Craft Research, Issue 7.1 (June 2015)

Website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=3D172/
Deadline for submission of full papers: 1 June 2015

Craft Research is now inviting submissions for its next issue: 7.1 – February/March 2016.

Editors
Prof Kristina Niedderer, University of Wolverhampton, UK, email: k.niedderer@wlv.ac.uk
Dr Katherine Townsend, Nottingham Trent University, email: katherine.townsend@ntu.ac.uk

Submission

For guidance notes, for further information or to submit a paper, please contact the editors. Please find all details on the website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=3D172/

craft+design enquiry #8: Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industries (2016)

Website: http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page_13.html
Deadline for expressions of interest: Postponed till further notice.

The craft + design enquiry Editorial Board welcomes Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton, from Queensland University of Technology, as the Guest Editors of c+de#8 with the theme of ‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’.

Contributors to c+de#8 are invited to submit Expressions of Interest for either the Themed Section or the Open Section by following the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined at the website.

Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015. c+de#8 will be published in mid-2016.

Please refer to the website for further details.

Edited Volume: The Craft Economy: Making, Materiality, and Meaning (July 2014)

Contacts: Susan.Luckman@unisa.edu.au and Nicola.J.Thomas@exeter.ac.uk
Deadline for abstract proposals: 31 July 2014

Edited by Susan Luckman (University of South Australia) & Nicola Thomas (University of Exeter).

A making renaissance is underway with handmade practice and goods in global demand. Thus the central aim of The Craft Economy collection is to bring together a comprehensive account of the current moment of growth in the contemporary handmade marketplace. We wish to examine the reasons why we are now seeing such significant growth, and identify the key drivers – both in terms of production and consumption. Importantly, we seek to locate this discussion within the larger picture of its implications for our understandings of the contemporary cultural economy. For example, what it may reveal about perceptions of authenticity and practices of ethical consumption, as well as shifting labour and production models (creative micro-enterprise; the home-based digital cultural economy; the attraction of entrepreneurial self-employment; and the gendering of craft work). In the digital age, almost seventy years since the Frankfurt School first railed against the culture industry’s commodification and standardisation of all art, the bespoke ‘analogue’ physical item becomes Othered, different, desirable. Handmade objects are imbrued with touch, and therefore offer a sense of the ‘authentic’ in an ‘inauthentic’ world: they offer connection to the maker through the skill and learning apparent in their construction, and they demonstrate the time spent on their making in a way in most other objects cannot. Handmade cultural goods thus need to be located within wider debates regarding ethical consumption, makings, and ‘retro’ interest in unique physical artefacts.

CFP: The Hand and the Machine: Tensions in Interwar Design (SECAC, Sarasota FL – October 2014)

Venue: Southeastern College Art Conference

Dates: October 8-11, 2014
Location: Sarasota, Florida
Website: http://www.secollegeart.org/conference#papers
Deadline for submissions: April 20, 2014

The story is familiar: modernism’s post-World War I fascination with machines and technology – in architecture, industrial design, the decorative arts, and fashion – dissipated in the 1930s, replaced by a valorization of handicraft and a reemergence of the human subject. Where the machine aesthetic dominated design in the early 1920s, artists grew disenchanted with the signs of industry in the 1930s, focusing instead on the human subject, and crafting work to show the “hand” of the maker.  But is this tale of a “return to the hand” universally true? Are there certain mediums or national traditions that trouble the story?  This session solicits papers that examine the precarious dynamics of industry and the hand-made in the applied arts between the wars. We encourage a variety of perspectives within or beyond the powerhouse industrial economies of the West, and we hope, through the breadth of papers, to reassess the standard narrative of interwar design.

Session Co-Chairs: Toby Norris, Assumption College and Rachael Barron-Duncan, Central Michigan University.

Contact: tnorris@assumption.edu

Materiality and Aesthetics, Enhancing the Object and Democratising Technology (July 2014, Cornwall UK)

Dates: 10-11 July 2014
Location: Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK
Website: http://www.autonomatic.org.uk/allmakersnow/conference.html
Deadline for extended abstracts: 31 March 2014

The digital crafters in the Autonomatic Research Group at Falmouth University invite you to join them in critical debate about a radically transformed vision of 21st century production. In this brave new world of Makerspaces and Fablabs anyone can be a digital craftpreneur, harnessing the power of digital technologies to create, co-create, collaborate, make and sell.

Aimed at makers and researchers of all shapes and codes including hackers, crafters, inventors, designers, economists, curators and critical theorists, this two day conference will explore craft values, traditional making processes and novel forms of engagement, participation and interaction in digital and material cultures.

There are three broad themes we wish to explore: Materiality and Aesthetics, Enhancing the Object and Democratising Technology. More information on these and the conference exhibition and workshop opportunities can be found on the conference website.

We welcome contributions from both within and beyond the field of craft.

For queries, expressions of interest and early bird registration contact the conference team at:info@autonomatic.org.uk.

Special Issue of craft+design enquiry: “Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design” (April 2014)

Website: http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page_13.html
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 April 2014

About Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design, Kay writes “… These words posit different relationships to the environment; landscapes encompassed by the gaze or places known through the intimacy of bodily sensation. Both words are culturally inflected. Our understanding of both landscapes and places is shaped by sensory experience as well as by memory and myth, and are thus bound up with complex questions about human identity. 
Full Call for Papers #7 can be found on the craft+design enquiry   http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page_13.html
Submit abstracts now until 30 April 2014, if invited, full papers are due 30 June 2014.

Craft Research volume 6.1 (May 2014)

Website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=172/
Deadline for submissions: 1 May 2014

Being now held by over 40 institutions worldwide, including the American Crafts Council Library, in 2013, Craft Research has successfully introduced two issues per year. To build on its current success, we are currently looking for papers for volume 6.1.

Making Futures: Interfaces between craft knowledge and design: new opportunities for social innovation and sustainability (Sep 2013, Plymouth UK)

Dates: 26-27 September 2013
Location: Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth, UK
Website: http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk
Deadline for submissions: 10 May 2013

The CALL FOR ABSTRACTS is now open and the closing date for receipt is 10th May 2013. Making Futures invites submissions from artists, craftspeople, designers, curators, historians, theorists, campaigners, activists, and representatives from public and private institutions with an interest in the relationship between contemporary craft practice, sustainability and social issues.

Making Futures aims to investigate contemporary craft as a ‘change agent’ within 21st century society – particularly in relation to global environmental and sustainability issues, social equity and social innovation practices. In doing so, it tries to explore whether these imperatives present opportunities for the crafts to redefine and reconstitute themselves as more centrally productive forces in society.

Craft Research Volume 4.2 (Dec 2013)

Deadline for submissions: 3 December 2012
Website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=172/

After three successful issues, Craft Research is preparing to expand to two issues per year. From 2013 there will be two issues, one in January/February and one in September/October each year.

For guidance notes or further information, or to submit an article or review, please contact the editors or visit the journal’s website for details: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=172/

Editors:
Kristina Niedderer k.niedderer@wlv.ac.uk
Katherine Townsend katherine.townsend@ntu.ac.uk

MERZ MEND*RS: 1st MENDing Research Society symposium (29th June-2nd July, Lake District – UK)

IMPORTANT DATES

• April 27: submissions due
• May 8: participants notified
• May 21: final programme announced
• June 29 – July 2: MEND*RS 1st Mending Research Symposium

MERZ MEND*RS is a Mending Research Symposium at the Merzbarn in the Lake District, the first ever large-scale gathering dedicated to mending in the UK. MERZ MEND*RS is the first in a series of events, publications and activist projects around mending. Its objective is to map the state of the art, devise a critical agenda for mending research and to disseminate and promote mending practices and enterprises on a local, national and ultimately global level.

This informal, hands-on event will bring together mending practitioners, theorists, entrepreneurs and activists in the inspirational and germane setting of Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn. MEND*RS is an activist project to promote practices and discourses of mending within and beyond the academic establishment. Its aim is to maximise the social impact of mending research and to reinvigorate mending cultures in everyday life. MEND*RS’ aim is to build a mending network to unite practitioners of a marginal, disparate, often domestic activity with designers, craftspeople, small businesses, social enterprises, environmental and social wellbeing groups, local residents and researchers operating across diverse disciplines.

The Inaugural MEND*RS Workshop will be a combination of discussion and activities.  In order to engage with both scholars and practitioners of mending, we are issuing a call for participation.  We invite applications from anyone keen to participate in discussion, hands-on activities and the promotion of the MEND*RS network.

Submissions may take the form of a traditional academic paper, an interactive presentation, a position paper, a short film, a poster, or other innovative forms of presentation such as art or audio installation. Oral/film presentations will be allotted a maximum of 20 minutes.  Submissions may come from any academic discipline or professional background – our only stipulation is that the content should directly engage with the aims of MEND*RS and the aspirations of the MEND*RS manifesto.  Some suggested topics/themes can be found on the MEND*RS website under ‘Call for Participation’.

More info at http://mendrs.net/