Contextualising Practice: What is making?

This lecture was an exploration of what skill actually is by considering traditional forms of construction by both hand and machine alongside challenges to these. We considered whether making could be walking, breathing or even tidying a draw, but does this require skill? This lecture also challenged the nature of skill. 

These are some ideas/references which I found interesting during the lecture:

Anne Wilson

Engages a lot with the the history of textiles and explores the idea that when industry is lost is craft also lost? Are industry and craft as far apart as we think? Wilson suggests that there is much more craft within industry as we think.  

In an exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery, Wilson conducted a performance piece based on the warping actions needed to produce a woven piece of material. Seen as a comment on the lack of textile industry in north west England, this performance "walking the warp" involves a repetition of movements where, metaphorically, the action itself becomes both a textiles and a soft machine.

This idea of a craft process such as weaving being so skilful yet repetitive and machine like responds to this idea we focused on throughout the lecture of what skill actually is, and wether industrial processes which some people may not see as being as skilful as a craft could indeed be, in a way, very similar.

The everyday action of making:

The idea of everyday things which people do in their lifetimes being "making" really interested me and challenged my preconceptions of what making actually is. Does it actually have to be skilful? To me "making" something is a way of showing creativity and a skill which you have as a person, but does this have to be necessary to "make" something?

For example:

The book (un) fashion by Tibor Kalman and Maira Kalman explores the way that ordinary people wear unusual things, and how people in different cultures wear different things for different occasions. To us these things look very creative and unusual in comparison to our everyday clothing or occasion wear. Could these unusual and interesting fashions be a form of making and creativity? Is it an everyday action which is making something?
Where is the skill and creativeness in the making or is that even necessary to "make" something?



"Making" can be interpreted in so many different ways by different people, and what exactly making is and what it requires depends on the way in which you view it.