Materiality Matters: Documents on Contemporary Crafts 2

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Materiality Matters is the second volume in the series was launched in March 2014. Materiality Matters grew out of two international seminars co-organized by Norwegian Crafts, Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts and the National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design : Materiality Matters, 22 November 2012 and Very Good, 21 November 2013.

Editors preface:
For the crafts, the concepts of materiality and tactility are absolutely central. In Norway, these concepts have recently been the subject of greater discussion, and it seems now that the field of fine art has re-discovered them. In 2011 the annual craft exhibition and the fall exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus were both marked by a focus on textile works. Also in 2013, both exhibitions to a large extent included the same artists and materials, again with a particular attention to textiles.[1]

Materiality has apparently also been playing a larger role in the discussion on artistic quality in contemporary art. But if we claim that materiality is a quality-related concept in both craft and fine art, are we talking about the same type of materiality? Is it the same quality we are referring to in the two different traditions: the craftsperson’s loyalty and confidence in his or her materials, and the fine artist’s use and borrowing of the media of others? And what is the importance of the hand in contemporary craft practices that are increasingly making use of new digital technology?

The present anthology is based on some of the proceedings of two international seminars held in Oslo at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design: Materiality Matters in 2012, and Very Good in 2013. The first seminar examined the implications of materiality in the practical and contextual fields of curating and writing about craft art. As craft becomes increasingly inter-disciplinary, it has become apparent that craft practitioners themselves need to develop an adequate theoretical vocabulary for use within their respective fields.

The second seminar addressed these issues further, but emphasised the challenges met by practitioners who venture into new and previously unchartered territories of craft production. The emergence of new digital technology has spawned a generation of craft artists who either embrace or reject these new tools in their practice, proving that in the post-modern landscape in which we find ourselves today, conflicting aesthetics can co-exist and even inform each-other. Consequently, there is no hegemonic ideology able to determine either aesthetic truth or the ontology of craft, but only a tapestry of various – and hopefully illuminating – experiences, intellectual and otherwise, with craft and the wider fields of art and life. The contributors to this volume share with us their own experiences in eight essays, all of which are based on the original seminar lectures.

Writer and curator Line Halvorsen probes a conceptual shift in contemporary art that has brought practices of craft and fine art closer together. She looks at recent developments in the Norwegian art scene and argues that an emphasis on materiality has become a cross-disciplinary strategy for artists; they are reacting against excessively conceptual modes of production where the art object has been more or less abolished. Halvorsen sees the emergence of textile art as a logical result of this reaction.

However, though materiality is concerned with objects, it can also be related to crafts as intellectual practice. In her contribution, writer Jessica Hemmings addresses the challenges of writing creatively about craft. Having few antecedents, craft writing must not only find a language of its own but also its own ethos, rather than adapting one of art criticism. Writing is in itself a craft, according to Hemmings, with particular material qualities that can add further layers to the experience and understanding of craft.

Curator Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk takes on the curatorial process as a field of research. In his essay he presents a thorough exposé of how a collaborative art project can evolve gradually. Tverbakk uses his own work at Kunsthall Oslo as a case study for how an art project can connect organically to its material surroundings as well as socio-historical context. His primary example is the exhibition Fortvilelser i leire , by Norwegian artist Steinar Haga Kristensen.

In collaboration with the Oslo School of Design and Architecture , Neil Forrest initiated a research project on crafted ornament in contemporary architecture. As an effect of postmodern interest in the ornamental elements rejected by early twentieth-century modernism, the architecture of recent decades contains many examples of how ornaments can be re-interpreted so as to create tactile urban landscapes. Forrest describes such phenomena as the material topography of architecture, a concept he elaborates in his contribution to this anthology.

Trine Wester, artist and associate professor at Oslo National Academy of the Arts , has used digital 3D-printing technology in her own artistic practice for two decades, and was instrumental in developing the studio facilities at the art academy. In her summary of those experiences, she identifies a ‘hands-off-approach’ to craft which has brought forth a new ‘fabrication aesthetic’ of yet un-surveyable significance.

The practical outcome of such an aesthetic shift is represented by the work of artist Michael Eden, who regards 3D-print technology as the beginning of a new industrial revolution, one apt to change the very nature of craft skills. In his essay in this anthology, however, Eden affirms that the new technology should be regarded simply as a tool. He points out that the continuous technical and aesthetic development of crafts is a historical necessity.

Yet in spite of a growing interest in digital technology, its applications to craft, the emergence of hands-off skills and the philosophical discussions they spur, we are also witnessing a counter-movement championing traditional hands-on skills within craft. Art and design critic Dennis Dahlqvist proposes in his essay that industrial designers and craft artists today are reverting to handcrafted modes of production as a radical strategy for social activism. The mass-production of consumer society is being effectively rejected, claims Dahlqvist.

The limits of digital technology in the field of crafts are further explored by Stephen Knott, research fellow at the Crafts Institute in Farnham, in a critical analysis which discusses the epistemological implications new technology has for crafts. Knott draws some of his conclusions from the sum of experiences gathered in the seminar called ‘Very Good’, for which he presided as moderator.

It would seem we are reaching the summit of a discussion which started already in the 19th century, if not before. In the 19th century, there was a strong fear that craft skills, knowledge, quality and individuality were in danger of being replaced by industrial production and capitalist rationality. Now more than a century later, the tables have turned and craft skills are in increasing demand, not only within industrial design but also in fine art, which had abandoned the skill of hands for intellectual skills during the high modernism of the mid-twentieth century.

In this second volume of Documents on Contemporary Crafts, we are drawn into the ongoing discourse on what craft is and can be. One important step in this development is the acceptance of hands-off technology in combination with traditional hand skills. Perhaps it is a matter of treating computer programming as a skill equal to pottery throwing and weaving.

No longer simply modes of production, craft skills are also becoming vital methods of academic research as well as methods for contributing to aesthetic and even social development. The latter is something we no doubt will encounter more and more as craft artists are finding ways to employ their skills for social and political interventions. But how will that affect the role of materiality? If one conclusion can be drawn from the contributions to this volume, it is that the recent technological and conceptual advancements within craft art have actually brought materiality and tactility to the foreground of contemporary craft.