Lueckenhausen, H, Craft and Design, Interventions Conference, Wollongong University NSW. July. 1992.

My parallel to 42 as the answer to the perpetual question is 'sometimes'.
Our efforts in recent times to develop models of absolute difference or conversely (and equally fraught) absolute sameness for the parts of the art / craft / design continuum have left us,
as always, with the pendulum swinging to the eminently sensible middle ground of 'sometimes'.
By way of example, the Australia Council presents us with a wonderfully accurate illustration of that swing between models with its movement from separate Art and Craft boards to amalgamation (bringing with it all the vexations of enforced reconciliation) to the absorption of some of the Design Unit's programs, to the development of the Community, Environment, Art and Design Committee.
If the evolution of the Council's Boards and programs seems vexed, then I contend that is an accurate reflection of the problems we have as a society in crediting the parts within the whole. Again, as with the 'is craft art?' debate, the only sensible answer is 'sometimes'.

Even though we have now moved onto a post-modern era the critical and particularly the educational infrastructures of the visual arts are frequently peopled with representatives of at least two generations of adherents to the position illustrated by Peter Dormer's extraordinarily bold assertion that "Mystification and subversion we leave to artists and from them we demand insight and intelligence of a very rare order indeed".
This depends on an article of faith that attributes a sort of 'conceptual godhead' to one branch of the arts while denying it to all the others.
I have no intention of arguing against what is, on so many levels, a patently absurd assertion.

The point is to understand the potential for the arts to impact outside of the 'priestly' art classes and certainly outside of the art school 'seminaries', on the broader social and specifically the built environment.
For all their potential, ideas are like sperm, if they are not successfully implanted they die.
I am reminded of the title to an exhibition of graphic design in Germany.
'Design ist Kunst die sich Nuetzlich macht'.- Design is art that makes itself useful. Apart from the disquieting suggestion that in the widest sense, there should be any art that does otherwise, this is a neat turn of phrase.

What are some of the manifestations of craft in the continuum?

Whatever craft is, or is not, it manifests as object, even though we've been through all the silly stages of equating conceptual with non functional.
That object engages every aspect of human experience, from the sensuous to the intellectual.

To begin with, material brings with it a mixed history and mythology of association that often taps into ancient archetypes.
Timber, for example, elicits an immediate, often emotional, sometimes practical, sometimes irrational response.
Similar responses can be expected for metal and precious stones and to a lesser degree to stone, all of which are consistently associated with both ancient and contemporary mythologies about human beings and their relationship to the environment.

I believe many of these responses to be valid providing one of the pitfalls of craft revivalism can be avoided and the imperative in material is not seen as being sufficient unto itself.
If we interfere, we must do so assertively; otherwise we can be well advised to leave nature to its own ends.

The next question is - have technology and mass production [i.e. the ready availability of an ever increasing array of sophisticated, complex, exciting and above all affordable products] leeched process of its mystique?

Has the celebration of process in some crafts practice become at best a sentimental delusion and at worst a bogus quality?
Having moved on from the tortured, over-orchestrated 'naturalness' of jute macramé and lip lacerating cow-patty cups is the fine line that remains between handmade and luddism evident? One can see parallels between fear and rejection of the machine and the monumental delusion of the ancient Chinese potters who scratched their pots because only the gods were permitted perfection.
In either case, there was no need to bother.

Peter Dormer boldly states, "the craft aesthetic is
anti-technology, anti-science and anti-progress". To keep it in perspective, this sounds like dated late modernism, accepting uncritically [somewhat worrying for a critic] that there exists an uncrossable gulf between yesterday's technologies and today’s high-tech aesthetic. The latter being touted as the only honest expression of the economic empiricism underpinning the built environment.

Again in fairness, the socio-political nature of the crafts revival over the last three three decades has manifested itself at times as sentimental and reactionary.
However we now witness the evolution of a contemporary craft ethos that celebrates a parallel rather than an oppositional model of production. With the development of models of practice in which research, prototyping and the exploration of object as narrative look to bridging, not only with Industry but with other structures that go to make up the economic and social mainstream, we can affirm craft as a 'Doppelganger'.
We can identify a significant middle ground of small scale, limited run production that will allow many craftspeople to rationalize their particular emotional and aesthetic concerns in a way that has increasing relevance to the geographically and culturally discreet production models being demanded in a
post-industrial environment.

A moot point on the issue of the place of creative people in the larger social and economic equation is that western artists have been conditioned into a culture of the individual.
In an I / me /now culture we are more I / me /now than most.
It may well be to satisfy that particular egocentric need that many artists work in areas predicated on a sometimes tortuous rate of differentiation and change. This begs the question as to how people of this disposition will be able to impact on industries in which the anonymity of part players is more often the norm.
How do we reconcile the 'cult of the new', the celebration of uniqueness for its own sake, which is the cornerstone of arts criticism and possibly even of our culture with batch production?

Perhaps the superstar status of some designers is in itself a manifestation of the system adjusting to that phenomenon.

So is design a process or a commodity?

In one sense it is a problem solving method, which may like learning and living, having and raising children be a natural and innate ability. Organizing a shelf, a meal or an appointment may all be aspects of design.

In another it is the word used by design professionals in a continual affirmation of faith in technology in its own right. To a large extent it is this primal belief that may be responsible for the unsympathetic image the public has of design as being artificial, over controlled and over advertised.
Protect us Lord, (to paraphrase Knox) from the 'monstrous regimen of engineers'.

In yet another design is a counter culture, with a 'look' and like most counter cultures it can prescribe language, behaviour, dress and at times, an inflexible aesthetic.
In Melbourne for example: dress black, the designer uniform, has become known as Fitzroy beige alluding both to an ideologically acceptable suburb and the ubiquity of its use.

Similarly ubiquitous and a good deal more serious, is a particularly vacuous aspect of minimalism (the heritage of 70 years of high Modernism), which at times confuses simplicity with simple mindedness.
Using dieting as a parallel, you can only shed so much fat before you change from becoming more and more healthy to being dead.

The artificial design/craft dichotomy can be seen as one manifestation of a social phenomenon which relies on keeping as opposites those aspects of ourselves that might more productively be seen as complementary.
Numbered amongst these are the intellectual and the sensual, the industrial and the domestic and the male and female.

As Marshall Berman sees it, "our desperate allegiances to ethnic, national, class and sexual groups which we hope will give us a firm 'identity' ...", as opposed to "...the internationalization of everyday life - of our clothes and household goods, our books and music, our ideas and fantasies.....", is evidence of our need for a new modernism.
Be that as it may, whether we subscribe to New Modernism, Post Modernism or any other model, it at the very least points out that the absolutism of international formulae have mislead us into yet another vexed attempt to locate the 'Holy Grail'.
It is of course, part of the human condition that we are cursed to continually try to do so, within the sociological and historical framework of the pendulum swing.

Another face of design has seen it become somewhat of a wonder word, being loaded with some real and some imaginary expectations with regard to its ability to halt the decline of production in some countries, or even more unrealistically, to facilitate a belated development into a production based economy in Australia.

Francois BURKHARDT can find little evidence that product design has followed architecture into Post Modernism. " Indeed, design today is in difficulties and is facing a crisis just because of this attachment to the Modern Movement, and because there has been no ideological replacement for it. Modernist doctrines are hardly tenable these days; design appears ideologically out of step, tied to the past when functionalism was the order of the day".
One of the damaging aspects of mainstream design, at least that sector of it to which Burkhardt's comments fairly apply, is that the very internationalism which was to have been such a workable formula for arriving at the big answers to the big questions approves only of designers in its own image.

The perpetrators of that 'culture' within Australia and that includes the magazines that contain 'the word' as it were, approve mainly of work from Europe, in respect of furniture for example, particularly Milan, or of work at the very least in the 'Euro-chic' image.

Interesting also, in respect of the continuum between various branches of our creative professions, is that some of the products of early modernism, designed for and produced by machines for large scale if not mass consumption have assumed a certain 'specialness' that makes them sought after, even in reproduction. Similarly it is no accident, particularly in respect of marketing expertise [and budgets] brought to bear, that designers such as Phillippe Starck successfully aspire to superstar status with a world following and representation in public collections. Design is taking on some traditional 'Art' world methods.

Practice and theory - which informs which?

The classic (and I maintain artificial) dichotomy between concept and function gives us a prime example of the tyranny of language. It is a clue to the suspicion with which many practitioners regard theorists.
Avoiding the worst manifestations of 'functionalism', one can subscribe to a
holistic interpretation of function that embraces aesthetics and vice versa. The sensuous, the symbolic, even the spiritual are aspects of function.
Only in the most recent, most Western, most mechanistic of contexts, in fact in what is a tiny microcosm of human history has that been denied.
One can more clearly understand the sneering use of the word functional by understanding labeling for what it is - a classic fascist control mechanism. It is both fascinating and disturbing to witness so many organizational functionaries become so [albeit innocently] powerful through the manipulation of language.

Many practitioners (indeed one may argue, most Australians) cherish a larrikin image of themselves and it may well be in the rejection of authority that so many make the jump from
anti-authoritarianism to anti-intellectualism.
For craftspeople, the rejection of theory as an informing frame of reference innocently becomes a capitulation to relegation to a lower point in the 'hierarchy' of creative pursuits.
It is arguable that a sense of identity can only come from them taking control of their own history by further developing and engaging in a critical dialogue.
As DORMER says, "...what is and what is not "Art" is decided by the art world..."

Design similarly is evolving a discourse beyond economic rationale, although no one suggests it should or can be divorced from it. A good deal is now being written, albeit belatedly, about the place of design after modernism and its relationship to art, architecture and particularly to the cross over areas with other object based practices such as the crafts.
As with all attempts to codify the movement from intent to practice we begin to see in design writing, the evolution of a rich urban mythology.

I wish I could be sanguine about the potential for crafts and design theory to avoid some of the pitfalls of fine arts writing.
I would like to think we could avoid some of the worst posturing of arts theorists such as Baudrillard.
If it is difficult to accept practice not being informed by theory then it is doubly difficult to accept theory not only taking the high moral ground but also obfuscating the approach to that ground with an increasingly obscure vocabulary.

In fairness, sometimes too much is made of the entirely questionable concept of visual literacy. Is a picture worth a thousand words?
Not always. If it were, fewer artists would need to engage in lengthy rationale about work, which is obscure without it. Preserve us lord from those tortuous ramblings with which artists like to pad their own catalogues.
So it's horses for courses. Theory and practice inform each other and the answer to the question whether one is paramount is again - 'sometimes'.

Even theorists can be impatient with theory that remains divorced from practice. Jenny ZIMMER asks, "The theory is in place, but will the 90's apply it?"
So the links between theory and action need to be made.
Without wishing to exacerbate an anti- intellectual conservatism, we need to arrive at the goal.

Much of what designers and makers do stems from immediate responses to opportunity or lack of opportunity.
There is a pragmatic/reactive component to practice, born of an honest practicality but which does not necessarily deny concern with images and contexts of meaning.
What we do springs from a lifetime store of ideas and values, the frames of reference from which we evolve theory.

According to Nola ANDERSON "... the thing we consider least, if at all, in our theory of art is the artist, and the last thing an artist considers in the moments of creating, is the theory".

With deliberate irony she hints at and questions the idea of the conscious, centralized, all pervading super-theory, resulting in linear enactment. It reminds us of the pressures to develop concepts that have current ideological acceptability, around the weighty issues that are fashionable for the moment and will be acceptable to the 'issues mafia'.

In the arts no less than in other areas of human endeavour, individuals can become so obsessed with the righteousness of their cause that they can be born again into a cult of proselytizing social engineers.
Immaculate and absolute causes such as theirs can be seen being single mindedly pursued in a number of establishment sinecures.

In crafts practice one has the opportunity of exploring the relationship between object as symbol/statement, object through process and object as commodity.

In the former, lies the potential for objects (both domestic and public) to act as markers or signposts of our personal space
(both physical and intellectual), against the larger backdrop of the impersonal. As an extension of that, the postmodern revival of concern with decoration, whether eclectic or not, also addresses the potential for individuals to personalize object and structure in what can be (and frequently has been), an alienating urban environment.

In object as commodity we have the chance to have creative thinking impact on the wealth generating part of our community. Despite the alienation between these sectors for which, for some reason, Anglo-saxon societies are particularly notable. We exist in a peculiar juncture in our national history where lost opportunity for industrial development may give way to new opportunity in the post-industrial age.

As John THACKARA notes in a discussion of the general perception of design, " the 'opening to art' in design is significant because it represents the first signs that the super- rationalistic, anti-nature, mechanistic world view of planners and designers is beginning to soften".

Therein lies the answer to DORMER'S charge that craft is basically anti- technology, a concept based on the principle of dividing 'them' from 'us'.

So getting back to that point about designers and makers being affirmative rather than oppositional, it involves, amongst other things the further development, appreciation and promotion of the concept of value in intellectual property being in parenthesis to the products and artifacts of contemporary culture.
It involves an appreciation of cultural, and again for want of a better term, spiritual power of object and even material to make metaphorical statement - and of our obligations to extend that potential by putting ourselves and our creative skills firmly into the equation.

So in fact, to what extent are the crafts in crisis?

For all the well meaning machinations of those who support this view and notwithstanding some of the valuable promotion for the crafts that their campaign has achieved, to me it seems to be longing for the crafts movement of the 60's rather than looking for interpretation as an 'industry' of the 90's.
Are we in danger of ignoring windows of opportunity by continually looking over our shoulder at what was, or at what we thought was?
Some aspects of the fellowship of the crafts movement within the whole socio - political framework of new hope for a new world that was the 60's are no longer with us and are being sorely missed.
On the other hand craft is much closer, for all the problems remaining unresolved, to being recognized as a significant part player in a network of niche industries and niche markets. The values of 'action within' rather than 'reaction from without' are those being aspired to by contemporary practitioners.

I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the current movements to strike craft from secondary curricula either, regrettable though they are. Sadly education has always lagged well behind the avante garde. Current educational policy development seems to me to be portraying quite accurately the anti-crafts as a word climate of approximately five years ago.
I'm not advocating complacency, we do need to get the infrastructure right but it’s a little premature to assume the sky is falling.
It would be amusing if it weren't so horrifying to watch the current crop of social engineers, within education and without, trying to control the language.
The word crafts has survived a whole series of well meaning attempts to obliterate it in recent times and if its survival is a humbling lesson for us all, on the power of language to evolve its own functional parameters, then maybe that is a parallel to the practice of craft as well.

Is it naively optimistic, to see threat as opportunity,
decay as opportunity for growth?
What is deconstructivism if not erzatz urban decay,
concocted to encourage a new wave of urban renewal.
Again, this may be the current challenge.
Disorder, complexity and change equal opportunity.

I have used the word 'Teraph' as a generic term for a whole body of my work. Teraphs are ancient Hebrew household gods and I adopted the word because it combines the image of a benign visitation with the larger picture of the craft object being a prop and an anchor in the ceremony of living.
However Michael Bogle noted in his book 'Modern Australian Furniture' that teraph is only a dictionary entry away from teratism: worship of the monstrous.

I love that image. It's like a metaphor for the contradictory images of crafts with which we must deal.
Do any of the images suit?

Sometimes.

1. Dormer, P., "The Ideal World of Vermeer's Little Lacemaker",
in Thackera, J., (Ed) Design after Modernism, Thames and Hudson,
1988 p.141.

2. Dormer, P., ibid., p.135.

3. Berman, M., "The Experience of Modernity", ibid., p. 47.

4. Dormer, P., ibid., p.141.

5. Burkhardt, F., "Design and Avante - Postmodernism", ibid., p145.

6. Zimmer, J., "Moving into the Nineties - Craft", The Sydney Review
Oct. 1990

7. Anderson, N., "An Argument" in Thompson, B., (Ed)
Meaning - Craft Realities No. 5

8. Thackera, J., New British Design London, Thames and Hudson 1986. p.12