Toronto Craft Alert

Lots of exciting editorial developments are brewing behind the scenes here at TCA, and we’re excited to introduce this new feature, Craft Theory, where the meatier (tofuier?) dimensions of craft culture are unpacked by TCA writers.

Please read on for an exploration of the contentious (it’s true!) term “Craftivism” by Nicole Dawkins, who currently has her own craftivist works on display at Come as You Are until the end of July.

Revolutionary Knitting Circle Workshop presented as part of Super String, curated for Stride Gallery by Anthea Black. Photo courtesy of Stride Gallery.

“Making” a political statement: what is craftivism anyway?
by Nicole Dawkins

What exactly is craftivism? Most people who use the term (including Betsy Greer, who is credited with coining it) would agree on the base definition of craft+activism=craftivism. Maybe it’s just the little anthropologist in me, but I always want the term to mean something more…concrete. Is it a new kind of social movement? Or a new art movement? Does it pertain to a specific anti-corporate, environmentalist, or feminist form of activism?

Is craftivism a relatively recent form of political and social engagement? Or is it rooted in history? There is a long tradition, from the crafty works of second-wave feminist artists like Judy Chicago, to the crafty pacifist activism during the Vietnam War, and all the way back to figures of John Ruskin and William Morris who sought refuge in craftsmanship from the spiritual deadness of industrialized labour.

Is craft just a tool for political dissent, or in the context of mass production and consumption, is craft a political act in and of itself? What place and effect do craftivist projects have on gallery walls, as saleable goods in craft fairs, and on Etsy?

On Friday June 5, 2009, at the Textile Museum of Canada, artist Cat Mazza, artist and writer Anthea Black and TCA’s own Jen Anisef had a panel discussion addressing many of these questions in conjunction with the museum’s two current politically engaged and crafty exhibits When Women Rule The World: Judy Chicago in Thread and She Will Always Be Younger Than Us, both curated by Allyson Mitchell.

Despite producing powerful craftivist works herself, Mazza argued that the term “craftivism” begins to breakdown when used to pinpoint a specific movement, primarily because both craft and activism are in themselves such broad terms. She used the example of the 2005 Wombs On Washington project, where pro-choice activists planned to drop knitted wombs on the Supreme Court steps; in contrast, anti-abortion activists knitted and crocheted gowns and booties as Gifts for the Unborn. Someone has even used Mazza’s freeware program knitPro (which converts digital images into needlework patterns) to crochet a stark black and white image of a fetus with the text “this is a life.” (She originally devised knitPro to recreate logos of labour-rights offenders.) The political ambiguity of the term also came to a head recently for the Etsy Craftivist group when the group leaders made the faulty assumption that the membership was all liberal leaning. They weren’t instigating debates over the definition of “craftivism” as necessarily politically progressive.

In lieu of using the ambiguous “craftivist” term to describe the political intention of her own work, Mazza uses the concept of the “micro revolt” (hence the name of her website). She draws the term loosely from French philosopher Felix Guattari’s concept of “molecular revolutions” — that small acts of resistance initiate change, and that isolated groups in various regions doing like-minded things nudge change along. As she says, “I see what I do as an experiment rather than a conviction.”

Mazza has two pieces in She Will Always Be Younger Than Us. The completed Nike blanket petition is a 14-foot wide hand-knit and crochet swoosh, made up of “signatures” (4×4-inche squares) from crafters from more than twenty countries. This work will eventually be sent to CEO of Nike Philip Knight, to demand that the corporation implement fair labour policies. The short film Testimonies is about sweatshop labour, and is filtered through knitoscope, a program she developed which converts moving video into what looks like stitches.
Helmet Liners for Stitch for Senate initiative

Her recent Stitch for Senate project draws upon the history of women knitting to support soldiers. She collected knit helmet liners made from a WWII pattern and then sent them to each state senator, who were asked to choose to either keep the liner or donate it to a soldier fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.Whereas signing a petition takes only a few seconds, projects like the Nike blanket or Stitch for Senate are effective precisely because of the very personal and time-consuming collaborative process through which the message of protest comes to be voiced.Much of Mazza’s work has to do with drawing crafter awareness to labour abuses being committed around the world. “Craft hobbyists understand what goes into making an object. I realized that they would be an interesting group to mobilize for anti-sweatshop labour,” Mazza said, adding that craft circles are also great forums for discussing these issues. Those of us who know the work that goes into hand knitting a toque or sewing a wallet often do have a deeper understanding of what consumer goods ought to cost if the people who made it were paid fairly.

And yet, sometimes I worry that the language of Buy Handmade or Shop Local (while mighty important efforts in many ways) make it seem like all foreign goods or factory made goods are bad, instead of forging connections and improving the lives of makers around the world (let’s be honest, a lot of that stuff is “handmade” too).

During the panel discussion, Anthea Black also brought up the issue of what happens to the political intention of craftivist works when they are included in art institutions. Black was critical of her own curatorial choices from a show called Super String at the Stride Gallery, which featured a knit banner with the words “Peace Knits” by Calgary’s hardcore craftivist group the Revolutionary Knitting Circle. The banner was initially created and functioned as a banner among protests during the G8 Summit protests, yet for the exhibit it was stripped of the context of its making and mounted on a stark white gallery wall.

She has since become interested in establishing “curatorial ethics around politically engaged craft projects” to figure out how to maintain their radical potential in museums and larger institutions, by finding ways of keeping the context of their making, privileging the relationships that are made, and the skills that are shared.

“When craftivism is put in a gallery setting, the political intent of work can be softened or even erased,” Black said. Mazza’s Nike blanket petition was, in a perfect example, suspiciously cut from the Subversive Lace and Radical Knitting show in New York’s Museum of Art and Design in 2007 at the last minute because there was “not enough space.” I guess taking on a huge corporation like Nike was too “radical” for an exhibit on “radical knitting”?

Anthea Black’s skepticism surrounding placing this kind of work in a gallery space made me wonder about another major venue for craftivist works — the marketplace. I don’t think there is anything wrong with making money off what you create. The growing micro economy of handmade is pretty radical if for nothing more than enabling a lot of people to quit their 9-5 jobs and make a living doing and making the things they love. But what would be the effect of, let’s say, Mazza’s logoknit pieces (copyright issues aside!) or the Radical Knitting Circle’s Peace Knit banner if they were being sold on Etsy? Does trying to make a profit get in the way of making a political statement? Not necessarily, but there is definitely a risk that the message will loose its potency just like a mass-produced Che Guevara t-shirt.

That’s why I think it is so important to think critically about what it means to do/make/sell-it-yourself, so “handmade” doesn’t simply devolve into an aesthetic or a marketing gimmick. While it may not be possible to pin down exactly what “craftivism” is or will become, it’s exciting to be reminded that we all have the tools and abilities to craft a political statement, whatever you want that statement to be.

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Nicole Dawkins is a button collecting, sexy-sock-monkey-making foodie who recently completed her undergraduate degree in social cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. She recently conducted a miniature ethnographic study of the Toronto craft scene and plans to continue studying the politics of DIY when she begins a master’s program in anthropology this September.