How to Broadcast the Quiet Revolution
It was a typical grey Flinders Lane winter afternoon, with the sunlight straining between the ANZ and Telstra towers. I was passing by the window at Craft Victoria, as I had done thousands of times before.
Something caught the corner of my eye. Next to the window was a power point. At first this seemed unremarkable. There are power points everywhere in the city. But there was something strange about this one. For a start, why was it on the outside of the building? Couldn’t anyone plug in and use the electricity for free? So who would pay for it? I looked closer. It didn’t seem an ordinary power point. I ran my fingers over it—this power point was actually made of porcelain.
It was craft! Someone created a ceramic tile, cast from a power point, and attached it to a wall as an act of ‘craft graffiti’. Eventually, I tracked down the perpetrator—Honor Freeman, a ceramicist then based in Adelaide. She is one of many Australians practicing ‘poor craft’, an application of craft skills to materials and spaces on the street. As an act, it feels almost revolutionary, albeit in its own quiet fashion.
When we think of revolutions, scenes come to mind of crowds storming bastions of privilege. Oppressed peoples take their destiny in their hands to radically re-order society, overturning hierarchies.
But alongside these ‘active’ revolutions are alternative forms of social change. The Italian communist Gramsci created the phrase ‘passive revolution’ to describe the American alternative. Fordist factories channelled workers desires towards individual aspiration rather than collective action. Brands like Coca-Cola make generational change a matter of consumption rather than riot. Nowadays, we suspect any revolutionary push as just to be just another marketing gimmick. We’d call it a McRevolution.
That’s why the recent introduction of DIY values in the crafts has been labelled a ‘quiet revolution’. The take up of crafts like knitting in the 21st century are about individuals taking destiny in their own hands and seeking change in an immediate way. It’s an alternative to buying something in China with a Hallmark prefabricated message.
But there’s a danger. While flying under the marketing radar, the ‘quiet revolution’ carries its own risk. Its humble aspirations can create a comfort zone that is cut off from the outside world. The ‘Bambi craft’ now proliferating in design boutiques shows where this might lead.
In design we are now seeing the emergence of a new global consciousness. Cooper Hewitt’s Design for the Other 90% promotes designers who are creating solutions for those living in the third world. While a responsible alternative to the rampant consumption of much celebrity design, this movement does locate creative control very much in the metropolitan centres. Like Make Poverty History, it assumes a passive position for those living in necessity.
Craft’s ‘quiet revolution’ is well positioned to reverse this arrangement. We have already seen the capacity of Australians to work with traditional craft communities in developing product. We are not dealing just with the problems of the third world, but also its increasingly rare and valuable asset – how to make something by hand.
It’s the dilemma of any craft. When asked for her advice to aspiring writers, the late Susan Sontag said, ‘Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.’ We all have to find a space somewhere between the bench and the window.
Kevin Murray is a craft writer and curator – see http://www.craftunbound.net/.
Image: Honor Freeman, powerpoint, 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment