The Vera List Centre for Art and Politics in New York is hosting a discussion about craft as a medium for political protest.

Many contemporary artists are using craft as a largely unregulated place of protest where diverse and timely political statements are being made. Presented as part of a series of talks on agency, the panel proposes that crafting, because it is often social and communal, plays a vital role in the public sphere.

The panelists include Liz Collins, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Cat Mazza and Allison Smith. As well as participating in the panel, they have collaborated on a ‘large-scale knit banner’ that will be unveiled during the event. The discussion will be published in Modern Painters.

Political protest is an unlikely avenue for craft to use for profile in the visual arts. It would be interesting to determine if the crafting process itself is considered protest enough, in which case the actual cause selected is merely decoration.

Cricket writer Harsha Bhogle has attributed the success of the Australian team to the humble approach to their craft:

As such, he says, they are more humble than any other team. "Maybe not in terms of behaviour on field or in terms of the way they approach people, but in the way they approach their craft and the way they approach their profession, they’re humble. It’s the way they approach their craft."

Ponting’s Australians: good and humble

Life for bears was always improving.

There was no shortage of food. Honey production had become mechanised and they were supplied with a regular abundance of their favourite food.

And no shortage of shelter. The forest provided them with the timber they needed for building their growing homes.

So the average bear could now enjoy life on their own honey deck, work out in their own honey gym, hibernate in their own honey lounge. Life was sweet.

For bears, honey was their reason for living. Their whole lives were spent in the accumulation and enjoyment of honey. Every bear home had at least one multi-function honey pot, where they could dip their honey sticks, pour their honey drinks and squirt their honey hits.

Once and a while, a Baby Bear would ask, ‘Daddy Bear, where does honey come from?’ The Daddy Bear would take Baby Bear to the honey deck and point to the large buildings in the distance.

‘See those buildings, Baby Bear. They are the honey factories. Inside the factory are large air-conditioned hives that produce the raw honey. See the smoke coming out of the factory? That’s from the furnaces that filter the honey so that it becomes clear and pure.’

In school, the bears were taught about the science of honey production. The bees themselves were taken for granted. The bears learnt only about the factory system.

Not all bears shared this enthusiasm for the factory. A small group of ‘Fair Bears’ paid more attention to bees. They would explore the forest and find disused natural hives which they took home and admired for their beauty.

Though most bears thought that these Fair Bears were strange, they were tolerated. It was assumed their enthusiasm for raw honey was because they couldn’t get enough of the pure stuff. But when they saw the wild hives, most bears appreciated their beauty and quietly wished that their honey came from such elegant structures.

If only! But life isn’t like that, is it. Life is cruel. One thing bears fear more than anything else is the sting of the bee. Rumour of swarms had prompted them to build high walls around their houses. The honey factories were not ideal, but the bears could relax knowing that the bees were securely housed.

But sweet as it was, there were growing signs that this lifestyle was coming to an end. The bears’ appetite for big homes was so great that the forest began to run out of trees. There were reports from the honey managers that the bees were starving and honey supplies in the future were jeopardised.

At first, the bears ignored this advice, dipping into their honey stocks and basking in the sunlight exposed by the empty forest. But eventually reason began to take hold and they realised they would have to do things differently.

The Circle of Bear Elders held a meeting with the factory manager and the chief representative of the bees. First they addressed the manager, a particularly wise and experienced bear, to tell them the situation. He gave them the grim news.

‘Honourable Bear Elders, I’m afraid the situation is perilous. There are hardly any trees left in the forest. The bees can no longer collect the pollen for making honey. Soon there will be no timber left to fire the furnaces. If this continues, honourable Bear Elders, we will be looking at a future without honey.’

The Circle of Bear Elders gasped at the prospect. The most powerful bear, George W. Bear, came forward and demanded a solution from the manager.

‘On behalf all the honey-loving beings of the forest, I insist that you find a way to continue honey production.’

‘Well, the only short-term solution that we can see is for the bees to go the distant forest in the east, where there are still flowers that could supply what they need to make honey.’

George W. smiled, ‘Well, what’s the problem then? Queen Bee, please instruct your bees to go the distant forest in the east. The honey-loving beings of the forest will celebrate their efforts.’

The Queen Bee was an oriental beauty with golden stripes. She narrowed her eyes and fluttered her ornate lace wings. ‘Honourable bear elders, we appreciate your concerns naturally and graciously acknowledge your love of the honey that we produce. But we do not know how to find the forest to the east. We need your assistance. We need your map and compass to be able to find the way.’

Though they feared the bees would lose their precious maps, the Circle of Bear Elders agreed to assist the bees on their journey. But then the Queen made one further request.

‘Before you go back to your sumptuous bear mansions, honourable bear elders, please indulge us in asking you a simple question. Why should all this be up to us? Surely it is your mansions that have caused such devastation in our forest. If your houses were smaller, then there would be more trees and we could return to our usually feeding grounds.’

This statement caused great consternation among the bears. They were anxious to maintain honey production and needed to keep the bees on side. But they couldn’t imagine returning to the tiny shacks they used to life in.

The Circle of Bear Elders decided to have a series of meetings so they could discuss this issue in more depth and start to set targets for their house sizes.

Meanwhile, the Fair Bears decided to go into the forest and meet with the bees themselves. To their relief, they found the bees very interested to discuss the problems. No one was stung. They talked about how they could make honey outside the factory, making wild hives and gathering food from the clover. Fair Bears actually preferred the raw honey and offered to assist the bees in erecting posts on which they could start building the hives.

Will the bees find the forest to the east? Will the bears manage to live in smaller houses? Will new partnerships like that between the Fair Bears and the bees continue and grow?

Lord knows, and he’s not telling anyone, yet.

After nearly eight years at Craft Victoria, I am now experiencing the incredible lightness of being without a small arts organisation. It’s been a very moving week, with an astounding Fresh exhibition, a flood of kind messages and a very warm gathering on Saturday to reflect back on what’s been happening in craft so far this century.

With the newly-won benefit of hindsight, it seemed that running an organisation like Craft Victoria was a matter of balancing between the professional development and wider engagement with culture. The concept of home seemed the simplest metaphor. It’s important to separate ourselves off from the world to find comfort and security. But this separation can become a fortress if we don’t open the door occasionally to the outside world.

Since 2000, we’ve had a number of high quality exhibitions that demonstrated the modernist endeavours of individual makers. But complementing that were initiatives like the Scarf Festival and South Project made contact with new audiences here and overseas. We’ve provided all the benefits of a club, but tried to ensure that the membership is diverse as possible.

Keeping modernism and humanism in play is a tricky balancing act. And after eight years, it gets increasingly hard to keep the balls in the air. Our managerial culture is always going to make it difficult for humanist energies.

So I’m going to take a little rest and go back to own craft, writing. Time to find a new home.

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Mark Edgoose’s mezuzah creates a ritual door ornament and connects it with the practical business of modern life, such as finding your keys and phone when you leave the house.

Last week I was moderating a forum at the Jewish Museum of Australia. They had just opened the Contemporary Judaica exhibition titled New Under the Sun. This is the third such exhibition that the museum have staged and toured. It’s a wonderful creative challenge for craftspersons to create objects that have real ritual significance, even if it is for a culture that they do not belong to.

The speakers on the night included silversmith Mark Edgoose, jeweller Blanche Tilden, ceramicist Kris Coad and designer Paul Justin. The first three were non-Jewish and all expressed a gratitude to the Jewish community for allowing them to participate in their culture in this way. Paul Justin had some very interesting points to make about the challenges of having his designs manufactured remotely.

The focus of this show was on new rituals, such as the Yom Hashoah, the remembrance of the holocaust, and feminist symbols such as Miriam’s cup. The role of craft in developing objects that give substance to these traditions seemed a tangible role to play. Some in the audience made reference to the history of Judaism in Western Europe, which prohibited Jews from guilds, which meant that they formed an alliance with non-Jewish crafts to supply their precious objects.

There was an ironic note struck when someone in the audience asked a question about the enduring relevance of craft, particularly in the direct physical involvement of the maker in the production. It became clear then that it was only the non-Jewish craftspersons that had made the work themselves.

It seemed a nice point for cultural dialogue that these two cultures—the non-Jewish makers and the Jewish community—could exchange their authenticities. Skill for faith: the makers offer their manual talents in exchange for the engaged rituals of Jewish life.

It evokes a point made by Julia Kristeva that to engage with the faiths of others in a multicultural society that we need to acknowledge that we are ‘strangers to ourselves’.

Congratulations Jewish Museum of Australia. You set a wonderful example of creative engagement with community. I’d certainly recommend a visit to the gallery.

American Craft magazine has been re-launched under the editorship of Andrew Wagner. Despite its name, the magazine takes a global view, featuring a French jeweler on the cover and articles from Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

The emphasis has moved from the object to the maker. This is most evident in the cover and its accompanying story. The risk is that it moves into Martha Stewart territory. At the moment, there is enough serious content to resist that. Paul Greenhalgh’s ‘Critics Corner’ raises some weighty issues about the place of craft in the pantheon of art history, though the criticism of craft ideology seems a fairly cheap conservative shot. It would be good to see the magazine feature an alternative line, pointing towards the increased ideological engagement of craft.

Meanwhile, the issue is beautiful to behold. The paper stock has been lovingly chosen. Of particular note is the change to the American Craft logo. It looks disarmingly similar to the Craft Victoria logo, don’t you think?

Some time has elapsed since the gathering in Johannesburg. It still seems too soon to reflect fully on the event. It will be very interesting to see what emerges. It’s a challenge to maintain contact across time zones and cultures, but I’m hoping that we can build on the gathering in a substantial way.

One certain outcome of the gathering is a great expectation of what south-south exchange might bring. As an Australian, it seemed that we couldn’t match the scope of the craft sector, certainly in size. But we do have a quite evolved cultural infrastructure which consists of organisations and policies. Now that South Africa is continuing its process of Black Empowerment, it seems a good opportunity to offer support through knowledge and skills transfer. This is particularly relevant to the practice of putting craft objects in art galleries.

It seems that this kind of partnership in developmental activities might be of particular relevance right now. One of the many sayings that was circulating around the gathering was numbo liya kade – ‘magic takes time’. We shouldn’t expect exhibitions and publications to appear magically as a result of the gathering. But we know have the beginning of a history that we can evolve across the south. The real work begins!

Now on show at the redoubtable Craft ACT is a collaborative exhibition by two glass artists – Luna Ryan from Canberra and Jock Puautjimi from Tiwi Island. The title of the exhibition Mamana Mamanta means ‘gradual friendship’. Both Luna and Jock gathered much of their glass from old television screens. The image on the left is one of Luna’s, titled ‘Vision of a fragile Eden series’ (2007, kiln cast recycled television screens).

Interesting how television, the window to the world of spectacle, can become a sculptural substance that freezes one particular scene.

Saturday began at the African Cultural Centre, where Benji Francis presented the raw work by nine young performers who each told the story of their lives for the first time to an audience. These were ordinary stories of people in townships. One was a boy who had shot his stepmother after daily beatings. Another was a girl whose best friend overdosed from drugs she had sold her. Another boy’s parents had died in a car accident and was then caught up in the crime world in order to survive.

But the most dramatic story was the girl whose teacher had thrown a rock at her for coming to school while they were still on strike. The police had returned soon after and tried to disperse the teachers with guns. She fled the shooting and hid at home. The police eventually knocked on her door and uncovered her hiding. They then commanded her to stand with her back to them while they shot her mother. When her uncle turned up, he raged against them and threw rocks. By that stage they had run out of rubber bullets and shot him dead with real bullets.

I asked this girl, Linda, if she knew why the police were shooting, and she seemed to have no idea. While the tragedy of her uncle’s death was bad enough, the absence of any political context to it was quite shocking. Why were the teachers striking? Or perhaps it was a very different response to lack of social services. Talking to Benji Francis afterwards, I leant that many of these police were white Afrikaaners. So what has changed since the end of Apartheid?

This morning’s performance was graced with the presence of the first lady, Zanele Mbeki, a great supporter of South African craft. The young actors seemed unfazed by this official presence. Mrs Mbeki was very gracious and commended the actors, saying that their performance opened her eyes to the problems that still beset South Africa. The reluctance to delve further into the shooting at Protea South might have been due to an concern not to embarrass the first lady.

We walked out of the theatre for a lunch of chicken biyrani. Almost immediately, we were entertained with a troup of jive dancers from the Katherus township. Their dancing was amazingly energetic and infectious. The stories we had just been privy to gave us as a sense of the individual challenges that township children face. It was very moving to be immediately hit by this wall of energy, showing an immense capacity to overcome tragedy and keep moving.

I then moved with my group to the Bus Factory for the craft workshop. As we entered the building, we were greeted by women in traditional Zulu costume who were singing and dancing. We were handed programs that listed us as official guests. No one had told us. It was the official re-launch of the Craft Council of South Africa, which has just undergone a black empowerment revolution.

I was asked to the platform and made some remarks on south and craft. I kept my comments short as there was a translator, Mamma G, who put my English into Zulu. While my sentences were short, her translations seemed to go on much longer. I learnt afterward that she made her own speech in response to mine. While I might have said, ‘It is important for crafters to understand the gallery’, Mamma G would say that ‘You must listen to this important message and take your work seriously. You need to value your work more and stop being so lazy.’ It seemed to go well enough, and we played a small but fraught part in the new organisation.

The workshop was challenged by sound problems, but it worked well enough in the end. There were an interesting variety of participants, from crafters to government trainers. We ended up focusing on the pragmatics of exhibition, talking about how someone might create a gallery of their own rather than wait to be invited into someone’s stable.

After a drink in Newtown, we made our way back to Soweto for the live coverage of the Rugby World Cup between South Africa and England. Apparently the South African President Thabo Mbeki had encouraged his team by telling them that they were in Paris not just representing themselves, but they were ‘representing all countries of the south.’ In his ANC letter of the week, Mbeki writes:

I also know that the Springboks know that they will walk into the Stade de France, on 20 October, carrying the hopes and best wishes of the rugby nations of the South, who sent their best fighting squads to France to bring the Webb Ellis Cup back to the South, away from its temporary sojourn in the North.
(ANC Today Vol.7 No. 41, 19 October 2007)

What a perfect drama for the South Project in Johannesburg, otherwise known as Mzantsi (‘south’).

We found ourselves in the local Soweto shabeen with a couple of hundred others drinking around a projector that was beaming the game onto a screen. I had thought that rugby was a white man’s sport, so it was surprising to see a largely black crowd getting so excited about a white game. The broadcast was part Afrikaans. They seemed to start speaking English, but lapse into Afrikaans when the action became too exciting. When the game finally finished, there was mayhem in the shabeen. Everyone got up onto the tables and started dancing. They kept up the rhythm for hours. Sometimes, the audience would erupt into live singing over the top of the recorded music. The excitement of victory was so powerful.

The conversation around the evening was to do with how rugby has been embraced by blacks. The amabokaboka (the people of the Springboks) seemed to completely identify with this white team.

The day began with stories of seemingly hopeless struggle, and ended with a great collective celebration. We heard from Zanele Mbeki in the morning about the need to attend to individual hardships, and then saw Thabo Mbeki in the evening celebrating his country’s triumph on the world stage.

That’s South Africa.