guarding of craft become a ‘futuring’ practice, aimed at producing a just and sustainable future for the planet and its inhabitants, both human and more-than-human?

Contribution long abstract:

In the latest Venice Biennale, the Golden Lion was awarded to Mataaho Collective, a New Zealand based collective of female crafters. In their installation Takapau, traditional craft weaving techniques and the accompanying meanings and metaphors form the basis for a spatial intervention that speaks to the global art world. The curated exhibition of the biennale, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere was an invitation to local communities from all over the world and especially the global south, but equally brought in foreign, hybrid, or, in the words of craft theorist Julia Bryan-Wilson ‘strange bedfellows’, such as craft, to one of the most important international fora for contemporary art. The ubiquity of indigenous art and craft practices, was visible not only in Venice but is pervading the global art world as it has been pervading the world of critical and artistic design since the nineties.

Or perhaps craft has always been present as a neighboring, rather than a ‘foreign’ practice, and it is just we -as modernist, western-based art, craft, design critics or theorists- who have not been paying attention. In this sense craft can be seen as one of many ghosts of modernity that keep resurfacing, and which, thanks to the growing ubiquity of technology, are even proliferating. What can safe-guarding of crafts mean in the context of these hybrid art-craft-design practices today? And how can safe-guarding of craft become a ‘futuring’ practice, aimed at producing a just and sustainable future for the planet and its inhabitants, both human and more-than-human?