Craft como palabra

[Bárbara Palomino]

Saludos a todos!
Finalmente logro darme un tiempo para contribuir, desde este rincón del mundo, en Craft Talk.
Hace un tiempo atrás Kevin Murray me sugirió poner en discusión en esta plataforma el uso y significado de la palabra 'craft', lo que ésta significa y el lugar que ocupa en el contexto latinoamericano, principalmente en el chileno. Pues bien, creo que ésta será una primera intervención al respecto: No existe un concepto tan amplio como 'Craft' en nuestro contexto. Por lo general, se vincula o se traduce 'craft' con la palabra 'artesanía', pero ésta se acerca a su vez al folklore. Cuando hablamos de 'artesanía' nos referimos básicamente a piezas decorativas y objetos tradicionales o de uso cotidiano realizados manualmente, con poca o nula intervención de maquinaria, que mantienen de algún modo vivas ciertas técnicas ancestrales que fueron transpasadas de generación en generación y que son propias de una cultura o grupo étnico determinado. Una diferencia apreciable entre el significado de 'craft' y el de 'artesanía' se podría evidenciar al contraponerlas con la palabra 'arte'. 'Arte' y 'Artesanía' en nuestro país son palabras que por lo general 'no deben' vincularse, son definiciones que separan disciplinas y se categorizan de forma distinta. No es bien visto que un objeto de 'arte' sea un objeto 'artesanal', la obra pareciera perder cierto valor estético si es así. El campo de visualización y difusión de los objetos artesanales en nuestro país está alejado del campo del arte contemporáneo, a no ser que éste sea utilizado de modo conceptual o a manera de ready made, y por lo tanto apropiado por un artista visual que lo traslada al espacio del arte. Esto último podría considerarse actualmente como una moda, una especie de 'atracción por conveniencia' hacia ciertos materiales, técnicas y objetos propios de la artesanía sin un real interés por lo que ésta implica, alejada de la elaboración artesanal y la implicancia en la realización de su confección. No existe en Chile una Galería dedicada a la difusión de artes y oficios tradicionales, de artesanías típicas y contemporáneas, la artesanía por lo general es exhibida en ferias urbanas, tiendas comerciales y museos arqueológicos. Traducir o trasladar el concepto de 'craft' a nuestro contexto no es entonces una fácil tarea. Recuerdo haber compartido con una colega largas horas de discusión sobre cómo traducir las aplicaciones de éste término y sus derivaciones de un artículo en inglés realizado por Kevin para nuestra publicación en espanol! Llegamos finalmente a no traducir o sólo a aproximar a conceptos que pudieran aludir a algo similar en nuestro idioma y en algunos puntos, cuando la confusión ya nos sobrepasaba, le solicitamos al autor que nos brindara su definición, lo que él entendía por dichos términos.
Al parecer la idea de un Sur unido a partir de una legua común como el craft no es tan simple de lograr cuando lo que nos parece unir no encuentra su homólogo en una equivalencia. Quizás habría que inventar una nueva palabra para abarcar todo el set de posibilidades que implica el inglés Craft y denominar aquello que nos une. Quizás una palabra 'spanglish' que permitiera referirnos a lo mismo...

[Peter Hughes]

One problem that has not been raised here in relation to the term 'craft' is that many of us in the English speaking world are also pretty unsure about what it means. There has been a concerted effort in recent years to replace the term with 'design'. This, I think, is intended to have two main consequences. The first is distance the practices formerly known as craft from 'labour' or work and to emphasise the 'intellectual' component of practices. Picture the designer in front of a computer screen using CAD to come up with a concept that, ideally, someone else can get dirty and sweaty actually making. In this direction craft seeks to align itself with the world of design, and most particularly with the galaxy of international megastar designers. I have increasingly observed a denigration of both labour and the skills that can only be attained through it. The individual who wants to make their own work seems increasingly to be judged a 'looser', implicitly, if not explicitly.

The second intention is distance practitioners and the critical/educational/commercial complex built upon their work from the social and political heritage of the crafts in the west. I would argue that the 'Crafts' in the West, and the Anglosphere in particular, have never had much to do with the traditional practice of the various crafts when they were the normal way of making things. The Crafts are an historical phenomenon located firmly within the advent of industrialisation and while they were a reaction to it they were also made possible by it. We cannot escape the historical contingency that gave rise to the crafts, nor ignore its heritage. Certainly in the nineteenth century the Crafts were part of a larger libertarian movement that sought to undermine the division between intellectual and manual labour so deeply ingrained in our culture, and obviously, from Bárbara's post, also deeply ingrained in the culture of Latin America. Equally, however, the nineteenth and early twentieth century crafts practitioners and theorists did not wish for a return to traditional crafts practices that were rooted in a social hierarchy that denied craft persons creative expression and control over both their labour itself and the products of it.

I agree with Kevin that the status of the crafts in Australia is much lower than its perennial travelling companion, 'Art', with which it is locked in an eternally hostile embrace, always loosing. Nevertheless, ignoring that pathetic contest, the crafts do have a certain status in Australia and other English speaking counties that seems much higher than that they enjoy in Latin America. I think that the 'crafts' could well be ethnically particular to certain countries such as Australia and the United States, where they also take particular, varied forms. Thus, although they connect with the broader notion of 'craft' that embraces traditional practices and skills they are fundamentally different from them, be they contemporary or historical. All of which means that, maybe, the application of the word 'Craft' with the all-important capital C, to other cultures is colonialist and imperialist. Even if this is so, the crafts are a fluid entity in fairly constant flux. I would certainly see the crafts grounded a little more firmly in 'real world' practices for I believe that one thing that distinguishes 'craft' from 'art' is their humble capacity to take their place in the the messy contingent world that surrounds us in our daily lives. The crafts compliment that world through participation and this necessarily limits them, but as any crafts practitioner knows, limits are the stuff of creativity.

My apologies, this has become a bit of a rant, and to get back to the subject (sort of). Both the predominance of 'gallery' based craft (or that hideous hybrid, craft-art) and attempts to re-brand craft as 'design' serve to undermine its heritage and reduce it to second rate 'art' or pseudo design that unnecessarily limits practitioners to an industrial aesthetic.

[Kevin Murray]

I noticed this Klimt02 page featuring craft from Latin America. According to the page: 'These works demonstrate a wide range of contemporary materials and forms including, but not limited to, expressions rooted in traditional materials, structure, processes and history, as well as art that explores unexpected relationships between craft and painting, sculpture, conceptual and installation art.'

None of the artists seem to reference traditional crafts. And they are clearly gallery-based. I wonder if these are an exception in Latin America - maybe they are not even living in Latin America?

[Kevin Murray]

This is very interesting. Excuse me if I reply in English, but, you know how bad my Spanish is! but also so that others can follow the argument. But please feel free to keep going in Spanish, Spanglish or Chileno.

Barbara, you seem to be saying that there is a significant difference between the English word 'craft' and 'artesanias', the closest word in Spanish. While 'craft' is an art form that can be found in galleries and is a source of status (though that's arguable), artesanias is more often associated with traditional cultural practice and is clearly lower in the cultural hierarchy than art.

So Barbara you ask if is possible to invent a middle term that might help link craft practices across the South.

And Mano de Obra argues that the differences are quite large and that any attempt to read the Anglo concept of 'craft' into the Latin American scene would be a kind of colonisation.

What seems to have happened in the Anglo world is that modernism has been given free reign and in the process has uprooted most traditional connections we have to each other or place. In English you can say 'you' to anyone, but in languages like Spanish, you always have to think first about status in order to choose 'tu' or 'su'. That makes life sociable, but also complicated. But what makes English conducive to movement between peoples and classes, is also what empties it of substance. It's not a great language for intimacy or respect.

Parallel to the English language, craft in the Anglo world has lost much of its traditional base, and has become an art form that is often experimental and gallery based. English is the language for an international network of craft practitioners who share similar studio environments, and constitute a community without a common traditional base.

But this doesn't mean that craft is equal. There's certainly a similarlow status for arts associated with manual skills in countries like Australia as Chile. It may not be as extreme, but it is certainly there. Please anyone feel free to contradict me on that!

Mano de Obra says that 'craft' is something to which Latin Americans might aspire to but do not belong. The same could be said from the other side. Artesanias is a connection to tradition that is lacking in craft. We can try to appropriate it through primitivism or world craft, but we need to accept that it is not something we are born for.

But does that mean east and west cannot meet (at least across the south)? Perhaps collaboration is the key here. As Samuel Johnson says, 'nature gives with the right and the left hand'. You received from the right hand, and we received from the left.

Swap?

[Mano de Obra]

Bárbara, tienes razón en tus palabras ... aunque como buena latinoamericana con mucho Galeano en el cuerpo, a veces tiendo a pensar que mas allá de las buenas intenciones, la incorporación de la palabra "craft" a nuestro español viene de la mano con una especie de "colonización" del oficio. Craft en Chile no es artesania, ni arte, ni diseño, sino eso que se permiten los países sin hambre y sin prejuicios culturales, algo que nosotros podemos mirar con deseo pero desde lejos, algo a lo que podemos aspirar pero que no nos pertenece. P.M.