Kneaded more
I am interested in this web of craft process, how skill and embodied knowledge is developed through a relationship with material.
Image Credit: Harry Gay. Sourced from expertclay.com.
Repeated Gestures
Craft can be about the mastery achieved from doing something over and over; a trained practice, but it can also refer to a child’s play activity — a pipe cleaner sculpture. Contradictory and evasive of definition, craft has a chameleon identity, relating to the DIY Youtuber, the Carpenter, the Sushi Chef or Computer Programmer. My engagement with craft started with clay. A material that can morph with category — from abstract sculpture to pottery, from high brow to lowbrow — clay is a fluid material and like craft, has a porous identity. The craft of throwing turned me towards a new sensitivity. In a way, I was becoming disciplined by the material. This new relationship pulled me into something I’d loosely describe as somatic material consciousness.
There is an element of ritual before you get to the wheel. You must prepare the clay. It must have the right amount of water, which you decide through feeling the plasticity with your hands. The next step is to knead the clay body to ensure there are no air bubbles. Spiral wedging is a technique originating from Japan, it fixes your hands into repetitive movement, efficiently folding matter into a spiral motion that you stop only when you feel that the density of the clay body is even. Spending time with material is how you know. It just feels right when it’s ready.
Repeated gestures turn into muscle memory, as the hand performs the same shapes over and over. The spiral wedge points to a knot of entanglement between craftsperson, tools, and material. The potter’s wheel works best when the clay is aerated and without any irregularities to disrupt the centrifugal force. The spiral wedge therefore positions the craftsperson as the intermediary between the clay and the wheel.
I am interested in this web of craft process, how skill and embodied knowledge is developed through a relationship with material. Where does the mind go when the body is at work? Sociologist Richard Sennett shares the experience of a glass blower in the depth of her process. He writes, “she lost awareness of her body making contact with the hot glass and became all absorbed in the physical material as the end in itself […] put another way, we are now absorbed in something, no longer aware, even of our bodily self. We have become the thing on which we are working.” This mode of labour is heavy with material consciousness, implicating the glass blower to the extent of becoming glass. Knowledge of the material is felt somatically and is therefore difficult to put into words. To try and define this relationship in a text seems reductive, yet it is clear that when we make things with a relationship to the material, we make things with care. What kind of work ethic does this foster?
Craft, however, has two different meanings [...]. On the one hand, craft is a skill-based productive activity. On the other hand, craft is guileful subversive behaviour and the term can be used to describe a person as ‘crafty’. Hacking embodies craft in both respects.
Criminologist Kevin Steinmetz locates parallels between computer hacking and craftwork in his 2015 article, ‘Craft(y)ness: An Ethnographic Study of Hacking’. He writes, “hacking is more than an act or behaviour — it’s a cultural practice tied to work.” In other words, hacking is not just about breaking the code, it is a work ethic informed by skills developed through curiosity and commitment to material. It’s a democratic form of creativity at the nexus of skill, tools, technology and labour, and thus also a mode of craftwork. According to Steinmetz, a commitment to hacking comes from “fascination with the machines itself”, the process of problem solving, the journey — not the destination.”
“skills and know-how of all kinds are a defence against inequality and its harsh socio-economic consequences: ‘the craftsman can sustain his or her self-respect in an unequal world’.”
Decolonial Hacker is a project that embraces ideas of craftwork in computer hacking. Founded by Eugene Cheung, Decolonial Hacker is a downloadable web browser that dissolves gallery and museum website pages to reveal articles that critique and analyse those institutions. Creative problem solving and material knowledge are applied to rearrange and subvert the identities of these institutions, placing their definition in the hands of the public. It’s improvised and embodies a transgressive craftivist approach, flipping the narrative of top down authority. Grounded in democratised creativity and know-how, Decolonial Hacker’s DIY institutional critique reminds us that we have tools to empower ourselves.
Craft as Reactionary
The emphasis on embodied knowledge, rather than written or spoken knowledge, found within ideas of craft can lend itself to an anti-academic spirit. However, unchecked anti-intellectualism can just as easily lend itself to reactionary politics. Curator Glenn Adamson cautions against ‘Romanticised Pastoralism’ and denouncing intellectualism in all its forms.
He argues that romanticising the pastoral can feed into a conservative imaginary where all tradition is good and difference or change is bad. Notions of ‘truth in tradition’ or idealising an economy of artisanal and manual labour without considering contemporary reality can be reductive and dangerous. He locates Pastoral Romanticism in the artisanal symbolism of Italian fascism, the Trumpian political alignment with blue collar workers, and Brexit anti-immigrant rhetoric. I think of ‘made-in Australia’ nationalism. Romanticised Pastoralism cautions us to be careful when we idealise ‘working with our hands’.
The curiosity and commitment to tools and material required in developing craft skills offers the potential for deeper relationships with the materiality of the world. Maybe this is code and hardware for the hacker, but it could also be wool, yeast, photo-film, or sound. These materials have their own sensations, their own set of problems to solve. Listening to oozy wet clay, brittleness of glass, the warmth of wood or the conduction of copper — being interested in how they slip, fracture, soak, or tether. These are material intelligences difficult to articulate through spoken or written language.
As a mode of labour, to be engaged in your craft doesn’t rely on competition, supply, or demand. The enjoyment of process, ritual and material is not a means to an end. To be entangled with material is to care and be invested in its properties, which potentially offers an alternative motivation to work. This work ethic tied to genuine engagement, in material and the processes they call for, is a work ethic that is neither uniform nor definitive – existing outside the binaires of labour and leisure.