Craft Practiced, a Reader

A subset of writing about craft focuses on what the body knows about materials and movement. Much more than some subset of human practice is about or emanates from human bodies engaging in material practice, knowledgeably. During my time as a student in the MA in Critical Craft Studies program (MACR), I have found myself in conversation time and again in which we, craft practitioners and scholars, bump up against the singularity, the itself-ness, of the outcomes of physical practice in...
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A subset of writing about craft focuses on what the body knows about materials and movement. Much more than some subset of human practice is about or emanates from human bodies engaging in material practice, knowledgeably. During my time as a student in the MA in Critical Craft Studies program (MACR), I have found myself in conversation time and again in which we, craft practitioners and scholars, bump up against the singularity, the itself-ness, of the outcomes of physical practice in the experience of the practitioners. With this bumping-against, we find a tenuous border: stuff is stuff, and it isn't words. And yet: we manage translations.I selected the included texts from and around readings from my assigned MACR coursework about the kind of experience that is in the middle of craft and movement practices. I made my choices based on ineffable criteria about a feel for material and movement, and a certain kind of readability.In this reader, Craft Practiced, writing from Robin Wall Kimmerer, unfolds ways human knowing deeply anchors our bodies to our environments. Glenn Adamson considers material intelligence, from a distanced perspective. Phoebe Kuo's ethnography flows from a sensory account of swimming. An interview with woodworker Alexis Caldero, who designs chairs that position users to heal, will be our bridge between craft and functional somatics, demonstrating other axes of translation between materials. Margaret Boden considers possibilities of embodied knowing as they relate to either craft or art practices. Kate Hawes shows the clarity of embodiment tangled in literal and figurative human constructions. Interspersed are moments from conversations I have participated in over the past year with my sister and her partner, which engage and explore the prospects of translation between movement and language.