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craftivism Archives - ChangingMedia

Apr 16
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Fighting the Power With Craft

By | Art & Social Change, Crafting Change | No Comments

In today’s issue of Crafting for Change… anti-consumerism and knitting vaginas for reproductive rights – crafters challenging the status quo.

First off – craftivists fighting consumerism. The woman behind MicroRevolt knits logos of brands that are known to use sweatshop labor like The Gap and Nike into handmade garments as an exploration of labor, production and consumption.  She created a software program that creates knitting patterns from images so anyone can knit their own versions of brand-name goods, like the Gap legwarmers below.

GaplegwarmersMicrorevolt

While MicroRevolt is explicitly political, the Counterfeit Crochet Project is more of an open exploration of brands and why people covet them. The artist behind the project encourages people to make their own knockoff versions of designer purses. People have crocheted knockoff Gucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton bags, complete with crochet approximations of clasps, embellishments, and handles.

chanel_full_bagChanel, anyone?

Both these projects ask questions about what makes the brand so important to people and what people are able to create themselves. I like them because they make you think about what goes into these products and what you are capable of making yourself. Recreating a branded product connects people to the production process in a world where the norm is to buy things made halfway across the world by anonymous garment workers.

Probably because a lot of crafters tend to be women, lots of craftivists have also taken on reproductive rights issues. Government Free VJJ is trying to knit a female reproductive organ for every man in the Senate and House. They figure if congressmen have a uterus of their own, maybe they’ll keep the laws out of American women’s bodies. They’ve already sent a uterus or vagina to lawmakers in at least 36 states. This is a hilarious tactic to get politicians’ attention and make pro-reproductive rights voices heard.

uterusA knitted uterus sent to a North Carolina senator.

A women’s institute in the UK led the Embroideries Project to raise awareness of female genital mutilation, a widespread practice in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Women sewed and embroidered vagina quilt patches, and displayed the quilt at a shop in London. The woman behind the Uterus Flag Project has women craft images of their uterus to inform women about unnecessary hysterectomies and the overmedicalization of women’s bodies (more info here). Reproductive organs are not a typical subject of craft projects – these craftivists are breaking this taboo to make people think about important issues related to women’s bodies.

There are plenty more examples of people using crafts to speak up about issues that are important to them. These are just a few examples of craftivists taking on causes they care about in unexpected ways.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Photos via Government Free VJJ, MicroRevolt, Counterfeit Crochet Project, and riklizart].
Apr 03
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Stitches of Protest

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The Northern border of Mexico, a hotbed of drug trafficking and gang violence, has long been a violent area. Starting in the early 1990s, a wave of murders began to carry away the women of Ciudad Juarez. Since 1993, over 1500 women in the region have been murdered, and hundreds more have disappeared, yet to be found.

Many of the women worked in maquiladoras, low-paying garment factories that cropped up along the border after NAFTA came into effect in 1994. Protests emerged both in Mexico and around the world in response to the violence, as well as the Mexican government’s lack of response to the murders.

In 2005 Lise Bjorne Linnert, a Norwegian artist, began a community art project to raise awareness of femicides in Ciudad Juarez. The project, called Desconocida Unknown Ukjent, consists of hand-embroidered fabric labels, with the names of women who have been murdered in Juarez, as well as the word “disappeared” in many languages. Over 4,500 people have made 6,200 labels as part of the project. Linnert has organized workshops all over the world where people gather to stitch their contributions. They embroider one label with the name of a woman who has been murdered and one label with the word “disappeared” in their native language. The piece has been exhibited throughout Europe and the U.S.

desconocida label

Desconocida wall

Linnert states “To stitch the murdered woman’s name on a small piece of cloth is a physical act, time consuming, repetitious; an intimate experience. It is an act of care, in remembrance and of protest. The embroiderer brings back an identity to each name, through the trace of handwriting, stitches, and colors.” The practice of embroidering also links the project to the work many women in Ciudad Juarez do in the maquiladoras. Seeing thousands of names displayed on a wall is a powerful message about how many people have been killed.

Similarly, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of women in Argentina whose children had been “disappeared” for political reasons during the Dirty War in the 1970’s, embroidered the names of their children on headscarves and wore them while protesting. The names served as a visual reminder of these victims and an act to show that they would not be easily forgotten. While this was a small part of the Madres’ protest, the headscarves they wore became a symbol of resistance against the junta. White headscarves are now painted on the Plaza de Mayo, where the Madres still demonstrate every Thursday.

Plaza de Mayo

Whatever the cause, people use the tools available to them and the skills they have, be it organizing, public speaking or needlework. These two heartbreaking projects show that craft can be an act both of memory and protest.

IMAGE CREDIT. Images via the University of Texas, Lise Bjorn Linnert, and Amelia Rodgers-Jones.
Mar 06
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Renegade Wool

By | Art & Social Change, Crafting Change | 3 Comments

I’ve been wanting to write about the awesome practice of yarnbombing since beginning this blog. If you’ve never heard of yarnbombing (also called yarnstorming), it’s basically the crafty equivalent of graffiti, done with yarn and needles rather than paint. Renegade crafters head out, usually under cover of dark, and cover signposts, parking meters, benches, bike racks and other urban structures with colorful knitted or crocheted yarn. Extreme yarnbombers have taken it even further, covering entire cars, buildings and statues with yarn.

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Like any public art, yarnbombing certainly beautifies neighborhoods, at least temporarily. But can it effect social change? It’s certainly not fighting poverty, hunger, or poor health. But it does get people to pay attention to their surroundings in a way they normally wouldn’t. It brings some brightness to drab, cement landscapes and makes people smile.

One community in the UK is putting up yarn installations to deter crime, or at least reduce residents’ fears of crime. Police and neighborhood associations have decorated trees and lampposts with yarn baubles, in the hopes that it will make public spaces more inviting and encourage residents to spend more time out and about in their communities. Building on the “broken windows” theory, they hope that by making the area look more pleasant and taken-care-of, people will be less likely to commit vandalism or other crimes. Art (or craft) in public spaces is one way to achieve this.

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Renegade crafters have also used yarnbombing to make expressly political statements. A group of environmental activists in Alberta wanted to raise awareness of natural areas in their province that are being destroyed, so they yarnbombed a forest that was slated for logging. Danish artist Marianne Jorgenson entirely covered an historic military tank with pink, knitted and crocheted squares to protest Denmark’s involvement in the Iraq war. If you had to think of something that was antithetical to a violent war, a pink, fuzzy blanket would probably be high on the list.

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In all these uses of yarnbombing, whether for a political purpose or just for fun, the yarn has symbolic connotations of warmth, love and comfort. Like a baby blanket or an afghan your grandmother made for you, it’s something cozy and inoffensive, an antidote to oppressive urban sprawl or abandoned neighborhoods.

If you want to learn more about yarnbombing, a new fiber arts center, Baltimore Threadquarters, is hosting two yarnbombing workshops this Friday and Saturday. Check them out and get knitting!

 

IMAGE CREDITS. ShapeThings via Flickr; Bowery Boogie; BBC News; MarianneArt.
Jan 23
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Making Fairer Fashion

By | Art & Social Change, Crafting Change | One Comment

Most people in the U.S. probably can barely sew on a button, much less make an outfit from scratch. But fifty years ago, making your own clothes was the norm. My grandmother made her own clothes and her children’s clothes. My mom learned to sew by making outfits for her Barbies. But like most of my generation, I grew up more often heading to the mall for back-to-school shopping than making anything myself.

Globalized, industrial production has drastically reduced the price of clothing, but it has also introduced other issues. Shocking news stories of sweatshop labor have made a lot of people rethink where they buy their clothes. As we’ve become removed from the production process, we have to ask ourselves a lot of questions when buying clothes. Where were they made? Who made them? How much were the workers paid? What were working conditions like?

And after those cheap clothes go out of style or we just get sick of them, what do we do with them? According to the EPA, Americans generated over 13 million tons of textile waste in 2010, with 85 percent of that waste going into landfills. Mountains of our rejects are also donated to thrift shops, although many of those items end up being made into rags or shipped to developing countries for resale. If you’ve seen the bales of used clothing being processed at DeBois Textiles in Southwest Baltimore you have an idea of the enormous quantity of clothes that get discarded all the time. When clothes are cheap and fashions change quickly, people will naturally buy more and throw away more.

So what’s a fashionista to do when faced with all these questions? One way to shop ethically is by buying clothes secondhand, or from companies with certified fair labor practices. Another strategy that’s becoming more popular is making your own clothes. You know exactly where and how it was made, and you don’t have to worry about whether your money went to a company that practices child labor or mistreats their workers. If you use upcycled materials or alter secondhand clothes, you’re even taking these things out of the waste stream. More young people are picking up the sewing machine again; sewing classes are popping up around the country and the web abounds with patterns and advice for making clothes (some examples here, here and here for how to turn thrift store finds into great new pieces).

Admittedly, not everyone may have the time or the resources to make their own clothes, but having basic sewing skills is a huge help when you need to mend something or make minor alterations. It means you can patch that hole or take in a seam instead of tossing something. In my own adventures in sewing, I’ve learned that it’s much easier than I thought to make or alter a lot of things. I’ve altered a lot of clothes that didn’t fit me quite right, which I would have otherwise given to Goodwill. When I consider buying something, I now think “could I make that myself instead?”

I don’t see a return to making all our clothes by hand, but I do think that making your own can make us rethink how we buy and see potential in things we may have seen as trash.

Jan 09
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Crafting for Change

By | Art & Social Change, Crafting Change | 2 Comments

A movement of self-proclaimed “craftivists” has emerged in recent times, devoted to the answering the question: “How can craft improve the world?”

Betsy Greer, who coined the term craftivism, defines it as “a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper & your quest for justice more infinite.” Craftivists are knitting to protest sweatshop labor, cross-stitching anti-war messages and taking over public spaces with projects like Massive Knit NYC, in which knitters adorned trees, benches and other objects in Washington Square Park with yarn.

While most crafters, from the occasional scarf knitter to the hardcore DIY-er, probably do not think of themselves as craftivists, even the everyday crafter is making a statement simply by making something instead of buying it. Making your own subverts our consumerist culture where most things are bought and soon thrown away. Handmade items are an antidote to mass-produced, impersonal goods. By using re-purposed materials, crafting reduces waste. It fosters resourcefulness and reusing or mending things instead of throwing them away.

In this space, I’ll be exploring how people are using crafting for activist purposes (be it political, environmental, feminist, etc.), as well as how the craft and DIY movement generally empowers people to create rather than consume, and reduce their environmental footprint.

But craft can also simply be a force for empathy and connection – a small, good thing in a time of crisis. After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, one crafter decided to put her skills to use for the children of Newtown. Kim Piscatelli was inspired by the children’s book “The Kissing Hand,” about a raccoon going to school for the first time. He is anxious about leaving home, so his mother kisses his palm as a reminder of her love, telling him to hold it up to his cheek whenever he misses her. Piscatelli wanted to give the children of Newtown a similar reminder, so she organized her friends to make hand-knit mittens with a heart on the palm for each child at the school. The mittens are meant to remind the kids of how much they are loved by their families and friends.

Word got out about the project and soon crafters all over the U.S. and beyond were knitting, crocheting, and sewing mittens and sending them to Connecticut. Nearly 600 pairs have been collected so far. While it doesn’t take a political stance, this is a great example of crafters coming together to support a cause. Stay tuned for some more radical examples of craftivism!

[Photo via The Kissing Hand Mitten Project]