Political craft history andcontemporary craft ethics

Rayna Fahey

The Fabric ofResistance

We live, dance, sleep, work, craftand play on Aboriginal Land

Industrial revolution

• Mass shift from handmade cottage industries tomachine based manufacturing

• End to mutual-aid based subsistence communities

• Concept of work moved out of homes and farms andinto centralised factories

• Mass unemployment in fabric and textile based craftindustries

Luddites

• Direct action movement

• Started with lace and hosiery workers nearNottingham

• First attacks in 1811

• “Machine breaking” made a capital crime in 1812

• 17 men executed under this law

• Countless men transported to Australia

• Agriculture workers followed lead

• Rural riots lead to foundation of the TradeUnion movement

Banners• Began in the Trade Unions in Britainin the 1840s

• Used iconography to portray lives ofworkers, historical influences andvisions for the future

• Use spread to many different politicalmovements

• Use of banners continues to this dayin diverse forms

Flags

• Most effective form of creative resistance

• Used to symbolise united visions and goals

• Usually handmade by women active in movement

Bulgarian Uprising Flag

Sewed by Rayna Knyaginya for the AprilUprising in Bulgaria 1876

Text reads ‘Freedom or Death’

Eureka Flag

• Created in 1854 in Ballarat

• Sewed by Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke andAnastasia Hayes

• Flag continues to inspire and unite working peopletoday

African Slavery

Harriet Powers

Suffrage Movement• First major political movement to use crafts as a formof subversive communication

• Major utilisation of clothing, banners, painting,ceramics, knitting and other fabric crafts ascommunication medium

• Suffrage Atelier - group within Suffrage movementdedicated to producing visual material

• Produced at least 15o banners

A Militant Movement• The British Suffragettes served over a century ofcollective time in prison

• Tactics included:

• throwing bricks through windows

• marbles under police horses hooves

• defacing portraits in parliament

• burning mansions and churches

• Some died for the cause

Signature handkerchief sewn by Suffragette JanieTerrano in Holloway Prison, 1912

Chilean Arpillera

•Pinochet regime - numbers of ‘disappeared’ numbered inthe hundreds of thousands.

•Smuggled out to the international press.

Greenham Common Women’sPeace Camp

• Home of controversial military base that housednuclear warheads

• Greenham Common Women’s Peace camp wasthe longest peace camp in history 1981-2000

• Creative resistance was the main form ofactivism

• NVDA, fence art, poetry and song, banners andcostumes

Global Solidarity QuiltProject

• Quilts contributedfrom many countries

• Attached to the fenceas creative presencefrom women all over

Woven Woolen Webs

• Challenged theoppressive existence of thesecurity fences

Craftivism“…based on the idea that activism + craft = craftivism.That each time you participate in crafting you aremaking a difference, whether it's fighting against uselessmaterialism or making items for charity or somethingbetwixt and between.It's about the not-so-radical notion that activists can becrafters, and crafters can be activists.”

From www.craftivism.com

Lisa Anne Auerbach

Lisa Anne Auerbach

lisaanneauerbach.com

Lisa Anne Auerbach

lisaanneauerbach.com

Cat Mazza

Stitch for the Senate

stitchforthesenate.us

Sara RahbarIranian-born fabricartist

Uses flags to makestatements aboutAmerican-Islamicrelations andnationhood

myspace.com/sararahbar

Melbourne Revolutionary CraftCircle

Sorry Fence

QRacks in the Land

• Community based collaborative archiveproject

• Compiling historical and contemporary craftaction, activists and theory

• radicalcrossstitch.com/wiki

Fabric of Resistance Wiki

Facing the FutureThe Craft Movement is part of a long strugglefor social and political change.

In this time of increasing political andenvironmental volatility, crafters should embraceour revolutionary past and use our creative skillsto make and inspire change.

Direct action and solidarity action through craftwill save our planet and all the communities thatlive on it.

Last year in UK less than 8% of all donatedclothes actually ended up being resold in charityshops. A part are recycled as industry wipe clothsand others shipped as charitable aid to the thirdworld countries. Some 7% are not even worthbeing recycled or further donated, so they end upin landfills. And this is just the clothes peoplebother to donate to charity. In the UK three outof four unwanted clothes a thrown straight to thebin with out the chance of being reused.

Textile Production - Bangladesh

•Buy second hand

•Make your own clothes

•Buy good quality, sustainable fabrics

•Recycle your waste fabric

Sustainable Options

love and rage

radicalcrossstitch.com