Lueckenhausen, H, Craft Internationalism, Contemporary Craft Review, Collected Essays on Issues and Themes in Australian Craft. Ed. Jenni Zimmer, Published by Craft Victoria, May 1995, pp 40-42S

A few years ago, when the General Assembly of the World Craft Council (WCC) was hosted by the Crafts Council of Australia we saw gathered in the Powerhouse lecture theatre in Sydney, the makings of what was at once the most extensive and promising and the most diverse and vexed cultural network in the world.

The 'buzz' around the theatre was United Nations writ small, with a diversity of agendas that tipped me into the deep end of a pool of issues ranging from 'staying alive' to international reputations. Picture me sitting amongst the delegates listening to Anne Brennan speaking and showing slides about mouth clamp jewelery, making reference to women being silenced. On one side of me sat Vanjar Richards, the delegate from Liberia who was eventually murdered in the anti John Doe riots, and for whom craft was a platform for carving a national identity out of continual riot and social unrest. To the other side sat Mr Saraf from Kashmir who spent all his time at the conference, bringing every subject, every private conversation around to the issue of trade barriers against Indian craft export. The overwhelming question that began to oppress me was—what on earth do we have to say to each other?

Let's move on to 1993. I am standing in a huge (and I mean airport hangar huge) mausoleum built for the Ayatollah Khomeini. An enormous crowd of weeping, Iranians hushes as a dramatic anthem strikes up and an honour guard escorts Mrs Obeyesekere the WCC President, Ishtiaque Kahn, the UNESCO representative and me, the WCC Secretary to the shrine where we lay a wreath. I am not dramatizing, nor is this selective embellishment, as I bowed towards the crypt I thought—what am I doing here? I suppose I meant—and here of course I am fine-tuning—what is the connection between an Australian designer/maker and this diplomatic gesture? The answer is complex but the clues include the facts that Iran holds the Vice-presidency of WCC Asia, of which Australia is a member; the Iran Handicraft Organization raises the second highest rate of foreign exchange for Iran after oil; and we are major exporters to Iran. For Iran, crafts are one possible wedge in a door long closed to much of the world.

The distance between standing at my bench, sitting at my desk, or listening to a foreign minister for trade or export through simultaneous translation can be as little as two days or as much as a conceptual shift of who and what I am and why craft exists. Let me propose craft, the act of making, the act of contributing to material culture as a common denominator to macro and micro history.

The opportunities and threats active in WCC are a microcosm of international relations. For example, Australia and Japan work superbly well together, while our relationship with Malaysia is a little tetchy. Our new Asian consciousness often leaves us in the catch 22 dilemma of neither being able to claim to be Asian nor being permitted to deny it. In a period where many post-colonial societies are reaffirming their own cultural continuums we have the dual image of an ex colony and an ex colonizer. Articulating our qualities, our cultural imagery, identifying our material icons in this fluid context is not easy, yet overseas, that is what I am often asked to do.
 

Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam for example are all busy freeing themselves from their histories of political and cultural colonialism. That Malaysia, is throttling ahead inventing a preferred instead of an actual history is no less of a lesson for us. In this context, the frequently asked question is—what is particularly Australian about Australian craft?

I am not being pessimistic when I say that answer is yet to be arrived at. We are nowhere more 'multi' in our multiculturalism than in the eclectic mix of our material language. In order to agree on a structure within which we are to form that picture of ourselves however, we need to step back from the rush long enough to rethink the categories. Most developing cultures do not have the tradition of separation of art, craft and design from each other or from other central platforms of their culture which the industrial revolution bequeathed to us. The holistic view of man made object sitting within ceremony, play, theatre, trade, religion, life and death which we find so easy to admire in Asian cultures may be closer to our own truth than our academic and institutional frameworks allow.

As someone officially categorized by the Australia Council as a NESB, that is—from a non English speaking background, I find current talk of multiculturalism more promising than threatening. I have experienced what is probably the world's most successful cultural mixing at first hand. The result is not a new tribalism but a new, eclectic construct. It seems to me that our icons are firming similarly. Doreen Mellor, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consultant to Craft Australia did remind me recently of another primary ingredient of that mix however. She said that to Aborigines the issue of bi-culturalism precedes that of multiculturalism. That is an issue that needs some work.

I'm still not sure what it was that we hoped all the international delegates could take away from the WCC General Assembly in Sydney. I am at times bemused to think of myself arguing an issue angrily in Colombia or sharing a moment of exquisite beauty in Japan. What is contained in our experience of designing and making that projects us into the world? Two things seem certain. One is that crafts present in various guises in all cultures. The other is that some aspects of crafts at least are common.