Post on 10-Jan-2023
Skill City. Reflactive craftmanship as eco-social design
(Lecture Premsela Stichting, Me Craft/You Industry, Zuiderzeemuseum 2011)
Handwerk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwIUgd7eb0&feature=player_embedded
Economical perspective After this film no one doubts the importance of craftwork or Handwerk as it is called in Germany. The contributions of craftsmen and women to the Dutch economy is also considerable: according to Trades Council for the Crafts (HBA), some 900,000 jobs are involved. Within this broad economic perspective craftsmanship no longer concerns the picturesque traditional profession of the wicker workers livening up town fairs. We are talking about highly sophisticated trades characterized by qualitative competition, productive network cooperation, and professional ambition. But the filmmaker has probably applied too broad a definition of craftsmanship. Once we refocus on ‘skilled manual labour’ we are less sure of his argument. Even worse, we will counter a major problem. In information society manual labour has gained a bad reputation. In the last decade of the 20th century, the decade of quick and easy money, for young urban professionals the image of the craftsman came down to greasy hands, hard work, lack of status, low wages, and therefore, ultimately, work for losers. Even among artists, in the last decade of the 20th century craftsmanship was still associated with docile and dull repetition of technical skills that denied them their most precious quality: artistic creativity. But the times, they are a’changing. Over the last three years the Trades Council for the Crafts (HBA) is promoting craftsmanship in nationwide campaigns, using celebrities, i.e. well known artists, entrepreneurs, athletes and popstars, as rolemodeling ambassadors. In Dutch vocational education (MBO) directory boards are considering to reinstall the title of master craftsman in educational programmes. And now, of all people, even artists have rediscovered the value of the crafts, in spite of the fact that avant-‐garde art owes its very existence to the split – at the end of the 17th century – between the artisan and the artist. The individual artist steps out of the shadows of his powerful and fortunate patrons, taking the floor in painterly self-‐reflection, as in an exemplary way is executed in Velasquez painting Las Meninas. Velasquez’ autonomous gesture is the upbeat to the modern imperative of individual autonomy as ‘being your own lawgiver’. Artistic implications Have we surpassed this modernist opposition? How to explain design and fashion’s promotion of the crafts? Fashion speaks for itself: from haute couture to fancy handicraft, skilled needlework has always been basic. But why design and crafts, especially in the age of digitalisation? What does handicraft mean in digital times?
Unfold L’artisan electronique Industrial design is part of the explanation. But on a deeper level it is probably the ambiguous autonomy status that designers had in the past century: they were not really free but bound by commissions for specific business goals, being dependent upon and instrumental to their paying client’s unskilled taste. Since the 90ies however, designers have become crucial players in economy, visual culture and communication. Thanks to digitalisation, the network structure of society has made even artists aware of them becoming nodes in layers of networks. Every one has become an in between, at best: a medium being a message in itself. Even the Dutch Christian-‐Democratic party aims at the radical middle. They do not yet realize that a technological radical mediocrity is our human condition. Indeed, media have become our roots – radix – to the world. Media rule our lives: medio-‐crity. As such our human condition is radically mediocre. We are no longer able to deal with the world. We are stuck in between without admitting it. My talk is about the relation between craftsmanship and this radical mediocrity. There is a techno-‐political need to break the spell of our mediatized hyper individualism and to restore – as a recent debate formulates it – the common, leaving behind indifference. We have to take serious the idea that our Dasein is design and start designing the inbetween. That is our real inter-‐est, as I claimed in my Premsela annual lecture of 2008: Dasein as design. Craftsmanship is related to this quest. This was acknowledged by Richard Sennett who delivered last years Premsela annual lecture, under the title Out of touch. Though Sennett mainly talked about cello playing, the literal manipulation of strings, his focus was the relation between the aesthetic and the political. He connects lack of artistic craftsmanship – not being in touch with the cello – to socio-‐politically not being involved, engaged, connected, related, linked or logged in. In 2008, four years after the start of my Skillcity
Foto’s: Erik en Petra Hesmerg
Handy crafts or mani-pulation in digital times?
program in Rotterdam – I’ll END MY TALK WITH A DESCRIPTION -‐ Sennett published The Craftsman. Being a student of Hannah Arendt he redefines our present human condition, amending Arendt’s 1958 published book The Human Condition, translated in Dutch as Vita Activa. Arendt propagates a repoliticization of public space. She made a distinction between labour (homo laborans), work (homo faber) and action, accentuating the reflective quality of the latter: action in combination with speech triggers the public debate. In her analysis the homo faber, i.e. tool using man, this craftsman is devoid of creativity. Craftsmanship is an economic or at best a cultural, but never a political asset. Sennett however, fully in tune with his previous publications on the demise of the public sphere, the corrosion of character, and respect, Sennett recalibrates the importance of craftsmanship in the 21st century. To Sennett the values that underlie craftsmanship transcend economic value. His cello example states that it also has an aesthetic value, and next to that an ethical and a political value. Sennett’s focus of craftsmanship is selfless dedication to quality. Note the selfless. I want to step further and claim that craftsmanship embodies a wide range of mental and social competences that are realised as skills: from soft skills as attention, ability to concentrate, power of discernment, perseverance via generic competences to specific job related skills. I also agree with Sennett’s suggestion, criticizing Arendt, that craftsmen actually do operate reflectively and as such act. But to understand this we have to rethink the outcome of reflectivity: not as concepts or words, but as skills. Crafts(wo)men get to grips with, and a good grasp of, their subject matter by means of their hands, eyes, ears, noses, and mouths, i.e. by their mediated senses . They reflect by means of their senses in their respective media as artists have always done. In being in touch, i.e. being interested, their skills become expressions of media consciousness, transforming our human condition as radical mediocrity. Their attention to materials, their proficiency, and their expertise are testimony to precisely that reflective interest which most postmodern individuals lack in their dealings with media, in using their means of transportation and communication. The realisation that we, in our frictionless world, have outsourced reflectivity to our media -‐ ranging from pacemakers, hearing aids, and contact lenses to TVs, computers, mobile phones, cars, and Sat Nav -‐ never really hits us until the moment when they stop working. Resistance is a problem to us. How to cope with resistance? As long as the medium – from mobile phone to automobiles, from Ipad to Tomtom – media thinks for us, this medium – say: an escalator – is the ultimate foundation of the world. We experience the world when it breaks down. But what will happen when the repairman also functions within the same human condition? FILMPJE: escalator http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47rQkTPWW2I&feature=endscreen&NR=1
Politico-‐philosophical presuppositions: from autonomy to autarky Sennett’s redefinition of the human condition triggers fundamental politico-‐philosophical questions, questions that he does not address. His ‘string management’ is still perceived in perspective with Velasquez’ autonomous gesture. Look at the subtitle of The Craftsman: Man as his own maker. It is clear that Sennett favours individual autonomy gaining its
freedom in independent expression. But in digital times this autonomy has lost its substantial foundation. Within network society being independent is no longer an issue. Moreover, private life is fully public, due to our media. Every one is embedded, mediatized. Radically. The urgent question is rather: dependent upon what en how? Freedom’s issue now is: on what scale can I be responsible for what I do? Not accountable, responsible. Our present political core business is no longer enhancing hyper individualistic pseudo-‐autonomy. In hyper consumer capitalism we are solely controlling its disastrous effects. The real issues nowadays are peak oil versus renewable resources. Our human condition has to deal with self-‐sufficiency of people and planet within a cyclical perspective of shared profit. 21st century man’s issue is no longer ego, but energy, not cogito but community, not individualism but being interested, not interiority but in betweenness, not selfishness but sustainability. Individual self-‐determination (autonomy) is now embedded in collective self-‐sufficiency, in autarky.
(AUTARKY: studio formafantasma) Autarky is ecological in that it strives to be self-‐sufficient. It thinks in cyclical footprints and redefines food in terms of footprints: foodprint. Our economic system can no longer externalize its self-‐undermining effects – waste, pollution, lack of resources, traffic jams, climate change, senseless violence. These must be fed back into the system, internalized. We might call it sustainism, but let’s get rid of the –isms. These are our problems and we are part of the solution. An autarkic system does not import energy and does not externalize its waste. It has an absolute claim: there is no outside. We are all there is. This can become fascistic, but in an open source scenario this political perversion can be avoided. Autarky relies on the integrity of its networks: investing in the in between is its main interest. Policy makers call this Social Return on Investment. The backbone of this ecological autarky is an eco-‐relational philosophy with three dimensions: physical, social and mental. Body, bonds and brains. It is a threefold ecology. ECO3. I will come back to this later.
AUTARKY Footprint as foodprint
The recent revaluation of craftsmanship within arts and design bares witness to this autarkic awareness, because artists are already self supporting systems in themselves. This implementation in art is very important: creativity is always optimistic and affirmative. Walking around this exposition makes me more than happy. But aesthetics alone does not suffice. This awareness has yet to be transposed to ethics and politics. Since the aesthetic dimension is the topic of the day, I will restrict myself to the two other dimensions: craftsmanship in ethics and politics. Ethics Ethics is about how we normatively relate to the world and to each other. What do we value? In my 2008 Premsela lecture, I proposed the basic idea of an ethics based on craftsmanship: we all are designers in information society. In finding the scale where designers can again be responsible for informing the public and forming the product, eco-‐relational design is more than an option, because eco-‐relational design uses craftsmanship to fuse ethics and aesthetics, much like Michel Foucault suggested in his last books and lectures. Foucault labels this lifestyle an aesthetic of existence. However, this redefinition of our present human condition (Dasein) also demands a redefinition of reflection beyond the mind-‐body, subject-‐object opposition. Here do crafts and skills enter the stage. These are the link pin. In crafts it is no longer the mind that reflects, but the body in matter. Matter minds. But how does the body with its senses become reflective? In skills. In skills, the interiority of the maker – his intentions and expectations – reflects in a medium that acts upon matter. This sounds odd, but let me rephrase this in cybernetic terms, as once Gregory Bateson did in his book Steps to an ecology of Mind. Feedback is the crudest form of reflection: something bents (flexion) back (re) upon itself. Matter folds back (plier, ply) upon itself, creating an in between layer by multiplying, by implicating and explicating. Feedback creates space to think and act. That is why Bateson sees nature as mind, though in a different way than the Godfather of deep ecology Arne Naess who was more inspired by Spinoza and eastern philosophies. What is reflection in media society? Our uncritical way of dealing with media – the escalator effect – is the result of virtualisation. Our use of computer technology has involuntarily and inconspicuously rendered reflectivity immaterial. We lost every resistance in an information society that wants to be frictionless. A world that does not matter does not appreciate resistance. Till the system is down. We no longer know how the machine works, we don’t realize where the food comes from, and so on. Nevertheless, due to the ever-‐increasing intensity of our dealings with screen displays and gadgets, the reflective capability of the average image consumer and screenager has exponentially grown. But as a result of this increased immaterial reflectivity, postmodern individuals have become less sensible to matter. That is where craftsmanship steps in.
-‐ material reflectivity: cont®act What kind of reflectivity does craftsmanship add to this feedback and virtuality? It takes reflection back to the body and introduces resistance as a productive force. As such it counterweights immaterial, medial reflection. Skill in this craft perspective is the in between of mind and matter. Skills connects and binds in transferring its techniques. Material training provides material reflectivity. It brings people in touch with matter and media. Skills materialize reflectivity. It creates a body of knowledge that is passed on to next generations in a master-‐bachelor apprenticeship. But is this material reflectivity rational? First we have to realize that rationality in working circumstances is more than using statistic models to predict what will happen. We also talk about rationalized production, referring to Fordism and Taylorism, the rationalized production line in the workspace. In this sense skill is through and through rational: it consists of repetitive patterns. But on the scale of the craftsman this materialized rationality becomes reflective, because it is in touch, Sennett would say, with the senses, with the body. Craftsmanship engenders reflectivity on a scale where body and senses are still capable of overseeing the activities being carried out. Limits are still imposed by physical effort of the craftsman, not by external authority. In the good old Marxist terminology: There is no alienating division of work. Let me illustrate the core business of material reflectivity from a sports perspective. Take the example of soccer ball jugglers. Rather than using their head to 'think' about the ball, skilled soccer ball jugglers use it to keep in touch with the ball. Literally, their head is the material embodiment of their reflectivity. In similar fashion, the arm of the javelin thrower ‘thinks’ when she hurls it, correcting the throw, till the very last moment, whereas the judoka uses his hips to assess the momentum to step in to unbalance and throw his opponent. Calculation is no longer explicit. After years of training the body attached to the medium thinks for itself. Action and reflection coincide: material reflection as reflaction. Connected to their 'medium' and tools, athletes are reflactive in becoming one with their medium. The medium is the message, indeed, in full bodily awareness. This 'immediacy' eventually appears as a simple act or gesture, but it is the mark of perfection. What remains hidden, however, are the uncountable hours of practice required to make it all seem so easy. Material reflectivity is the result of concentration, perseverance, and self-‐disciplined repetition. As such embodied knowledge and material reflectivity has an existential and micropolitical meaning in information society. It is a tactile world that favours contact over contracts, interactions over transactions. Mentality: dealing with resistance The existential aspect within this ethics, the core of an aesthetic of existence is resistance and ambiguity. These are decisive aspects of craftsmanship, counterweights to our frictionless consumption of information. Skills offer social and cultural ways of coping with resistance: in craftsmanship, one runs into physical resistance, inherent to material, and mental resistance, resulting from lack of being in touch; in sports, the obstinacy of one's
body or medium. In music, tensions in the throat or in the hand. Craftsmen learn in a practical ways to deal with dilemmas. They discover what the limits are and develop a sense of proportionality. A craftsman thinks, while using his hands and eyes, as a painter thinks with his brush and paint, a dancer reflects bending his body, and a chef analyses a piece of meat cutting it. One uncontrolled movement ruins everything. Craftsmen grasp the world by tactful manipulation. In minding their matter, they establish contact tactfully. Years of practice have enabled them to sense exactly what a given situation asks for, and what it demands and forbids. Football players are just as flawless in this respect as are Japanese swordsmen, dancers, carpenters, designers, sculptors and goldsmiths. Physically, the point is to wield instruments and weapons with such precision that hardly any application of force is required. It is all about finding the proper balance between applying and releasing force; or in other words, a subtle handling of resistance, allowing ambiguities. Craftsmanship sharpens the sense of uniqueness, and appreciates the productive force of differences and resistance. At that point, skill becomes will. Eventually will (interiority) is articulated in our skill (inbetween). This statement ‘skill is will’ goes both ways. Some will argument that the craftsman imposes his will onto matter (the Frankensteinian option), others emphasize the role of resisting matter that demand the craftsman to adapt (the Da Vinci option). The medium as an end can never justify the means. When the medium becomes the message, when the end overrules the means, in other words: when an end justifies itself beyond the application of the means, in spite of all disastrous consequences, ambiguity and resistance are annihilated. It starts feeding upon itself and discourse becomes circular: why growth? For growth's sake! Why progress? For progress' sake! The check on this blindness is in the social and political embedding of craftsmanship. That brings us to the second part, that I will present less strict and more painterly. Politics: Skillcity ECO3 This enables me a shift to politics. Craftsmanship is a metier, an ethics and a lifestyle. But is it, as Studio Makkink & Bey ask us, a landscape, a work landscape? I don’t know yet. We’ll talk about that today extensively. For me, as an urban landscape it is a real option: Skillcity, the project I have been working on the past 5 years in Rotterdam South. Let me give you an impression of what we have been doing. www.vakmanstad.nl Skillcity is an integral program implemented in socio-‐economically sensitive neighborhoods of Rotterdam South, aiming to introduce a up to date craftsmanship in between the old labourer city that Rotterdam once was and the new cultural city with its festivals and logos into which Rotterdam was transformed during the 80ies of the past century. I introduced the concept and analysis in 2004 and it was adopted as one of the blueprints – i.e. open source
social designs -‐ of the 10 years socio-‐economic and literal physical renovation – building high qualitaty housing -‐ of Rotterdam South in 2006 by the Pact op Zuid, now reshaped as Kwaliteitsprong Zuid. Within the context of Pact op Zuid Skillcity got the funding for three years to operationalize its strategy. Strategically Skillcity is a open source social design that redefines society as a layered and scaled texture of networks in which individuals are nodes. Empowering people means knitting networks around them that function both as a safety net and a trampoline. The conceptual backbone is a relational philosophy.
Schooling is crucial in this concept, as is creating opportunities to enter the markets with adequate expertise. The interventions are focused on four ‘fields of interaction’: schools in neighbourhoods, the neighbourhood, the market and local politics and policies. To gove a simple example: 1) physical integrity: primary school kids are stimulated to participate in a broad variety of activities, learning soft skills focused on eco-‐social education, assisted by their parents in the school, 2) active citizenship: all stakeholders in the neighbourhood are empowered to participate in activities centred on the socalled ‘craftshouse’ a new form of community house where kids between 10-‐14 years can train their generic competences in technics, health care, ICT and cooking, 3) sustainable craftsmanship: cooperating with local enterprises and vocational educational institutes (ROC) 14-‐18 years are enabled to improve their specific craft skills in a craftswharf as a production unit, manufacturing products, and 4) ECO3: Urban infrastructure: Rotterdam Skillcity researches, formulates and develops its overall strategy with its scientific bureau that designs integral and sustainable area development analysis and reports for the local authorities and building corporations that include the elements of 1, 2 and 3 in order to enhance and implement this eco-‐social discourse through a number of publications. Under this heading, Skillcity has designed an integral and sustainable area development plan for the neighbourhood Feijenoord and for the Inner-‐city Harbour Area (Stadshavens), while being involved as advisor in many other development projects.
The past 3 years the first field of interaction has been realized at primary school Bloemhof in the neighbourhood Bloemhof, scientifically monitored by Erasmus University and Verwey-‐Jonker Institute. Physical Integrity consists of four ‘vectors of learning’, or ‘trajectories’. Interweaving these trajectories builds networks that guarantee the well-‐being of the pupils and their parents who assist in this project. The trajectories consist of: judo, cooking/eating, gardening/eco lessons and philosophy. The crucial focus is eco-‐social education and cyclical awareness. Judo enhances material consciousness of one’s physical limits, regulates aggression and counters the negative weight problems of obese children. Working in the four city-‐gardens around the school, realized in cooperating with the municipality, local council (deelgemeente) and the housing corporation Vestia, kids understand how healthy food is cultivated and, on a larger scale, provides insight in the ecological interdependence of all life forms. Cooking with and eating products from the gardens – 300 kids 4 days a week -‐ helps to develop a taste for healthy food, an attitude of care and a balanced diet. About 25 mothers assist in the kitchen and the restaurant. Philosophy fosters interest, enhances
mental focus, develops soft skills like listening, formulating and arguing and enables the children to reflect on their eco-‐social embedding. In combination with the other trajectories philosophy is transformed into ecosophy, enhancing ecoliteracy on three levels: physical, social and mental. The program has been inspired by Félix Guattari’s threefold ecology.
All these activities are embedded in networks of traineeships with pupils and students from different types of schools: VMBO, MBO, HBO, university. After three years of Physical Integrity at the primary school Bloemhof, the monitoring results has given us very positive results to work with, most notably where the social development of the children is concerned. Compared to similar schools without a like program, the children at the Bloemhof school are developing higher social skills, and appeared to be more balanced in a social-‐emotional way. Simultaneously, their social handicaps are decreasing. Compared to a Montessori school with a primarily middle-‐class population from Dutch descent, the scores of the children at the Bloemhof school are slowly creeping up to those of the socially and economically more advantaged school. Now that a beginning is made increasing the children’s eco-‐social awareness during the first three years of Physical Integrity, since November 2011 we have started after school homework classes in collaboration with the Rotterdam Academy for Higher Vocational Education. Also, as of January 2012 we have planned to cooperated with the Amsterdam based IMC Weekendschool and are working on the vacation school in the neighbourhood.
During 2011 the implementation of Physical Integrity at three other primary schools in the South of Rotterdam has started. Beginning of 2012 we have started with the implementation of the craftshouse and craftswharf, having had a financial guarantee for the next 3 to 5 years from a private fund. This enables us to create a number of scenarios that will allow for easier implementation of the program in different situations and work on the development of methods via scientific monitoring. Coming April we will publish two books – after the first Woorden als daden (2009) -‐ that provide a first draft of such scenarios, as well as commentaries from several notable Dutch pedagogues, philosophers, sociologists and healthcare specialists. All this to create a eco-‐social discourse that enable policymakers and professionals to redirect their strategies in order to transform on a practical and theoretical level, i.e. discursively their ideas on integral area development and sustainable craftsmanship.