Obscure Objects of Desire 1 2 3 4 - PRINTER VERSION
>> With a few notable exceptions I found the 'strands', the name given to the section of parallel programs far more interesting and to the point than the offerings at the plenary sessions. I am not sure why this was except that perhaps the talks in the plenary sessions, which were given by speakers from outside the crafts field and who, therefore, were not quite sure of the issues most of the delegates were struggling with, did not resonate with the same sense of urgency that seemed to exemplify the talks in the strands. In one of the plenary sessions, for example, the film historian Philip Dodd, who was just appointed as the new head of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, gave an exuberant talk on Nationalism. He opened it by showing the credits from the James Bond film, Dr. No. The idea being that film graphics like this were particularly English and that they were a type of craft that was not being recognized preserved or studied. He even seemed to suggest at the end of his talk that perhaps while we were engaged in writing the history of modern crafts we might find a place for this idiom inside that history. His talk was full of literary references and highly entertaining but his shotgun-style approach left everyone wondering exactly what his point was. Yehuda Safran of Columbia University in New York, who spoke on Heidegger, seemed to have even less of a direction. His presentation, which he concluded by reading from Heidegger for 15 minutes, was mind numbing and there was a palpable sigh of relief when he finished. The opening plenary talk, was the bright exception. It was given by Idris Parry and titled "Rilke and Things". Parry's enthusiasm for Rilke and his sincere desire to share Rilke's ideas had his audience transfixed. He explored Rilke's thoughts about not only the making of a common object like a shawl and its 'equivalence' to life, but also the difficulty in expressing that equivalence in language. On the last day of conference, after attending more than 14 lectures, I could not help but long for the sincerity, clarity and the incredibly rich content of Parry's talk.
One of the interesting talks from the Strands that elicited a strong response was given by Pamela Johnson and titled "Out of Touch: The Meaning of Making in the Digital Age". She posed the question, why do we make crafts in a digital age? In answering that question she argued that the element that separates crafts from the fine arts and makes it special is 'sensuousness', that it is understood through touch. She gave some interesting physiological explanations to lay the ground work for her argument, from the number of receptors in the spinal cord to suggesting that the skin can be seen as the body's largest organ. She also suggested that touch was the only sense that cannot be tricked. All of this raised the hackles of many of the academic theorists who apparently believed that making such a fuss over touch was inherently anti-intellectual and might, therefore, make the crafts less viable as a subject for academic research. There is, however, an important American philosopher from the 1930s who did not find touch and the intellect to be at odds. John Dewey, in his book, Art As Experience, which was based on his lectures on aesthetics at Harvard University in 1932, wrote that "there is no limit to the capacity of immediate sensuous experiences themselves—that is in the abstract—would be designated 'ideal' and 'spiritual'."
There was another session that also fired a debate among the conferees. This was a plenary session panel on The Oral History and the Crafts. Mike Hughes, Paul Thompson and Moira Vincentelli spoke about their reasons for doing oral histories as well as the methods they employ. For the most part there seemed to be the feeling that they were trying to find some sort of 'truth' that needed to be preserved for posterity and that this truth, judging from the explanations of how they conduct these interviews, was
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> With a few notable exceptions I found the 'strands', the name given to the section of parallel programs far more interesting and to the point than the offerings at the plenary sessions. I am not sure why this was except that perhaps the talks in the plenary sessions, which were given by speakers from outside the crafts field and who, therefore, were not quite sure of the issues most of the delegates were struggling with, did not resonate with the same sense of urgency that seemed to exemplify the talks in the strands. In one of the plenary sessions, for example, the film historian Philip Dodd, who was just appointed as the new head of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, gave an exuberant talk on Nationalism. He opened it by showing the credits from the James Bond film, Dr. No. The idea being that film graphics like this were particularly English and that they were a type of craft that was not being recognized preserved or studied. He even seemed to suggest at the end of his talk that perhaps while we were engaged in writing the history of modern crafts we might find a place for this idiom inside that history. His talk was full of literary references and highly entertaining but his shotgun-style approach left everyone wondering exactly what his point was. Yehuda Safran of Columbia University in New York, who spoke on Heidegger, seemed to have even less of a direction. His presentation, which he concluded by reading from Heidegger for 15 minutes, was mind numbing and there was a palpable sigh of relief when he finished. The opening plenary talk, was the bright exception. It was given by Idris Parry and titled "Rilke and Things". Parry's enthusiasm for Rilke and his sincere desire to share Rilke's ideas had his audience transfixed. He explored Rilke's thoughts about not only the making of a common object like a shawl and its 'equivalence' to life, but also the difficulty in expressing that equivalence in language. On the last day of conference, after attending more than 14 lectures, I could not help but long for the sincerity, clarity and the incredibly rich content of Parry's talk.
One of the interesting talks from the Strands that elicited a strong response was given by Pamela Johnson and titled "Out of Touch: The Meaning of Making in the Digital Age". She posed the question, why do we make crafts in a digital age? In answering that question she argued that the element that separates crafts from the fine arts and makes it special is 'sensuousness', that it is understood through touch. She gave some interesting physiological explanations to lay the ground work for her argument, from the number of receptors in the spinal cord to suggesting that the skin can be seen as the body's largest organ. She also suggested that touch was the only sense that cannot be tricked. All of this raised the hackles of many of the academic theorists who apparently believed that making such a fuss over touch was inherently anti-intellectual and might, therefore, make the crafts less viable as a subject for academic research. There is, however, an important American philosopher from the 1930s who did not find touch and the intellect to be at odds. John Dewey, in his book, Art As Experience, which was based on his lectures on aesthetics at Harvard University in 1932, wrote that "there is no limit to the capacity of immediate sensuous experiences themselves—that is in the abstract—would be designated 'ideal' and 'spiritual'."
There was another session that also fired a debate among the conferees. This was a plenary session panel on The Oral History and the Crafts. Mike Hughes, Paul Thompson and Moira Vincentelli spoke about their reasons for doing oral histories as well as the methods they employ. For the most part there seemed to be the feeling that they were trying to find some sort of 'truth' that needed to be preserved for posterity and that this truth, judging from the explanations of how they conduct these interviews, was
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign