Craftivism and Mobility

Here is one of the latest research projects that I’m working on…

Yarn Bombing, Knit Graffiti and Underground Brigades: A Study of Craftivism and Mobility

A vibrant, multi-colored piece of knitting snakes around a parking metre in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. A tree in the city’s St. Louis square wears “Stellar Fruits”, the trunk wrapped with a wide fabric cuff, adorned with over-sized textile blueberries, and a set of raspberry-coloured globules that drape over the tree’s broadest branch like ripe, pillowy fruit, plump with juice and ready to be picked.

Stellar Fruits (c) Tricot Pirate

Each piece is tagged with a pink heart pierced by two knitting needles as crossbones, a sign that Tricot Pirate has been here.

“The Knitted Mile”, a textile version of the painted yellow centerline that divides most roadways was stitched together in 2008 from the contributions of ninety knitters from around North America. Embroidered with the slogan “slow labour, good results”, the entire mile-long stretch of bright yellow needlework was laid out on a road to raise awareness of the fast-pace of modern life—an example of collaborative knitting and textile street art.

The Knitted Mile (c) 2008 Robyn Love

In May 2006 in Copenhagen’s main square, a World War II tank was covered from cannon to caterpillar with more than 4,000 pink squares, woven together from the handiwork of hundreds of knitters as a symbolic act of protest against Denmark’s involvement in the Iraq war (along with the United States, the UK, and other European nations).

Pink M.24 Chaffee © 2006 Marianne Jorgenssen

Yarn bombing, knit and crochet graffiti, and collective knit-ins are acts of ‘craftivism’, a termed coined by Betsy Greer in 2003 to signify the merging of crafting and activism. In her words, “craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper and your quest for justice more infinite”. Combining a do-it-yourself ethic, the covert movement of street art, and needlework, craftivists bomb urban spaces and inanimate objects as a means of art and consciousness-raising—sometimes political, sometimes humourous, sometimes dazzling, but always unexpected.

Although not overtly expressed, the practice and discourse of craftivism implies questions of mobility—nomadic knitting while on public transportation, use of mobile technologies to organize and execute yarn-bombing brigades, digital mapping of tagged spaces, the recording and publishing of installed needlework by mobile devices. It follows what Sheller and Urry (2006) have described as “the new mobilities paradigm”, suggesting that increases physical travel, global transportation networks, the simultaneous growth of the internet and mobile telephony, the international flow of consumer goods, and many other examples are putting “issues of ‘mobility’ [at] centre stage” (208). With these developments and a conception of mobility as having important implications for modern life, including social relations, activism, communication, patterns of experience and relations to space and place, this paper seeks to explore the relationship of craftivism and mobility.

Knitted Wall Street Bull

At its most basic, what does it mean to think of craftivism through the purview of mobility? Or, said another way, how might the practice, politics, and culture of craftivism intersect with questions of mobility (and immobility)? How does the craftivist movement spread and multiply? What are its networks and connections? And, how might mobile technologies and media articulate with craftivist practice?

This proposed research connects with my interests in DIY craft, feminism, and the use of the so-called ‘domestic arts’ as means of détournement, social commentary, and critique. I am particularly interested in elaborating mobility as a concept in this context, knitting and purling the craftivist movement to the expanding field of mobilities research and seeing what emerges.

Stay tuned for the more details on how the paper turns out!

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