New Perspectives on Old Patterns?
Needlework Revisited: Between art and activism, crafts and cultural performance

Lecture in the framework of ESP Exploratory Workshop
Vilnius Academy of Arts, 20-22 Spetmeber, 2007

For decades, scholarly perspectives on needlework were directed by more or less traditional disciplinary patterns, closely related to its status in society. Neither feminist art history - pointing on the aesthetic value of crafts and arguing against the gender-related hierarchies of art - nor the fact that in the second half of the 20th century saw a broadened spectrum of artistic materials and techniques - including the use of or references to needlework - were reason enough to seriously leave this frame. Basically, authorship and aesthetic value of the object remained the main criteria of classification and concern.

However, more recent developments in media technologies might change this in significant ways. Blogs and other so called social web applications show that together with D.I.Y. techniques and home style handicrafts also needlework experiences a proper renaissance in many cultural fields, including the arts. Not only younger generations of artists use knitting and stitching to create work with explicit political imagery, also the old tradition of "Revolutionary Knitting Circles" is revitalized. And while "craftivism" and "subversive stitching" are promoted as powerful cultural techniques for local activities shared by global networks of cultural jamming activists, researchers on the cognitive impact of network aesthetics ask in how far meshwork models may work as "philosophical toys" for mental training and tools for understanding complex processes. In fact, in many cases even the (im)material boundaries between before separated aesthetic and cultural practices seem to be blurred.

The paper will discuss potentials and problems of transdisciplinary accesses to this field of cultural production and performance.