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- Convenors:
-
Britta Fluevog
(Transart Institute Liverpool John Moores University)
Kera Lovell (University of Utah Asia Campus)
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- Chair:
-
Anna Svensson
(Institution of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University)
- Discussant:
-
Verena Winiwarter
(Austrian Academy of Sciences)
- Formats:
- Workshop
- Streams:
- Sui Generis
- Location:
- Room 22
- Sessions:
- Monday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This maker space encourages WCEH delegates to talk, visit, explore and create. It offers the chance to process ideas haptically via the act of artistic creation. Together, we will be crafting panels for a large quilt on the theme “Using the Past to Envision the Future”.
Long Abstract:
In this maker space, conference attendees are invited to spend time exploring thought through making. This informal space will have materials, examples and information on hand to allow for self-exploration, creativity and communing in novel forms. It seeks to be a place of process and slow time, both for the craft project itself as well as for any ideas percolating during and after conference sessions and events. A crafting attendant will be there to assist and answer any questions.
Attendees are invited to create half A4 (or A4 if preferred) quilting panels with their own interpretation of the theme “Using the Past to Envision the Future”. These panels can be created prior to or during the conference out of any materials that can withstand rolling, folding and steaming. Materials should be sustainably sourced.
The maker space is a low barrier space with processes and materials for all skillsets. Relevant and necessary supplies, including textile markers, needles, thread, yarn, fabric, and knitting/ crocheting material will be available, both traditional and non-traditional materials for textile creation. Attendees may bring materials they want to contribute or use.
Requirements: Uolu hosts assured us that if this panel is accepted, a dedicated room to create a makerspace will be available, ideally we would be able to offer coffee or tea in the space or to have it close to the coffee break area. Additionally we require: Access to an I-pad, tables, chairs, boxes with locks to store crafting material overnight.
Accepted contribution:
Session 1 Monday 19 August, 2024, -Contribution short abstract:
In a participatory work forming connection through shared labor, forge bonds between people of unlike mind, culture, or lived experience. Learn spooncarving while having a critical conversation about our ability to coexist despite our differences. We’ll question what it means to be a “decent” human.
Contribution long abstract:
The Decency Project is a participatory work forming connection through shared labor. Seeking a bond between people of unlike mind, culture, or lived experience, I teach strangers to make a functional object while having a conversation. We are guided by a pedagogy of awareness embracing critical thinking and historical contextualization. Our dialog is not about contemporary politics, but abstracted ideals and our ability to coexist despite our differences. We question what it means to be human: What must I do? What can I do? What must I not do?
Using 19th century Appalachian woodworking techniques, participants carve spoons - objects of functional interaction at the center of the home - from logs and tree limbs found or cast aside by modern manufacturing requirements. What follows is an exploration of traditional craft skills, concurrently rejecting and acknowledging the romantic myth of lost mastery as a necessary given. Bonding through their shared labor and distracted by the dexterity of hand and material, participants are questioned and empowered to delve into abstractions of cultural and societal structure. Absorbed in their carving, participants discover a freedom for critical thinking within a cooperative discourse. The discussion is simultaneously interactive and performative, interrogative and declarative.
The resultant engagement is a pluralistic investigation, both inter- and trans-disciplinary. Within this inclusive perspective, we envision potential futures, imagining what progress is possible and what obstacles might prohibit that progress. Together, we identify where decency occurs within our lives, and nurture relationships in an historic moment of conflict and disconnection.