SIEF conference
In early June, the Crafting Futures team contributed to the SIEF international anthropology conference hosted by the University of Aberdeen.
Supervisors and UA professors Bert De Munck, Marc Jacobs, and Jorijn Neyrinck (Werkplaats Immaterieel Erfgoed) organized two panel sessions and a roundtable discussion on the topic of craft transmission and contemporary challenges.
The panel featured research papers by our team as well as external researchers, concluding with a lively roundtable discussion. Panel speakers included Anneli Palmsköld, Head of the Department of Heritage Studies at the University of Gothenburg and a textiles and craft specialist, as well as social anthropologist Tim Ingold, who has written numerous articles on making and skilled practice and is a profound influence on craft discourse today.
Transmission and Safeguarding Craft as Embodied Knowledge in a Digitizing World
Craftership is traditionally seen as based on embodied and tacit knowledge passed on by doing and as at odds with codified and abstract knowledge. Recent technological developments create new opportunities to document and pass on craft knowledge and know-how, but it also brings tensions with embodied knowledge.
How can digitalization contribute to ‘un-writing’ the safeguarding of craftership? This panel zooms in on the transmission of craft knowledge and skills, in times of digital technology and artificial intelligence. It examines how embodied knowledge, the role of the hands, and of eye-hand coordination, continue to matter for learning and safeguarding craftership. How do crafters and others deploy digital approaches to ‘les gestes’, and what approaches regarding embodied knowledge/practice emerge at present? To what extent does embodied knowledge still matter for craftership and what does the advent of AI mean in this respect? And how do these changing contexts of transmission challenge notions of gender, embodiment, affect and performance in relation to craftership, or make room for new (trans)formations and narratives of multivalent cultural knowledge?
Panels, speakers and papers
The first panel session puts focus on crafting, transmitting and transforming and included the following presentations:
* On (New) Technology: Influence of Tool Selection on Transmission of Embodied Textile Knowledge by Vic Bervoets and Tim Dierckx
* Unwriting the curriculum. Textile exercises and explorations by Clara Vankerschaver
* Immersive Digital Environments for Craft Transmission by Xenophon Zabulis
*On Basket Weaving Knowledge Transfer in the Digital Age by Ian Garcia and Jouke Verlinden
*Crafting machines and crafting the machine: Technology in and as craft by Holly Zijderveld
The 2nd session addresses ethical and policy related perspectives:
*On the New EU Regulation on the Protection of Geographical Indications for Craft Products: Opportunities and Challenges by Vadim Mantrov, Anita Vaivade and Liga Abele
*Unraveling the Interplay of Analog and Digital by Pierre-Antoine Vettorello
*On visual ethnography in safeguarding ICH in Vojvodina by Tatjana Bugarski, Aleksandar Petijević and Bogdan Sekaric
*Craft as Futuring Practice: Re-articulating Craft Discourse Through Relational Thinking at the Venice Biennale by Ils Huygens
Detailed descriptions and abstracts can be found here.