In the Global North craft looks like leisure, which is funny because its processes and products are both still called craftwork. Craftwork tends to be defined in opposition to more “modern” alternatives, whether technical (hand loom versus machine loom) or economic (sewing circle versus factory). Here’s the story about the craft/work nexus. When it’s known to be the product of many hours (or years) of skill, craft is priced high and the most sought-after pieces show the richest work. When a technology arrives to shortcut the process, as the sewing machine did in the 19th century, the craft look becomes cheaper to produce, and high-end goods preserve their exclusive status by refocusing away from decoration and defaulting to the next most expensive element. Perhaps the rarity of its source fabric, the elaborate cut of a jacket that could only be hand-tailored, the price of upkeep, or even the distressing process – individual so as to be unique to each piece, a kind of artisanal “anti-craft”.

Crafting exists outside state politics, but it is political because its affiliations are up for grabs. It could be defined as artisanal or Luddite in the face of the machine. Its patrimonial focus might be nationalistic or subversive. Informal communities of crafters can reinforce conservative social values or create space for radical mobilisation. Craft is political because it takes long hours by hand workers, hours that are sometimes paid and sometimes given freely. Think about the different kinds of work in my two stories. The first is about capitalism – flexible workers sell their labour to an entrepreneur who keeps a good chunk of the profit; the second is a vital cultural expression created in time and space spared or stolen from formalised work. That space is now almost always virtual.

There are two current stories about politically focused digital craft: one is the online sewing / quilting / knitting group; the other, the group or solo crafter creating objects that are digitally hybrid or digitally native. Sometimes they overlap. The first tells a tale about radical sociability, knitting together participants’ lives as they crochet, weaving solidarity through what has, in other eras, been called “consciousness-raising” or “gossip”. The second is digital artisan practice, often professional, promising a utopia of virtual objects that détournent the urges of consumer capitalism and its polluting production processes. Both visions offer glitchy promises of change. 

Right, the Covid-19 Global Quilt was started by artists Kate Just and Tal Fitzpatrick to collect and share varying experiences of the pandemic. In memorialising those who have died it continues a grief quilting tradition that dates back to the Victorians. The AIDs Memorial Quilt, on which every panel represents someone lost to the disease, has never stopped being added to since it was begun in 1985.

“Craftivism”, a term coined by Betty Greer in 2003, exists at a nexus of feminist reclamation and activism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism and labour justice, and its outcomes range from the works produced to the creation of activist communities. Based as it is in the making of material objects, how does craftivism work out online? Internet craftivism was big in lockdown. In response to slow and inadequate state PPE provision, people (mostly women) got together remotely to sew decorative cloth masks. Both the crafters and their productions had a range of political affiliations. Some lockdown masks had slogans, from Black Lives Matter to anti-vax. Online groups range from regular socials like Virtual Queer Crafting run by the University of Michigan Center for Gender and Sexuality that uses craft to explore and reclaim gendered practices, to “tradwives” such as the anti-abortion, gender-critical Instagram “community” @tradwivesclub that muses, “If only they offered homemaking as a degree program instead of gender studies.”

Like the craftivist pink pussy #MeToo hats, lockdown craftivism has been heavily scrutinised. Were the homemade masks any use, either practically (the effectiveness of cloth masks was found to be limited) or politically (could the time and energy spent on demonstrating through craft be more efficiently spent otherwise)? Craftivism was slammed for being class-exclusive (it takes time to do craft and money to buy materials), and mostly white. There’s a good deal of misogyny in some of these critiques: it also takes time and money to attend a demonstration, money for transport, money for babysitters, while kids might be welcome at local or virtual crafting sessions, and may even join in. Overemphasising the whiteness of crafting can lead to overlooking the achievements of groups and artists of colour, like Bisa Butler, or the Social Justice Sewing Academy. This is not to say that (every) ethnicity hasn’t been minted as a currency of authenticity by state and commerce.

“A craft movement may have the trappings of an uprising, but it will leave political and economic systems intact,” writes Kathleen Morris in her 2016 essay, “You Are Not a Lemming”. Craftivism’s activist vibe, and in particular the figure of the craftsperson as an ideal independent and self-fulfilled artisan, has been co-opted by cultural and governmental organisations, as well as high fashion and big business. Morris cites Craft Ontario’s ongoing Citizens of Craft campaign, which uses old-school revolutionary imagery to propose a sales and networking platform for crafters. More ambitious programmes like the UN’s Ethical Fashion Initiative, founded in 2009 in conjunction with the World Trade Organization, have been critiqued as the epitome of a “neoliberal spirit of global capitalism”. These ventures muddy the political potency of real craftivists by embedding their image as a fake “alternative” in a world in which “there is no alternative”, dressing Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man in a chunky hand-knit sweater.

If the problem with craft as effective activism is a problem of economic and creative agency, can the digital, with its ability to bypass local structures of governance, provide any solutions? Showcasing and selling online allows crafters more control over how their work appears, and to connect directly with buyers or other makers, but the most popular craft platforms are big businesses themselves. Etsy, the platform for crafters, has been accused both of using its folksy facade to “craftwash” its traditionally capitalist structure, and of inadequately policing the factory-made “crafts” whose economies of scale mean their sellers are most likely to turn a profit on the site. Meanwhile, the politics of objects posted on Instagram can be softened by association with the site’s vaguely feminine association. Some craftivist projects have effectively used online platforms not only to publicise or sell but to create their work. The Instagram-based Covid-19 Global Quilt uses the structure of the site, with its square “patch” images, to make a work that “means” more than each of its parts. It has a “concept”. The online quilt is neither a craftwork in the traditional sense of being an entirely material handcrafted object, nor is it craft “in the age of mechanical reproduction”. It doesn’t imitate a more “authentic” offline product; the machine is integrated into a process that is still “handmade” by virtue of its creation by a group of people outside capitalised work structures, who are also handmaking material objects as part of the process. Is this still craft? Or activism? Or is it art? Some of the patches resemble high art’s reclamation of craft (such as Louise Bourgeois’ embroidered handkerchiefs). This is an uneasy area. What differentiates “art” from “craft” seems to be partly a concept governed by an individual artist, and partly the separation of that concept from its material execution.

Asantewa (2020) by Bisa Butler, one of the quilted portraits she created based on found photographs taken between 1870 to 1910 featuring black people whose names were not recorded. This portrait is made from cotton, silk, wool, and velvet, quilted and appliqué.

Some digitally created art that utilises craft splits the autonomy of its creators, outsourcing concept to the “professionals” and making to the crafters. The artist Faig Ahmed designs clever glitched and pixelated material optical illusions based on traditional rugs of his native Azerbaijan. 

The results look like craft and are handwoven by craftspeople following Ahmed’s designs, but the weavers themselves do not create the patterns. Does this matter? Many big-name artists head studios relying on input from uncredited assistants. Traditionally, craft is anonymous and often communal, but there is usually no sharp division of labour or dramatic pay gap between designer and maker. Traditional crafters are not only free, but expected to, put their own twist on traditional patterns. While it’s usual to speak of craft as something that’s “not quite art”, Ahmed’s works switch this around: they may be art, but they don’t quite qualify as craft. Sometimes I think art could learn a few lessons from craft, and these are not lessons of technique but of social practice.