Exploring net political craft: From collective to connective

Abstract

Craft and design has had a dialectical history since early modernism, where craft often sided with the romanticism of the arts and craft movement, while design became primarily market-led and allied with mass production, industrialism and consumerism. This conflict, which deepened through the twentieth century, is now exhibiting signs of reconciliation. What happens at the borders between design and craft today, when a new generation of makers trespass and extend across this raft, to combine post-industrial design, open source shared engagement and net political craft? An exhibition and series of workshops at the Jnkping County Museum, Sweden, set out to examine the new household tactics of the global popular crafts and the transversal movements of critical engagement, re-examining household production, craftivism and critical design. This article specifically examines the Counterfeit Crochet project of artist Stephanie Syjuco whose works were exhibited at the show, to see how she uses networked craft as a critical tool for investigating contemporary modes of political power, globalized production, consumerism and DIY activism.