IC:Innovative Craft Blog

In touch with making again

Posted Thursday 12 February 2009, 03:10pm

Amanda Game writes:

Always, it seems, one is on to the next thing. The next meal, the next sleep, the next day, the next artefact, the next journey, the next project. Intoxication with nextness makes it hard to find a space to reflect on the recent past and all things in it that have made it both strange and extraordinary. 

FilmCraft, curated by Matt Hulse for IC/Dovecot is one such strange and extraordinary thing from the recent past. It has left me, and others, with a feeling of permission to do the things that matter; permission not to be driven by models of funding, interpreting, seeing and enjoying the arts that reduce everything to a game of numbers and compromised imagination. It has replaced a sense of the competitive with a sense of the collaborative, and the magic of that is weaving its way seriously through a growing network of individuals to who knows what end, but certainly there is more than a lingering feeling of lightness and pleasure. Hard work, long hours, crap pay, unforgiving spaces and intermittent recognition are often the rewards for imaginative life – whether through tapestry, film, words or paint. These things are not a given but nor is material, or critical, success. And for those of us who are merely interpreters at the fringes of the extraordinary, it matters that we keep remembering that the success of any work of art depends on the lightened (not enlightened) experience of an individual in contact with it: and that experience can be shared in many important ways that are hard to measure by statistical accounts.

The next project has introduced me to a wonderful photography book called Things – A Spectrum of Photography 1850 -2001, generously given by Martin Barnes from the V&A. In the introduction, the critic Marina Warner writes the following words:

‘In Russian there is a word for “thing” with no precise equivalent in English: “vesch” means a “thing with a soul"….. a thing that resonates and possesses vitality and significance ….presence and feeling’.  Such was FilmCraft, for which Matt Hulse and his team deserve exceptional thanks. And please read the words below by Matt, in which he kindly shares his thoughts about the whole project.

Matt Hulse writes:

An unexpected outcome for me as curator/producer of the FilmCraft weekend has been a full realisation of the fact that, over the years, I have let myself drift in and out of touch with actual making. That may come as a surprise to folk who think of me as ‘a real doer’ but I do often forget that objects reveal their own unique stories, that the world is rich with fascinating things that speak to us directly without saying a word, and that as a film maker one may simply observe and record. There have been contributing factors to my faltering connection with making – teaching has at times tapped a little too much sap and the cerebral gymnastics demanded of screenwriting can too easily divorce one from the simple act of picking up a camera.

However, I’m delighted to say that working with IC and Dovecot has genuinely revived my connection with material, with the tactile, with actual stuff. Making is definitely back at the heart of my practice, and I’m particularly grateful to the weavers, Deirdre Nelson and Amanda Game for helping me find my way back to the things that really matter – not least through the process of ‘thinking through craft’.

That shift started me thinking about my work and my relationship with making, and how it has been possible for me, from time to time, to lose these crucial connections. I suspect it has quite deep-set roots in my learning experience.

When I was about 11 years old, I remember a woodwork lesson in which we were set the task of creating a spatula from a simple rectangular block. When it came to the end of term, each pupil’s handiwork was laid out on the teacher’s desk in ascending order, according to how ‘well done’ each one was – based on how closely it resembled the original template. Marked as a percentage, my effort came in at around 40%. In a comprehensive school where vocational skills were paramount, this wasn’t a great result. I can still see the sad, distinct little spatula with its rather too-thin neck looking back at me, begging to be freed from the fringes of the humiliating line-up.

I was frustrated by the mark I had been given, not least because I had really enjoyed the process, in particular the way the spokeshave had created delicate, curled shavings of wood. My fascination with and care for the material in hand had gone completely unnoticed on the official scale, despite me having put much soul into its crafting. I felt the essence of my achievement had been overlooked. (Ironically perhaps it was my enjoyment in the action of the spokeshave that had rendered the spatula a little too thin.)

This was an early knock to my confidence in ‘making’ but it also taught me an important lesson in how success is perceived and measured. I knew then, with a child’s clarity, that if I wanted my ‘way’ to be valued, I’d need to begin creating my own templates to work from/through, rather than accepting the existing, or given, structures. Become a maker, rather than merely a player, of games.

This instinct has taken some 30 years to evolve into something that I can articulate but all along it has been fundamental in my approach. Perhaps it’s my need to promote (and protect) different way of doing things that draws me to and from actual making. In a sense I have one ‘objective’ self looking out for that 11 year old, making sure he’s more widely understood and appreciated, whilst the other bit of me is just busily getting on with things, never mind what people think.

To draw this back to FilmCraft, the opening night’s performance and installation ‘A Stitch in Time’ represents a pretty clear demonstration of this modus operandi and I hope the event showed how successful it can be.

My primary role was to develop a template for the evening that enabled all involved to do what they do best, in their own way, in response to and collaboration with one another. I encouraged everyone to trust in a positive outcome of the joint effort, and expected folk to accept the reality that – as the sum of many parts rarely brought together – the specific nature of ‘the finished piece’ was essentially unknowable. Importantly, I was at pains to point out that it could also fail, but that it was a risk well worth taking. (It’s much easier of course to be confident about these things when one is working alongside brilliant, open-hearted and talented people – with a sense of humour.)

The open-ended template I evolved with everyone’s input was originally inspired by stitching and weaving - activities which bring and hold materials together. I truly hope that more ideas and actions will flow from this, and that as a result, the intellect, the heart and the hand will forge more fond connections.