QRacks in the Land
Just before Christmas I was approached and asked to participate in The Streets of Melbourne Festival. It’s the first time this Festival has been run and it’s been designed to showcase and celebrate street culture. Be it dance, performance, music or art. The Festival was run over three days in Federation Square in Melbourne.
I decided to use the opportunity to experiment with some ideas I’d been having about large scale cross stitch works.
Given that Federation Square is a privately run space, I was a bit limited in what I could do in terms of overt political statements. So I decided to go covert.
I’ve been working on stitching QR Codes for some time now. I’ve been doing them on regular Aida fabric (14 count mostly) and they’ve been working really well. So I decided to do it large scale. This project was stitched with black and white finger knitted wool and stitched on animal fencing (which is tough to work with but has a lovely strong and square grid).
QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes are an open source mobile phone read bar code type technology which originated from Japan (download the free reader here). While the Japanese tend to use QR codes for communicating public service information ie public transport timetables. The introduction of QR Codes to Australia has largely been based in advertising (ugh).
So I’ve been working QR Codes in cross stitch as a way of exploring non-corporate alternatives to this potentially very interesting and useful communication medium.
The piece designed for The Streets of Melbourne is designed to make a very clear statement on the irony of a privately owned and operated city square. A space that, within Western culture, has traditionally been the primary space for free speech. And of course this space in particular is part of the traditional gathering grounds for the people of the Kulin Nations.
It is to the Kulin Nations that this piece, QRacks in the Land, is dedicated.
A very special thanks to Emma for support in making this happen!
Craftivism in Italy
Cat Mazza from MicroRevolt has these lovely pics up from a craftivism workshop she facilitated? was in? not sure. But the pics are cool. Looks like they had an ace time expanding the imaginations of the people of Milan. And I ALWAYS give props to craftivism that involves finger knitting!
More here.
It’s awesome how much the craftivism movement is spreading. Thanks especially to the wonderful writing of Betsy Greer in her new book. We’ll be interviewing Betsy for the Craft Cartel podcast real soon. I’m looking forward to talking to her about her perspectives on the mainstreaming of the term.
In English it’s called a quadrillion. In Swedish there’s not even a word for it.
First post of the new year for me. I would have liked to finish this earlier, but it took me most of December to get the stitching done.
During 2008 the situation in Zimbabwe has gone from bad to… well, catastrophic. I’ve been following the reports from Zim before, during & after the election in March last year & it feels like the whole country is turning into a black hole, like it’s slowly imploding. Zimbabwe was once a prosperous country but years of bad government & raging inflation has left it devastated & unable to care for it’s own people. The people who actually tried to do something about the situation by electing a new president but got robbed of their democratic rights by Robert Mugabe & the Zanu-PF party. Today there is no sufficient health care, hunger & cholera is killing the people, those who dare to speak up are getting arrested & are “disappearing”, Mugabe still holds his office & the talks between him & MDC about sharing government have collapsed. The money situation is bizarre, the inflation has reached heights that are pretty hard to grasp. In august 2008 it passed 11 200 000 %. As Anna Tibblin, a Swedish aid worker living in Harare, puts it: In English it’s called a quadrillion. In Swedish there’s not even a word for it.
So, with that in mind I’ve spent December working on this advent calendar. I used a pattern made from an old ANC poster (which unfortunately didn’t turn out quite as well as I’d hoped) & a quote from the anthem of neo-colonialism as I know it: the slightly bizarre Christmas song Do they know it’s Christmas? by the 80′s Band Aid project.
If you’re wondering why the dates of the calendar only goes up to 24, it’s because in Sweden we traditionally celebrate at Christmas eve, not Christmas day, so here its’ the 24th that is D-day…
Hoopla (Finally) In The House!
A wee bit beyond deadline but Hoopla #3: Radical Inspiration is now available for sale. It’s been a bit of a mission and my plan to get it out in October was a bit overshot. But finishing a project before the end of the year is always satisfying!
Contents include:
creative action inspiration
projects
two patterns (cross stitch and menstrual pads)
plus more writing, pictures and fun!
The first three online orders will get FREE shipping!
Hoopla available in all usual stockists (soon). If you have a zine library or store, infoshop or craft store and are interested in stocking Hoopla, please get in touch.
Thanks to all the wonderful contributors this issue: Cate, Nina, Camille, Katie Lee, Rayna, Zoe, Johanna, Angela, Sarah, The Baronness, Estelle, and Cross Stitch Ninja.
Takin’ over the town
Craftster user craftcore has done these two gorgeous embroidered graffiti pieces. I especially like the crochet one. Especially in this time of a global economic crisis, I’d rather think we were using at as an excuse to create sustainable and self-sufficient communities rather than have a violent uprising. Sounds much more interesting (and less painful) to me.
Craftcore has also made some contributions to the upcoming issue of Hoopla which is perilously close to the photocopier!
Also found on craftster was plavalaguna’s version of the Firefox pattern which has been getting a fair few hits recently. So if you’ve been wondering what it looks like finished, here it is!
Check out her website and deviant art
Wear it with pride
This is quite a timely post given all the elections flying around at the moment. Typically when one thinks of a rosette, the image comes to mind of a slightly greying man in a grey suit, bad glasses and a slightly worn brown suitcase. He’s just knocked at your door and is trying to convince you that he deserves your vote (power, baubles, junkets) to do absolutely nothing different from the other guy.
Well politics has changed a little bit but the rosette is still a time-honoured tradition of all political parties. A rosette is designed to proudly declare your political view. It says ‘hey look I support this party and I’m a good person so it’s ok for you to support them too’.
A rosette is also used a prize. I’m sure you’ve all got memories of a country fair or a horse show or something similar. The shiny blue ribbon rosette which declares a winner is always worn on a puffed out chest, especially if it’s a first time winner.
Which is why I absolutely adore the new rosettes from Zoe (see podcast episode 5). She has taken a selection of colloquial terms for menstruation and turned them into rosettes so you can wear your moon on your chest!
Zoe has been pretty busy recently ’cause she also co-presented a Pecha Kucha night with Jared Davidson from the Garage Collective. They did 20 seconds each on 20 slides about art and activism. I was hugely inspired listening to this and I totally recommend anyone who is into conscious practice to take 10 and have a listen.
Craft Cartel Podcast Episode #7
This episode of the Craft Cartel podcast is a recording of a recent event we hosted in Melbourne called ‘The Revolution is Handmade’.
The first half of the ‘cast is a talk by Rayna and it’s titled ‘The Fabric of Resistance’. This podcast is kinda like Radio With Pictures ’cause you can follow along with the talk with the slideshow below
The musical interlude is a track called ‘Memories’ by Shorti RV (whom I can’t find anything about online, I’m guessing she’s Sydney-based, if anyone knows anything about her can you leave a comment? xox)
The second part of the show is the talk by Dr Joyce Stalker from the University of Waikato, Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. Dr Stalker talks about fabric crafts and political change. Don’t have the slideshow online sorry, but hopefully will in the future so we’ll update this when happens.
And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here.
The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!
We really don’t like advertising very much round these parts, so if you like what you hear, please make a donation to help support future episodes. It’s what an add-free world sounds like.
p.s. we’re having some serious issues with the plugin that manages our podcast so if you have any problems downloading this please let me know.
Ace.
sometimes they come back
I haven’t been as active here as I should be during the last couple of months. But now I have two new projects to share with you!
This first one is a simple cross stitch that I made some week ago, just to get myself going after a long period of zero inspiration. It’s a quote from some graffiti in the bathroom of a pretty run down Indian restaurant where me and my friends used to go to drink cheap beer a couple of years ago. I think it’s funny and serious at the same time – as a Swedish writer once said; to be a woman and not be a feminist is like shitting yourself in the face. All women should be feminists by birth, then it’s up to you to decide how hardcore you wanna be about it…
This second one is inspired by a song from Swedish punks Sju Svåra År, and they got the quote from Joan Jett – I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation! I love both songs and I think that this cross stitch turned out really well. I wrote a little statement about it on my own blog:
But more important is the fact that a woman that’s not afraid of expressing herself in any way, especially sexually, is still seen as a “bad woman” in societies eyes – she’s a whore, a slut, a sinner & if something bad happens to her, well maybe she deserved it. It must be very confusing growing up in todays (western) world, where the girls are bombarded with images of the “perfect” female body, with the demand on being sexy, being available, to always dress & act according to the expectations of the male eye, but at the same time balance on that thin line that separates them from “loose women”. Not to recognize their own sexuality & say fuck it, i like sleeping around, i like being myself in any way, because if they do they might be marked for life. It is amazing that the notion that a woman who sleeps around is a whore & a man that does the same is a stud is still such a unchallenged part of society. So, to not give a damn about one’s reputation, whether it be sexually or in any other way, is one of the things that might be most important in the feminist struggle today.
More Free Tibet XStitch love
I haven’t had time to visit Craftster in a while but this morning Johanna sent me an email going ‘seen this?’
Holy freaking wow!
It’s by craftster user cface23. She had this to say:
I made 2 separate cross stitching patterns, one for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag, and I made up the dove and text by taking inspiration from the internet (google image search anyone?). Then, I combined all of the patterns using my creativity and math skills. Unfortunately, my ambition got the best of me, and I was unable to finish my cross stitch before the contest deadline- finishing 2.5 weeks too late, just in time for the 2008 Olympics. But not I have this wonderful cross stitch to show off and share with you.
This is an amazing piece and has come out really well. I especially like the use of backstitch around the glasses on the Dalai Lama and the dove, makes it look quite striking. A wee bit late for the comp, but I reckon a winner anyway.
Awesome!!!
Mosaic Liberation
Those of us in the craftivism world often use our skills to demonstrate solidarity in a public way with those that either don’t have a voice, or have an exceptionally marginalised one. Craft has such a mainstream appeal, it can open up issues to a wider audience than the normal activist audiences that some issues get ghettoed into.
One such issue is the racism of the prison industrial complex. If you live in the suburbs it can be easy to forget or not even know about the living hell that many, mostly indigenous men, are experiencing in prisons across the world.
The prison industry must love all the fear that politicians like to whip up about how unsafe our streets are. The more people demand longer sentences and the abolishment of parole, the higher the profits of the private prisons go. And the higher the cost to society. In the 2006/2007 financial year the cost of housing each inmate in New Zealand was $92,000. If the goal is to reduce crime, you can not tell me that is the most effective use of that much money.
In America aka the land of the Free, there is 1 adult in prison for every 100 adults. A country with 5% of the population has 25% of the world’s prison population. And of course the prisons are all privately run. So the more people in prison, the more corporate profits. And to make things even sweeter, most states don’t allow prisoners or even former prisoners to vote. And when you think about the fact that only about 1% of the prison population in the US are ‘white’ you can quickly see how this human rights tragedy is offensively racist beyond belief.
Which leads me to the point of this post which is to celebrate the new work of The Baroness.
A spectacular new mosaic mural has been unveiled on the outside wall of the Treatment Rooms in the west London suburb of Chiswick to raise awareness of African-American men confined in the notorious Angola prison, Louisiana.
The artwork, which took four months to create with help from a dedicated group of activist artists, decorates The Treatment Rooms, home of street artist Carrie Richards, aka The Baroness, and her partner Mr. Spunky. The mosaic is inlaid with 3D ceramic pieces and tiles that The Baroness has printed on herself. Having studied ceramics for the past 6 years, she is now about to transfer any image onto tile to add incredible detail and complexity to her work.
The mosaic depicts the so-called Angola 3 – Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King – men wrongfully convicted of murder at Angola prison in the 1970s and who subsequently spent decades in solitary confinement. Though Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned, and Wallace’s recommended for such, both men remain behind bars.
The extensive work is also dedicated to Kenny ‘Zulu’ Whitmore, who has similarly spent 33 years in solitary confinement at Angola, where the majority of inmates are black and will die inside its walls.
The Baroness is personal friends with all of these political prisoners and has recently become spokesperson for the London Chapter to support the Angola 3. This mural follows on from the Luis Ramirez Wall – which was a mosaic mural in memory of her first prisoner penpal Luis who was executed by the State of Texas. She continues make mosaics infused with social and political commentary, and she’s The Treatment Rooms as the UK’s only ceramic adorned house of resistance.
The only freed member of the Angola 3, Robert King –who spent 29 years in solitary confinement and was released in 2001 after his murder conviction was overturned – attended the unveiling on June 21. One of the purposes of his stay in London was to launch the Free Zulu campaign. He spoke to a crowd of 150 artists and activists from the UK, Europe and North America who have rallied around the causes of the Angola 3 and Zulu.
Robert King spoke to Zulu after the unveiling and Zulu said he now had hope in his heart. He has since seen pictures of the unveiling and is overjoyed by the support reaching him from the UK.
Isn’t that the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen? I for one, am inspired.
Because this piece is not only beautifully designed and executed, but it deals with something important. With all the effort the creative community puts into making stuff, you’d think we’d be able to spare a bit more time and creative energy for the things that really matter.
www.thetreatmentrooms.org
www.angola3london.org
www.freezulu.co.uk