Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically ...rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy. The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.
Traditional craft practice has long emphasized features of function and materiality, with the useful and skillfully produced object at the center of the way craft is read and understood. However, a ...number of recent exhibitions and artworks have included not just objects, but also craft set in motion through participatory projects or performances. Correspondingly, the crafted object has undergone a shift in its once-central role, serving instead as a record of an event or process, a prop or tool, and in some cases disappearing altogether. Through a consideration of select projects and curatorial strategies from Common Threads at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary, AB (2008), and Gestures of Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR (2010), this article argues that it is necessary to consider how the histories and theories of performance art are intersecting with contemporary craft practices, with a particular focus on the role of documentation and ephemeral traces.
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Information about the Performing Austerity: Artists, Work and Economic Speculation panel at the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) conference held at the Ontario College of Art and Design ...University in Toronto in October 2014 is presented. Black explores how negotiating the precarious labor and climate of austerity budgets led them to ask practical questions on how artists, institutions and cultural workers produce and adapt identities within exploitative economic systems.
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Most ceramists will readily admit to a fascination with the processes and materials of their trade. When questioned further, many will also speak about a potential future user for their works, as ...well as the ideal way that users might employ the objects they make: imagined tea parties, ritualized coffee breaks, daily activities around the preparation and consumption of food, or landmark moments requiring a toast with handmade glasses reserved for special occasions. These notions about social activities permeate the design, creation and distribution of most functional ceramic objects.
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10.
side by each 2.0 Burisch, Nicole
Esse,
10/2022, Volume:
106
Book Review
side by each 2.0, an exhibition of the works of Alexa Hatanaka, at AXENÉO7 in Gatineau, Canada is reviewed.