I’ve mentioned before in a post the upcoming NEOCRAFT conference to be held this November in Halifax, so if you haven’t checked it out yet have a look at their website for a list of all of the amazing speakers that are going to be presenting. If you can make it there will be exhibitions throughout the city as well.
But just today I got an email that a related publication is already out to press. Here’s the blurb from the email:
‘The relationship between the crafts and modernity has long been characterized as difficult and the crafts are often perceived as occupying a marginalized role in the discourses of modernism. NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts seeks to challenge the assumptions surrounding this relationship by introducing a wide range of scholarly essays that explore the historical, contemporary and future positioning of the crafts within the broader scope of visual culture. The crafts occupy an important role in material, globalized modernity, and as such they must be understood through a multiplicity of gazes. With that in mind NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts unites an international, interdisciplinary range of writers who are actively contextualizing modernity and the crafts. Drawing upon writings in the fields of craft history, art history, philosophy, museum studies, anthropology, fashion theory, history, women’s studies, and design, this book explores in detail the shifting and influential cultural position of the crafts. NeoCraft is divided into five central themes: Cultural Redundancy or The Genre Under Threat; Global Craft; Crafts and Political Economy; Invention of Tradition: Craft and Utopian Ideals; and Craft, the Senses and New Technologies. Within each of these themes leading scholars, craftspeople and curators including Bruce Metcalf, Larry Shiner, David Howard, Grace Cochrane, John Potvin, Beverly Lemire, Joseph McBrinn, B. Lynne Milgram, Janice Helland, Elizabeth Cumming, Alla Myzelev, David Howes, Tanya Harrod, Love Jönsson, and Mike Press, explore the reality of craft practice that engages with the modernizing world.’
Product details:
273 pages, 65 bw illustrations, 7 x 9″
ISBN: 978-0-919616-47-9 (paper)
Price: $39.95
To purchase, visit http://www.nscad.ns.ca/press/press_neocraft.php
