"Subversive Stitches" and "Revolutionary Knitting Circles". Networking Textile Crafts with New Technologies

Vortrag | Lecture
im Rahmen der Konferenz | in the framework of the conference
"New Network Theory", Institute of Network Cultures with Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and University of Amsterdam/Dept. Media Studies, Amsterdam, 28.06.-30.06.2007 | June 28-30, 2007

Crafts, and especially needlework are usually considered as traditional techniques – and, in historical perspective, also as being part of a conservative educatory complex apt to train bodies and minds, "learning by doing", according to equally conservative power structures.

Accordingly, the fact that crafting communities and knitting circles from early on were also a place for social and political communication, and a fecund ground for subversive thinking and networking, has been widely ignored for a long time. Neither feminist art history – pointing on the aesthetic value of crafts and arguing against the gender-related hierarchies of art – nor early cyberfeminist theory that focused on the complex of "weaving and women" were able to bring major changes in sight – partly because their discourses were largely ignored as well, partly due to inherent essentialisms of their arguments that were critically debatable as well.

However, it seems that more recently the situation has changed in many aspects – as one can easily grasp browsing the world wide web, and some of its major new applications like weblogs respectively. Here, we find not only the old tradition of "Revolutionary Knitting Circles" revitalized. Especially within and by the way of D.I.Y.- and crafting communities using a whole range of more recent web applications together with other home made style activities also needlework and crafts experience literally a proper renaissance. And while "craftivism" and "subversive stitching" are already considered as powerful cultural techniques for not only digitally connected networks of cultural jamming activists and related activities on both sides of the interfaces – in so called "meatspace" as well as online, others research on the cognitive impact of network aesthetics and ask in how far meshwork and crocheted may work as "philosophical toys" for mental training, its creation possibly to be used as a tool for understanding complex processes of theoretical mathematics and physics even.

But does this really mean traditional concepts of craft and needlework, their subsumption according to conservative patterns of perception as well as their connection to the mentioned educatory complex are set out of function? What are the driving forces directing the new codification – and do they really lead to alternative directions? How do we have to judge the role of electronic media, and the new web "2.0" applications within these processes?

The lecture will take a closer look into this field and critically discuss these questions. Special attention will be devoted to tension fields like those between D.I.Y, "prosumer" and consumer cultures and related developments of creative, aesthetic and political strategies; individual creativity and creative interaction; authorship, copyright and commons; nerd-fetishism, peer group orientation and social networking; a. o., including on all layers the mentioned gender-related issues as well.

Hintergrundinformationen | Background Information:

Forschungsprojekt SoftWareZ auf www.under-construction.cc | research project SoftWareZ at www.under-construction.cc

Forschungsschwerpunkt Do It Yourself-Kulturen auf www.under-construction.cc | research focus Do It Yourself cultures at www.under-construction.cc

Infoseite Critical Crafting Circle auf www.under-construction.cc | Infopage Critical Crafting Circle at www.under-construction.cc

Projekt "A2D2A" auf www.under-construction.cc | Project "A2D2A" at www.under-construction.cc

Projekt "ReCycling Invention – WiedErfinden" auf www.under-construction.cc | Project "Re/Cycling Invention" at www.under-construction.cc

tags: alltagskultur, alltagstechnologien, analogital, art & media, art & society, communication, crafts, cultural history, design, digital culture, digitale kultur, dinge, displays, diy, do it yourself, do-it-yourself cultures, do-it-yourself-kulturen, everyday culture, everyday technologies, geek, handwerk, knowledge cultures, kommunikation, kulturgeschichte, kunst & gesellschaft, kunst & medien, material, media studies, media theory, medientheorie, medienwissenschaft, net culture, netzkultur, objects & things, objekte/sachen/dinge, perception, popular culture, populärkultur, repräsentation, representation, technologie, technology, textiles, things, tools, vermittlung, wahrnehmung, werkzeug, wissenskulturen