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Code of Practice

Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations

A cultural future, made in Italy

Sep 29th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
1 comment

The first UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries occurred at Monza, near Milan, 24-26 September. It brought together around 200 participants from areas of fashion, business, politics, design and craft. There were a broad diversity of nationalities, with strong representations from Italy, France, Uruguay, South Africa. As the only representative from the Pacific region, I felt a little isolated initially, but soon found strong connections particularly from other countries of the south.

The event was well-organised, strategic, relevant and in particular, provocative.

The premise of this Monza gathering was that cultural heritage can benefit from an association with business, and vice versa. According to the brief:

Cultural industries, notably in the areas of design and fashion, embody a continuum between traditional inspiration, the fruit of identity, and modernity. They would benefit from being more deeply rooted in traditional know-how. Cultural industries must be able to give life to and be nourished by know-how through adapting to a changing world. In so doing, they can embody a constant dynamic of renewal.

This move towards the private sector a shift from the focus that many associate with UNECSO, which would be to work with state institutions such as museums and universities to sustain traditions. Previously, the operations of the capitalist market would have been seen as a threat to cultural heritage. Not so today. This link between culture and business has become a familiar conversation in Australia, so how does it sound on the global stage?

Given the support of its hosts, it is understandable that the Italian perspective was strongly featured in the forum. The Italians have much to gain by associating their products with their cultural heritage. This gives them an obvious edge over countries like China, particularly in luxury brands.

It was surprising to see how strongly craft figured in this. In the opening session, Sandro Bondi the Italian Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities spoke of the close link between the handmade and an aesthetic sensibility. Roberto Formigoni, the President of the Lombardy Region, saw craftsmanship as the essential basis for successful industrialisation.

Complementing this were some high-powered presentations from business consultants about ways of marketing craft. Tom Pigott, the CEO of BrandAid, spoke about their pilot project in Haiti, where they recruited Hollywood celebrities to support local metalsmiths. He made the emphatic point that ‘Poverty needs marketing’.

This was one point that warranted critical reflection. It’s a curious statement, when you break it down to its components. The implied aim is to improve the standard of living for artisans, so their craft can flourish. One way to do this is to sell their very impoverishment as something attractive, particularly to consumers whose only real lack is lack itself. Yet, the success of this will inevitably destroy the very quality on which its success depends – poverty. Hopefully, future forums will be able to work through this contradiction.

At the very theatrical conclusion of the forum, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini joined his Italian colleagues in offering the sumptuous building of Villa Real as the permanent site for the UNESCO forum, which would become an annual event.

The UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries faces the challenge of finding a place for itself amongst a number of similar global platforms, such as the recent World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg.

The forum touches a sensitive nerve in the status of world crafts. It resonates with the current consensus that heritage is a living process that must be able to respond to modernity. The support of rich consumers is a real alternative. I think there’s an argument for the benefits of such patronage in supporting excellence and diversity in crafts, especially in the land of the Medicis. But there are also real issues in the breadth and sustainability of those benefits.

So might this debate proceed? In my next post I’ll mention what to me were some of the productive threads of discussion that emerged at Monza.

Horse hair – the new Chilean gold

Sep 4th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
5 comments

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Crin is one of Chile’s most distinctive folk crafts. In markets around the country you will find delicate forms, often taking the shape of insects, woven out of dyed horsehair. Despite its distribution around the country, almost all Crin originates from a small town called Rari.

Crin appeared mysteriously around 200 years ago, as local women found they could weave poplar roots into figures. After discovering the flexibility of horse hair they combined a Mexican plant fibre Ixtle which provided structural strength. It’s not clear why this technique emerged there in particular, but the town’s proximity to a spa resort meant that there was a ready market for cositas (little things).

Crin is made entirely by hand. No equipment is involved, even knitting needles. But unlike the chunky results of finger-knitting, crin is exquisitely fine.

As a folk craft, crin was rarely taken seriously. However, it is now finding a niche as a versatile, colourful and particularly Chilean component in the burgeoning new jewellery scene in Chile. But its recent success comes with complications.

Women crin weavers from Rari

Women crin weavers from Rari

Women crin weavers from Rari

A Santiago architect Paula Leal has been exploring ways of collaborating with artisans from Rari. An earlier attempt with weaver Alba Sepúlveda led to the award for the 2008 UNESCO Seal of Excellence for Handicraft Products. The product incorporated modernist forms of crin into a hair clasp.

But the business of incorporating crin into jewellery is actually quite a political issue. In some ways, it parallels the movement of New Zealand jewellers who sought to include local materials and techniques such as jade carving into their work. In some cases, this meant reviving some of the lost Indigenous skills, while at the same time not simply imitating traditional Maori culture.

In the case of Chile, it is still the case that you can’t incorporate crin into your work without the willing cooperation of an artisan. It seems the nature of Chilean society that local skills are not easily generalisable. It would be extremely rare for someone in Santiago to teach themselves how to weave with crin. This division of labour creates an asymmetry, particular in the relative prices of crin sold in markets and jewellery featuring crin in fashionable jewellery boutiques.

Even for someone who has achieved success such as Paula, this can be difficult. She had to find some new crin weavers when her previous collaborator broke the partnership. Apparently, she felt resentment that she was sharing the stage with a designer who didn’t actually make anything herself.

Manuela Tromben and Paula Leal

Manuela Tromben and Paula Leal

Manuela Tromben and Paula Leal

Recently, Paula Leal formed a partnership with fellow architect Manuela Tromben in the development of an exhibition devoted to crin. Orígenes Y Atuendos Imaginarios (Origins and Imaginary Outfits) included jewellery and wall work that manipulated elements of traditional crin to create new works. For instance, the cylindrical form that normally is coiled to form the body of a snail was uncoiled and introduced into a necklace form. Local jewellers Walka Studio added the silver attachments.

Orígenes Y Atuendos Imaginarios installation

Orígenes Y Atuendos Imaginarios installation

Orígenes Y Atuendos Imaginarios installation

Crin has a long way to go. There’s potential for much experimentation. It seems inevitable that someone in Santiago will eventually learn to make it themselves. But I hope that doesn’t exclude the possibility that some of the women from Rari might themselves engage actively with product development.

But here, on the other side of the Pacific, a recent exhibition in Melbourne shows an alternative path. Vicky Shukuroglou recently completed her Masters in Gold and Silversmithing. Vicky had previously taken a South Project residency in Brazil and was interested in weaving with alternative materials. While at RMIT she had furthered her manipulation of horse hair to create extremely delicate woven structures.

Vicky Shukuroglou object [PW] steel wire, horse hair 60 x 90mm

Vicky Shukuroglou object [PW] steel wire, horse hair 60 x 90mm

steel wire, horse hair
Vicky Shukuroglou object [BHH] steel wire, horse hair [double bass bow] 150 x 130 x 130mm [variable]

Vicky Shukuroglou object [BHH] steel wire, horse hair [double bass bow] 150 x 130 x 130mm [variable]

steel wire, horse hair

Vicky’s objects are designed deliberately to appear insubstantial. They certainly are not made to function as jewellery, lacking solid form and metal clasps. But as such, they might seem to be true to the wispy material itself, allowing it to unravel freely. Some are likely to worry that she is taking the object out of the normal circuits of exchange that connect it with people’s lives – it can only live on a plinth. Is this a possible path in Chile?

In all, what’s happening with crin tells a story similar to other crafts across the South. Part of the post-colonial process involves coming to terms with the immediate world around us. This means not always looking North for what’s precious, but learning in how to find the beauty in what is at hand.

That process has barely begun.

On the one hand Spring, and on the other, Autumn

Sep 1st, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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twohands

twohands

Today in the South our calendars tell us that this is the beginning of spring. But as trees come into blossom here, the leaves will begin to wither and die in the North.

In his novel Rasselas, Samuel Johnson attempted to discover the secret of happiness. After many adventures, he concluded that any happiness is always accompanied by a loss, ‘That nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left’. You can choose to have either worldly fame or a bountiful garden. It seems that full happiness can only be experienced collectively.

Two hands is a symbol of a world made from the separation of two halves – North and South, thinking and doing.

Aristotle saw the world as made by two kinds of persons: the user who determines the form and the producer who realises it. In much of everyday life, these two sides work together: we want a cup of tea and we find the materials and equipment to make one. As human society evolves, these two sides are drawn apart. In the West, there is a hierarchy that places the thinker above the doer, the architect above the builder. Globalisation has put increasing distance between the consuming ‘first world’ and the producing ‘third world’.

It seems this arrangement is reaching its limits. Environmentally and financially, the world is out of kilter. In the West there are movements such as the Slow Movement and DIY that seek to re-incorporate making into daily life. And in the emerging economies, there is a call for increasing consumption and agency. The Kyoto Protocol has set up a framework where the future of the planet depends on a consensus between these two worlds.

On the ground, there is increasing activity in a kind of product development that involves designers working with artisans. For artisans, this collaboration offers the opportunity to find new markets that can replace the local sales lost through cheap imports. For designers, there is the potential to add an ethical value to their products. In a small but tangible way, craft-design collaborations provide models of north-south partnerships.

Such collaborations face challenges. Some in the crafts believe it is essential to maintain a link with tradition – craft is a way of keeping our authentic cultural identity. They think design ties craft to a short-term fashion cycle, as the whims of a distant market dictate what an artisan can do. And some in design world see the making as unimportant: as long as it is good quality and cheap, designs can be produced by anyone anywhere. Good design transcends its materials.

Of course, collaboration is not for everyone. There are circumstances were ancient crafts need to be preserved for the sake of our cultural diversity. And others where design operates at a purely speculative level in order to forge new ideas.

But in our world today, it is essential that we construct a bridge to encourage traffic between the two. The water below is turbulent. A legacy of colonialism, dictatorships and exploitation make it difficult to bridge the two worlds. Dialogue does not imply the denial of difference. But a common interest in the success of a product can help develop trust. What’s needed is a leap of faith.

Craft Unbound is a place for reviewing attempts to bridge these worlds. One bridging project is the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations. It begins by gathering information from both sides – a frank and open review of the experiences of designers, artisans, community leaders, activists, historians, anthropologists, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Having surveyed the different perspectives, we can then bring together relevant organisations to construct a set of guidelines that best aligns the different interests.

To begin, we need to acknowledge that there a two sides to this story – the craft skills developed over millennia and the design concepts that give these skills a meaningful role to play.

Good craft is well-designed and good design is well-crafted.

A world vision for Mapuche

Aug 19th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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Standing around the coals discussing craft product

Standing around the coals discussing craft product

Standing around the coals discussing craft product

Alejandra Bobidilla (right) showing new designs at a cross-roads

Alejandra Bobidilla (right) showing new designs at a cross-roads

Alejandra Bobidilla (right) showing new designs at a cross-roads

Like most other colonies, the nation of Chile was established through a forced dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land. One group proved particularly hard to displace. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the Mapuche had successful resisted an invasion from the Incas. After this, they held off the Spanish for nearly 300 years, as colonists appropriated land to their north and south. The middle territory of Mapuche ranged from Concepción in the north to Chiloé in the south.

Today, Mapuche make up 4% of the population in Chile. Their centre is Temuco, a city of a quarter of a million people, now a tourist hub. In the region of Temuco are many Mapuche communities, which are mostly poor and subsist on crafts and agricultural production. The crafts of weaving and jewellery are particularly strong among Mapuche. In Chile, they are known as well for their herbal medicines and elaborate cosmography, based on the cardinal points.

The World Vision office in Temuco is focused on enabling Mapuche communities to have greater independence and capacity. In July this year, I travelled with Alejandra Bobadilla to communities west of Temuco, towards Puetro Saavedra. These were people known as lafkenche, people of the sea.

Maria Mallafil, Mapuche leader and weaver

Maria Mallafil, Mapuche leader and weaver

Maria Mallafil, Mapuche leader and weaver

Alejandra’s main mission was to encourage handmade textile production among the Mapuche women. We were accompanied by a Mapuche elder, Maria Mallafil, whose familiarity with the communities and understanding of their craft was essential. We mostly met in community halls. These were small rooms with walls covered by notices and posters of common concern. We were offered tortillas and cakes with tea, sometimes matte. For more remote artisans, we would visit their homes.

Both women gave feedback on their weaving and suggested new opportunities. In particular, Alejandra had samples from a Colombian designer for vests which were likely to be popular in the urban markets. She showed these designs and discussed how they might be produced. Along the way, she also dealt with issues ranging from health to agriculture. It seemed she was a very important conduit for information between the communities.

Helena Mallefil, Mapuche basket-maker

Helena Mallefil, Mapuche basket-maker

Helena Mallefil, Mapuche basket-maker

I was particularly struck by the visit to Helena Mallefil, a basket-maker. She had a particularly humble one-room house, with no glass in the windows, but with a very cosy tray of coals to keep us warm. She make a wonderful orange cake and tea. Looking around at her baskets, I realised that I had purchased one of them last year at ONA as a gift for my mother. As often, I thought of the distance between her seeming threadbare life and the comfortable clientele of ONA in Santiago.

Her baskets are strong, well-made and beautifully coloured with natural dyes. But I noticed one round basket in particular which was adorned with a head, wings and feet. It seemed like a penguin, but it was probably a hen (for putting eggs in). I could see great potential here, following what has happened with Aboriginal basket-makers in Australia’s Western desert, who now produce lively grass sculptures.

Cristina Sagreda designer and her son Daniel in the shop where they sell Mapuche handmade clothing

Cristina Sagreda designer and her son Daniel in the shop where they sell Mapuche handmade clothing

Cristina Sagreda designer and her son Daniel in the shop where they sell Mapuche handmade clothing

Back in Santiago, Alejandra took me to visit the shop in downtown Providencia (rich suburb of Santiago) where much of the Mapuche textiles are sold. It was a very nice shop, with a wide range of craft products, particularly jewellery. But I thought it was a shame that there wasn’t an outlet that might tell a Mapuche story more completely. I could see it would also make a difference if the designers were able to spend time directly with Mapuche in developing and producing new works.

World Vision do have a broad view of possibilities for Mapuche. They are currently working on a cultural exchange between Mapuche and Australian Indigenous. The facilities offered for Indigenous culture here, such as the Koorie Heritage Trust, may well be the subject of envy on the other side of the Pacific. But the resilience and pride of the Mapuche could be inspiring here too.

The Mapuche have a particularly rich musical, poetic and craft culture. Colonisation has seen them pushed to the margins of Chilean society. It seems a worthwhile challenge to find ways of bridging that divide.

Links:

Art and artisans: the debate we had to have

Aug 14th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
5 comments

I’ve recently taken up an honorary position as Adjunct Professor at RMIT University in the School of Art. On Wednesday night, I was asked to give a keynote in that capacity at a symposium entitled ‘Art & Globalization: Urban Futures and Aesthetic Relations’, organised in association with the Global Cities Research Institute. The lecture came at the end of a fascinating day—the breadth of papers showing the advantage of the college system at RMIT which enables dialogue between fields such as visual arts, architecture and landscape design. My paper followed a number that  reviewed the field of public art in response to growing democratisation. The very animated discussion at the end was particularly significant, and deserves reflection here.

My paper presented many of the cases featured in Craft Unbound within the context of visual arts. While product development is usually seen as a combination of craft and design, it is increasingly found now in symbolic spaces such as an art galleries.

In modernism, the boundaries that separate art from life are continually tested—from Duchamp’s readymade to more recent relational art that turns an art gallery into a restaurant. In recent times, such boundaries have been seen as increasingly political, particularly the divide between Global South and North that underpins the economic basis of the art world.

When we view such work, we not only judge it according to how it pleases us, but also the meaning it seems to have for those involved. Such work can forge new relationships that test our preconceptions about the possible relationships between North and South.

Danius Kesminas’ Punkasila project, for example, provides an alternative to the conventional path of Western artist who seeks to honour pre-modern traditions. Something as foreign as punk music may be seen to engage local Indonesians in a high-spirited collaboration. Whether we approve of that, or not, it gives us an alternative path to consider. Art gives us this space to experiment.

Some of the discussion that followed the paper expressed scepticism that an Australian artist working with a traditional artisan could ever be in the interests of both. An alternative strategy was raised in the work of Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, who exposes power relations through spectacles of humiliation where, for instance, he pays workers to move a heavy rock between A and B without reason. For some, such work is seen as more honest about the power relations—it calls a spade a spade.

This debate was important. It was a rare opportunity to air this scepticism in a public forum. My response was that we need to question our tendency to assume that art which involves the Global South must exclusively be a matter of revealing injustice. This is certainly not to deny that such injustice exists, but to allow for a point of view from the other side that does not want to play the role of victim. This is to assume that an artisan, or artist, might want the opportunity to create new works, get to know a foreigner and earn some money. This reflects the new confident voices from the Global South emerging around the Kyoto Protocol.

So how can we be sure that such collaborations have meaning for both parties? What stops such collaborations being used to gloss over real inequities? In the case of coffee, we have the Fair Trade label to give us confidence that our purchase does good. It would seem very important now to engage in research that found meaningful ways of reflecting the points of view of all involved. This is what’s currently in development with the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations.

The discussion revealed the very important role that an institution like RMIT can play as an academic forum in which to critically discuss trends emerging in cultural production. I am grateful to the audience who raised these issues, and hope we can find ways to inform this dialogue in the future.

As they say in Laos, ‘If you like things easy, you’ll have difficulties; if you like problems, you’ll succeed’.

Bali carves up the Glick International Foundation

Jul 23rd, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
3 comments
Made Leno works on a sculpture of Rodney Glick

Made Leno works on a sculpture of Rodney Glick

You come up with a brilliant idea. You find someone with the skills to realise that idea perfectly. You work out a fair price. While the person is completing the job, others discover your idea and start copying it. Should you try to stop them, or risk your singular idea now just being one of many? This is the problem that Rodney Glick found having his art made in Bali.

I think Rodney Glick is one of Australia’s most interesting artists. I’m usually left cold by conceptual work, but Glick’s installations always leave me with a strong sense of non-being – others might call it spiritual. His public art at Subiaco Station using close circuit cameras created something transcendent from an everyday commute.

But more than just an individual artist, Glick also creates spaces for others to create in. He first came to prominence in the eastern states with the Glick International Collection, a purely fabricated international collection along with fictional artists and writers. Following that, he established a colleague Marco Marcon a residency program in a small wheat town in the middle of nowhere – Kellerberin. I guess while so many artists on the west coast (and east coast) of Australia are striving to be somewhere (i.e., Venice or New York), Glick is attracted to the nowhere places. There it’s possible to construct something new.

I’ve never connected Rodney with craft before, but his most recent series has strong relevance to new practices involving collaboration with traditional artisans.

Rodney Glick is one of an increasing number of artists working with Indonesian artisans, particularly wood carvers. For a recent Perth exhibition, Rodney commissioned a Balinese wood carver Made Leno from Kemenuh south of Ubud. He asked Made Leno to carve a life-size version of the multi-armed Hindu god, but based on likeness of Western figures, including himself. This involved quite a technical leap, as traditionally these statues had been made only of iconic divine figures. There was quite prolonged and open negotiation about price and cultural sensitivity, and with time a beautiful carved figure began to emerge.

Glick was concerned that these works would be seen as disrespectful. However, when he inquired about this, he was surprised to see how warmly they were received: ‘While the sculptures do show Western people in poses that suggest Hindu gods, or in one case Buddha, they have been generally seen in Bali not as suggesting that their gods have been belittled, but rather as suggesting a divine presence that is in everyone and that links all humanity.’

Made Leno negotiates with Chris Hill about the carving job

Made Leno negotiates with Chris Hill about the carving job

Second time around, Made Leno works with a written contract - much better

Second time around, Made Leno works with a written contract - much better

But there was one problem – though it was more a result of the work’s positive reception, than any complaint. A nearby stone carver started also to make likenesses. Local Balinese soon started to inquire whether they could have statues made of their family in this manner. Rodney became concerned about this. According to his collaborator Chris Hill, ‘We have talked to the carver about this and he accepts our point of view that Rodney should retain some control over works done according to his idea, not because he wanted some financial reward but to protect the integrity of the concept.’ They cited the uncontrolled production of Australian Aboriginal artefacts in Bali as a sign of how copying can get out of hand.

Rodney is not dogmatic about this control. He has become involved in many other projects in Bali. As well as showing the work locally, he has helped start up valuable agricultural projects.

But this case does reveal a contradiction between the Balinese and Western creative economies. Artists like Rodney are attracted to Indonesia partly because of the ease with which it is possible to get things done. Artisanship there doesn’t come with legal strings attached: no contracts are necessary – it’s a personal thing . Yet taken to its limit, such a system can undermine the Western creative economy that artists like Rodney depend on. If the market is flooded with imitations of his work, then the one-off art works are in danger of losing value.

These figures formed a series called 'Everyone' that were included in the God-Favoured exhibition at Lawrence Wilson Gallery.

These figures formed a series called 'Everyone' that were included in the God-Favoured exhibition at Lawrence Wilson Gallery.

Rodney has to survive as an artist too. He’s one of Australia’s most creative and interesting artists, but he’s certainly not wealthy.

So what’s the ethical course of action here? Does Rodney have the right to prevent unauthorised use of his idea? In China, manufacturers can offer discount rates to produce branded goods because they get tooled up then to produce cheap imitations free of royalties. This proves unsustainable – in the end, everyone loses.

In addition, where do we place Glick’s work in agricultural development? Is that just a side effect resulting from his human response to the world he discovered. While Glick would most likely dismiss this as just his own personal intervention, is it possible to see this contribution as integral to his work, in the same way that we might see the Fair Trade label as part of the experience of eating the chocolate inside its wrapping?

I guess that we ask all these questions is part of the value of Rodney’s work. It’s an open dialogue at the moment. Lena Mado has been commissioned for a new series of works. Something’s working.

True to self or play the market? – the South African challenge

May 11th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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image

Erica Elk

In response to the recent South African election, the director of Cape Craft & Design, Erica Elk, penned these thoughts as part of their newsletter’s editorial. While focused on the South African situation, they could apply more broadly to all ventures that attempt to bring the market to play in assisting cultural development.

She reflects on the speech that opened the recent DAC Craft Awards:

Minister of Arts & Culture, Pallo Jordan, gave an interesting and thought provoking speech. The comment that stuck in my mind, which I paraphrase, was that we must be careful not to bend too easily to the dictates of product developers and trend forecasters who tell us how to adjust our products so they are more ‘palatable’ to international markets.  The danger is that one day we may land up having sold our cultural heritage down the river, producing homogenised products that look like everything else in the world – which is basically what’s happened in the high streets of all the major cities around the globe.

Right now, one of the reasons why our products are so popular is because they are so different and innovative and creative and clever and capture the spirit of the people of South Africa. And we mustn’t lose this.  The Minister has a very good point. We should guard our heritage and indigenous knowledge. But that doesn’t mean we should not be sharp enough to play the market at its own game – or get trapped into thinking that culture and knowledge is static. Because both those approaches could be dead-end roads. So how do we manage this contradiction between staying true to self and playing to market forces? I think part of the solution is the critical interface between education, culture and trade and the respective roles played by the departments of economic development, trade & industry, arts & culture, recreation, and education at all tiers of government.

They need to work together – which doesn’t mean doing the same thing.  It should mean doing different things together – in synergy – towards a common goal. Arts & Culture programmes need to nurture creativity, heritage, language and identity.  They should promote, preserve and protect to create the foundation for challenge, growth, innovation, experimentation, exploration and play.  They must help us explore who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we are going to – individually and collectively. They must set standards of excellence and not settle for mediocrity.  And they must do so without being prescribed to by the markets.

Economic and trade programmes need to engage with supply and demand issues – the provision and purchasing of products and services.  They need to nurture entrepreneurs, create an enabling environment, deal with infrastructure and logistical blockages, they must also market and promote and create opportunities and make connections. And simultaneously our education system needs to work to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence of the youth – so that they can express their real selves and not an imposed idea of self.

Without all of the above our products will become homogenised, as our minds and aesthetic judgment are ‘colonised’ by the barrage of images and products from the rest of the world. We’ve lived for so long in a country where things have literally been reduced to black or white – good or bad – that we lose sight of the nuances and complexities of our various realities and experiences.

Instead of it having to be a question of EITHER/OR … what about if it could be BOTH/AND…? While sometimes we do have to make choices – thankfully only every five years and this one’s over! – for the remaining 365×5 days we need to live with opposites and contradictions and different ideas and opposing opinions and views. How we manage to live and thrive in this space will ultimately impact on our success. Right now, I’m really hoping that our newly elected government gets this message.

Reproduced with permission. Innovative South African craft will be represented in the upcoming World of Small Things exhibition with new work by Hlengiwe Dube.

Fulidai-dai – another way of thinking about craft

May 7th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
1 comment

Deb Salvagno works for the East Timor Women’s Association, which runs tours of the Lautem district in East Timor, where traditional weaving flourishes. They also are involved in broader community development including health and education. Here she answers questions about the nature of this exchange between those inside and outside East Timor. It’s particularly interesting to read her reflection on fulidai-dai, the local gift economy that supports the transmission of craft skills.

007 (2)

007 (2)

What do you think is special about the craft produced in the Lautem district of East Timor?

The predominant craft medium we work with is traditional hand-woven cloth known as tais. All over the island of East Timor, tais are signifiers of ethnicity, and designs are specific to language groups. They contain motifs that are a symbolic dialogue of diverse cultural practices. Even when the motifs cannot be associated to culture, they usually represent something more than decoration. The women we work with live in remote communities in the south east corner of the island; in the flatlands of Los Palos and the densely forested highlands of Iliomar. Los Palos is home to the Fataluku people. Tais woven by weavers in this community utilise futus (ikat) dyeing methods to express their ancestral heritage. Fataluku tais are revered and valued highly in traditional exchange. In Iliomar, weavers from the Makalero people use a combination of floating warp techniques to create rows of a unique and dainty floral motif. Usually presented in white on red or brown back cloth, these motifs have their origins in colonial exchange with the Portuguese who first came to East Timor in the middle ages. Iliomar weavers also utilise futus dyeing methods, however the European inspired floral motif is unique to this area of East Timor. Fataluku tais are more valuable locally than the Iliomar tais as the relationship between these two communities are steeped in ancient pacts and power relations.

Learning about the anthropology of cloth consumption and how the consolidation of social relations and specific cultural values are expressed through tais has been an amazing learning journey for me personally. By the commercial application of the traditional skills used to create tais, the women we work with hope to safeguard their traditions while simultaneously easing the disadvantages of poverty; this area of this craft practice is extraordinary and presents great potential.

Do they need help? What kind and why?

Product design and quality control are two one of the many areas where artisans in East Timor need our assistance. As cloth is created for tradition rather than for markets, product should integrate and balance both the cultural distinctiveness of the cloth and commercial application of the women’s skills. ETWA works with the Cooperative for Tais and Cultural Development (CTCD), which has 86 female members drawn from three weaving collectives in Iliomar and Los Palos. These women come from the poorest and most disadvantaged families in the region; approximately 25% of female members were widowed during the Indonesian occupation, literacy is low and many members have limited access to farmlands. The coop is attempting to deal with the challenges presented by independence- and the challenges are many. The cost of everything is rising; imported cotton has risen by approximately 150% in the past twelve months. Many women are desperate for cash so they underprice their weavings and often they’re losing money as well as hours of back-breaking work. Clearly this is making them poorer, so it’s not surprising that paying for life’s necessities is a major challenge.

While income is generated through weaving tais and transforming it into soft fashion accessories such as bags, as one south-east Asia’s least developed countries, the design and quality of their finished product is low-grade. Developing international markets is vital as the domestic market for weavings is inadequate, however, until product design and quality improves, prospects for increasing market share are minimal. The back strap weaving technique also produces textiles that are as varied and unique as the women who produce them, so improving consistency of output is important. The imported cotton yarn available in East Timor is intended for commercial use and the colour range and quality are substandard. We are hoping that with assistance from the Australian design community, we can support the communities in Iliomar and Los Palos to begin growing high grade cotton locally and thereby replace the need for imported cotton. Through this process, we will increase local cash flows, improve product quality and help artisans to maintain their dyeing traditions as the colours of traditional tais are exquisite. As we take a holistic approach to our work, we are also looking to improve the women’s health and will undertake research in June this year. We’re excited about the possibilities this will open for the weavers.

Can they help us? Can you explain what Fulidai-dai is?

CTCD’s organisational model is based on the cultural notion of Fulidai-dai; a concept unique to the Makalero people of Iliomar. It is a set of cultural norms that govern relationships towards reciprocity, mutual exchange and collective support. The practice of Fulidai-dai encourages cooperation and puts the focus on supporting one another rather than encouraging individualism and competition. Through Fulidai-dai, groups work in reciprocity for the greater good of their community, such as working together in the fields, building houses, looking after children or caring for community members when they are sick. The notion of Fulidai-dai also encourages the passing on of wisdom, so when women share their knowledge of traditional arts with younger women, they are practicing Fulidai-dai; it ensures that cross-generational and cross- gender cooperation and sharing occurs.

By integrating the notion of Fulidai-dai which encourages collective decision making, common ownership, consultation and member participation, CTCD has developed a culturally appropriate business model. Unlike the state and privately-owned cooperatives that operated in East Timor during the Indonesian occupation, the principles of Fulidai-dai are similar to -yet run deeper than- the principles of International cooperatives.

In the west, many people feel we have lost the deep sense of connectedness and community that the people of East Timor share so there is much we can learn. Mutuality, cooperation, patience, loyalty and the essence of friendship are just a few of the ways of being that we can learn from the weavers in Iliomar. And of course the things we learn are equally as important as the gift of support we bring. Acknowledging Fulidai-dai as a legitimate and honourable practice rather than imposing a business model appropriate to our culture, is another way we can support the women to use cultural traditions to build new futures for their communities. If inclined, we can bring these notions back to Australia to help regenerate community here.

Where would you like to see the partnership between them and us continue in the future?

In East Timorese society, the practice of giving and exchanging helps to maintain harmony within communities. If we perceive our work with CTCD in this light, we acknowledge that we both give and receive and we recognize that when two cultures join together in recognition of what each can bring to the other, endless possibilities are created. We aim that our partnerships continue this way on a road towards empowerment for both the East Timorese women we work with and for our members and supporters in Australia. Our annual weaving tour is an example of this. The tour gives participants an opportunity to learn about traditional weaving and dyeing through a series of participatory workshops and East Timorese weavers receive an opportunity to express their craft.

On a more practical level, we aim to work with communities to build a central space for research, design, product development and training and a place of mutual exchange where the International design community can exchange skills with East Timorese artisans in Lautem. We recognize that what we as Australian women bring to the relationship is access to resources and to markets to help give CTCD members access to the things they need to improve their quality of life.

Deb Salvagno has a background in the rag trade and has a BA in Community Development. She has worked in East Timor since 2003 and is a volunteer with East Timor Women Australia.

Where in India is Australia?

May 3rd, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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They’ve been some invigorating Melbourne-India exchanges lately.

The first occurred at the RMIT Design Research Institute on Friday during a discussion about the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations. We discussed the arrangement whereby the Touareg nomads were paid half a million dollars for the use of their name in a new model of Volkswagen. This worried a  worker in East Timor, who said that throwing a large sum of money at a community can sometimes cause more problems that it might solve. An Indian designer took a contrary view, not to say that it doesn’t cause problems, but to question why we assume that we are the ones who know to use money better – ‘If I had all that money, I’m sure I’d blow it all on stupid things too.’ Clearly there’s a lot more to be said on this subject, but we hope that there’s more open discussion like this.

Meanwhile, an alternative conversation with Indian craft was occurring at the culmination of the Crosshatched project, organised by Sandra Bowkett and Minhazz Majumdar. For Sandra, this is the fourth time she has brought Indian artisans to Melbourne. On this occasion she opened up new opportunities for collaboration. For Minhazz, she came to Australia with great curiosity, professing that Australia figured very little in the view most Indians had of the world, especially compared to the US and Britain.

Pradyumna Kumar and Anne Ferguson

Pradyumna Kumar and Anne Ferguson
Vipoo Srivalasa and Pushpa Kumari

Vipoo Srivalasa and Pushpa Kumari

Two of the artists represented the Madhubani folk art tradition of Bihar. Pradyumnar Kumar worked with Anne Ferguson on realising a three-dimensional version of a story that he had illustrated in a prize-winning book. In the story, a firefly witnesses the trials of a walking tree as it battles a raging fire. It seems a particularly poignant story given the recent history of bushfires in Victoria. Except in this case, it is only the fire of the kiln that can same this unfired tree from eventual destruction.

Vipoo Srivalasa worked with Pradyumna’s sister-in-law Pushpa, to again take her two dimensional drawings into the third-dimension, in vessel form. They took turns in creating the outline and interior textures of the cobalt drawings on ceramics.

Minhazz Majumdar watching Montu Chitrakar singing the Melbourne song

Minhazz Majumdar watching Montu Chitrakar singing the Melbourne song
The scene at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Montu's Melbourne song

The scene at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Montu's Melbourne song

The third artist was a patachitra painter from Bengal. Chitrakars had been previously hosted during the Tramjatra project as an expression of tram solidarity between Calcutta and Melbourne. Montu Chitraka is part of the next generation of scroll artists. As part of his residency, Montu composed and painted a story of their journey to Melbourne, including the ‘highlight of my life’ in visiting the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The scroll was quickly acquired by the Australia-India Council, though he could have sold this many times over with the great interest it evoked.

So does this bring us any closer to Minhazz’ question about the role of Australia in Indian identity? We may well return the European concept of the antipodes, that constructed New Holland as a land where the natural order was upturned. A project like Crosshatched enabled these artists to try out different techniques, like moving into three dimensional works. Like the Bollywood film set in Melbourne, Salaam Namaste, Australia offers a space to explore new forms of Indianness. Whether this is a dilution or revival of Indian culture remains to be seen. At a person-to-person level, it certainly seems to have brought the two countries closer.

Perhaps one day we can think about reconstituting a new Gondwana, forest of the Gonds, by reuniting artists from lands in Latin America, Africa, Australasia, India and Middle East, who were once one land mass.

  • Majumdar Minhazz ‘Folk art forms in India: Evolving a new paradigm’ in Craft Revival Trust


Children can be the link between craft and design

Mar 9th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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The Tradition for Modern Times was an intense workshop to complete the Selling Yarns conference. Participants brought a range of skills and experiences, particularly from Indigenous and artisan craft centres. In first considering the kinds of objects that have value in life, there was a great emphasis on some knowledge or connection to those who make them.

The scenario proved very lively. An Australian Indigenous Design Company was attempting to develop a ‘world craft’ product with traditional Aymara weavers based in the Andes. This was to be sold through a local gift shop to an Australian family. It all began well when a poncho design was developed that featured a hood which appeared very fashionable. But when this failed to sell in the shop, the artisans realised that they had forgotten to ensure payment. Trust broke down between artisans and designers and a stand-off ensued. In the end, it was the consumers who managed to regain trust by developing a ‘sister school’ relationship with the Andean village. This then paved the way for a cultural exchange between the designers and artisans. On the basis of this restored confidence, they were able to develop a more fitted product that was eventually successful.

The workshop revealed many dimensions to the business of cross-cultural product development. In particular, it showed that consumer participation can often be very productive in strengthening these cultural ties.

This exploration has many more possibilities to explore, but these exercises seem wonderful opportunities to share expertise and forge new methodologies. We are certainly entering a phase of ‘world craft’ when new possibilities are critical for its future.

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