I’m off to the northern hemisphere tomorrow for a good hit of actual holiday-type activities, before my patchwork of fieldwork starts and I hit the digital storytelling and interviewing and thick description slopes.
Back in Brisbane at the end of January.
Everyone, have a lovely break, and I’ll try to remember to blog a little something while I’m away.
Against my better judgement, because I knew the effect it would have on my ability to focus on the rather cheerful article I’m writing, I spent a few hours catching up with some of the discussion that’s happening in my Australian cultural studies blogging neighbourhood about the Cronulla Riots. As predicted, the wind has gone out of the sails on my little boat somewhat. So, for the purposes of catharsis, really:
(image generator picked up from Sorrow at Sill’s Bend)
Make the distinctions between “purchased” and “homemade”, and between material and immaterial artefacts a little muddier, and I clap my hands and jump up and down for the HobbyPrincess’s Draft Craft Manifesto
1. People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products.
2. The things that people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people can’t see.
3. The things people make they usually want to keep and update. Crafting is not against consumption. It is against throwing things away.
4. People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarily it comes from their friends and family. This manifests as an economy of gifts.
5. People who believe they are producing genuinely cool things seek broader exposure for their products. This creates opportunities for alternative publishing channels.
6. Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.
7. Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable, and easy to learn.
8. Materials become important. Knowledge of what they are made of and where to get them becomes essential.
9. Recipes become important. The ability to create and distribute interesting recipes becomes valuable.
10. Learning techniques brings people together. This creates online and offline communities of practice.
11. Craft-oriented people seek opportunities to discover interesting things and meet their makers. This creates marketplaces.
12. At the bottom, crafting is a form of play.
None of this means I’ll be having any truck with popcorn-threading or pinecone-painting, however (or DOES it?).
Josh and I are off to Sydney at a truly ridiculous hour tomorrow morning for the Australian Television History Conference where John (Hartley) is presenting our co-authored paper, “Laughs and Legends, or the Furniture that Glows? Television as History”, which we are all a bit crazy and overexcited from writing and talking about.
Back on Monday, when I hope to be able to actually watch television again, at some point anyway.
In Adelaide over the weekend, I used Harry Potter as an excuse to experience the Capri Theatre first-hand. The Capri is a majestic, massively high-ceilinged theatre, with wooden floors, and two tiers of plush velvet seats. It is also home to the SA branch of the Theatre Organ Society, and boasts the most incredible theatre organ I’ve ever seen - a modern mechanical marvel featuring 20-foot high pipes, automatic flapping vent things (excuse my ignorance on the details) that kind of act as selective amplifiers, and a battery of percussion instruments (from glockenspiels to snare drums and canastas) mounted on the walls. They’re played via switches and pedals on the organ itself, which - you better believe it - rises from underneath the stage to thunderous, delighted applause from the audience. (A history and lots of photos here).
I’m not satisfied yet that I know what’s going on when we love obsolete mechanical technologies (and, come to think of it, old things, and lost and found things) so much. I could follow a well-trodden cultural studies line, and argue that the ubiquity of the digital (that is, technological plenty, for those who have it) means that cultural capital can only be accumulated by performing your knowledge and mastery of the rare and forgotten as well as the new and undiscovered (that is, technological scarcity). I think maybe part of it is that digital culture, and digital technologies, are so slippery, transparent, and uniformly inscrutable - when they do break, or die, or become outdated, they just sit there like deactivated clones, blank and silent, with their blank little screens. Maybe loving the way that you can see and touch and hear and feel the moving parts of clocks, and cars, and spanners, and pianos, is not only about about their enhanced presence as things, but also something to do with bodies.
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