New Cultures of Making Maja Vardjan

NEW CULTURES OF MAKING

28 Maja Vardjan, curator, Museum of architecture and design TUNNEL

“The good craftsman, moreover, uses solutions to uncover new territory; problem solving and problem finding are intimately related in his or her mind. For this reason, curiosity can ask, “Why?” as well as “How?” about any project.”1 Richard Sennett

In 2012, Ljubljana saw the first exhibition in the PopUp Home events series. Young designers furnished a flat in the city centre with their products and turned it into a pop-up shop cum gallery and community space. This collaborative effort was a response both to the economic situation at the time and to the young creatives’ position in the context of changed relationships in design. The way things were at the time, it was clear that mass industrial production no longer played a prominent role in their work. The focus had shifted to local productions, limited series and DIY projects, which explored new ways products were being created, made, funded and distributed.

If the Pop-Up Home was among the first harbingers of change at the time, such practices have become a staple in recent design production both in Slovenia and beyond. The interest shown by designers and users in locally produced hand-made objects is rapidly increasing as they continue to search for alternatives to excessive industrialisation, globalisation and the digitisation of our daily lives. The value of handwork is also changing in light of global labour exploitation, which has inspired many creators to look for ways to humanise the making process and contextualise a more responsible lifestyle.2 In her book Design as Attitude author and critic Alice Rawsthorn distinguishes between two types of projects that integrate the principles of handwork and traditional crafts with design: those that have made strategic use of artisanal symbolism and techniques, and

1 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Penguin Books 2008, p. 11. 2 Lidewij Edelkoort, “Art d’eco”, in: Formafantasma, Stedelijk Museum‘s-Hertogenbosch and Uitgeverij Lecturis 2014, p. 70. 29

XXIX

those that take a conceptual and anthropological approach to the idea of craftsmanship, addressing social, political and environmental issues as they explore the processes of hand making.3 So how do modern design, new technologies and the digital sphere co-exist and correlate with the principles of craftsmanship and traditional crafts in the postindustrial context? And how is this reflected in the products showcased by Tunnel 29?

New traditions

The exceptional cultural heritage of traditional Slovenian crafts represents a rich body of material waiting to be translated into new ways of implementing artisanal knowledge and skills. In her Wicker Vision Darja Malešič applies traditional wicker craft to standard water bottles which, once dressed in carefully crafted protection, are transformed into valuable personal objects. With its random form Garden fireplace Tojo.i.to brings new content to the primary making process. Rather than recognising in crafts an opportunity for nostalgic revival or a quest for ideals lost, such approaches unveil the potential of traditional crafts with their flexibility and ability to step outside the box. Floios jewellery takes flexibility and innovation to another level with a unique blend of traditional making techniques and new digital technologies. Designer Tina Košak takes unaltered forms she finds in nature and captures them in 3D scans to make jewellery from recycled precious metals. It’s an approach that gives new meaning and purpose to age-old techniques and materials.

3 Alice Rawsthorn, Design as an Attitude, JPR Ringier and Les Presses du Réel, Zurich 2018, p. 40.

30

TUNNEL

New technologies and methods of making no longer push us to produce series of identical products, but allow us to personalise, adapt and change what we do in the course of the making process. Small and mediumsized industrial and semiindustrial producers thus also play an important part in the discussion around handwork. Many products draw their appeal from the combination of serial production and artisanal details. The glass bowl line Cloudy by glass designer Tanja Pak combines small-scale mouldblown production with a hand blowing technique and subsequent hand finishing, which highlights craftsmanship as a thought process that aspires to achieve utmost purity and precision. Standard woodworking technology combined with a handcarved motif in the wine cabinet by the Vulgaris duo conveys how much time and skill was invested in its production; in a similar vein is the series of plates by Made in Moste, a studio whose philosophy is grounded in local production of wooden furniture elements and home accessories. Another creator imparting the symbolism of individuality into his products is David Tavčar with his recycled polyester cotton fabrics that introduce the randomness and irregularity so characteristic of handwork into mass production. A graphic in the form of a repeated pattern is created with the help of computergenerated parameters to disrupt the machine weave and transform the fabric into a one-of-a-kind product. Imperfections that distinguish handcrafted products from massproduced commodities and rituals of the artisanal making process have become an important consideration for people who seek both a special experience and products with added symbolic value. Industry and craftsmanship are no longer seen as polar opposites, but complement each other in the making process.

XXIX 31

Hand making as critique and alternative

Increased interest in handwork drives more and more creators to come up with DIY projects and opencode systems, and inspires them to reproduce existing products that redefine the very idea of designer as ultimate author. These principles often emerge and evolve as a response to social and environmental issues, climate change and like concerns. The Trajna collective’s project taps into the potential of invasive plants, exploring ways they can be used as raw materials to boost local production, such as paper production or DIY furniture. Eva Garibaldi’s project, which undertakes to extend the life cycle of non-recyclable paper, draws on the same principle, as does the Toasted Furniture series, for which designers employed a special toaster to transform waste plastic into water-resistant panels that serve as material for oneof-a-kind furniture. Process, research and experiment also underline the work of the Oloop group. Their projects bring communities together through group rituals of handwork and conversation, with the focus on the cultural and social integration of a frequently marginalised population – women. Rather than generate commercial products these projects primarily aim to raise awareness of the wider context in terms of collaborations, processes, social significance, and ultimately change the way we think and work.

Programming and handwork

The rebirth of crafts did not circumvent the digital domain. “Craft benefited from the injection of new thinking, and forays into dynamic and new fields,

32

TUNNEL

such as software,”4 says Rawsthorn in the conclusion of her text Craft Revival, where she identifies the iterative programming process, which matches the hand with coded instructions, as a link between design and handwork. New technologies and programming are redefining both design and craft practice, but the Serendipity Searcher, designed by a multidisciplinary group of creators for the National and University Library in the framework of the 26th Biennial of Design, stands out from other products showcased by Tunnel 29. By bringing together a spatial installation, a programmed digital archive and a human gesture, this installation becomes a digital generator for new readings of the library’s archive.

Despite their diverse approaches and aspirations the selected projects share a common denominator that looks at both traditional making techniques and digital processes from the critical position of our time. New forms and cultures of making are not just about forms and skills and their preservation at any cost; they are first and foremost about ideas and narratives that represent an integral part of the process and the product. The excellence of an artisan or designer lies not only in their quest for solutions to the problems at hand, but in their ability to raise the questions underlined by Richard Sennet at the beginning of this reflection. “Why?” and “How” evince new cultures of making as a thought process, and not simply a manual operation. And herein lies their strength, beauty and value.

4 Ibid., p. 46.

XXIX 33