mefoster /mechatronics

The resurgence of crafting is part of a DIY (do it yourself) movement with roots in punk rock, queer, feminist and anti-capitalist communities. Crafting creates a powerful space for collaboration, intervention and community building as it connects current DIY practitioners to an intergenerational network of artists and traditional craftspeople. The production of queer feminist craftwork is deeply rooted and critical of the legacy of gendered craftwork and representations of the body. Feminist Craft Corner produces a queered radical feminism in the practice of radical crafting through parody, interactive craft pieces and blogging. FCC explores the way queer crafters have altered feminist discourse on gender and gendered work as well as the character of the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement.
I also think about how the articulation of queer craft interfaces with the discourse of the body as construct and relationship. Queer bodies continue to exist in contemporary discourse as deeply pathologized bodies. In thinking about queer craft, this paper shifts the iteration of queerness into a realm of thinking about multiplicities, affects and assemblages particularly assemblage and affect in online spaces. I create, in Feminist Craft Corner as well as within the academy, a space for subversive manifestations of crafting community and craft objects as non-commercial, performative entities.

Feminist Craft Corner is a mixed media production first involving a series of web episodes, live performances, and an animation with interactive soundtrack. The Feminist Craft Corner webtv show and performance parody the culture of the public access diy web/television show by embracing a low-fi aesthetic. The craft pieces created within Feminist Craft Corner vary in terms of their location within the Arts and DIY crafting practice – (personalized stump cozies, knitting interventions, genderfuck dance songs, felted game technology, interactive craft technology). Craft pieces generated by Feminist Craft Corner reflect a shift in DIY crafting toward interactivity and mixed methods and materials. My thesis discusses the creative culture of radical feminism and the relationship between craft, digital technologies and bodies.

The Feminist Craft Corner is a multi-media performance and DIY crafting project created by Miki Foster. The Feminist Craft Corner project seeks to radically collapse feminist, queer theory and DIY crafting/making through the creation of interactive craft devices and the dispersal of instructional videos through public access television, live gallery performances and videoblogging.

In 2009 Feminist Craft Corner will exhibit an interactive installation video piece entitled “Crafting Technology”. Users craft objects with midi-triggering devices that are mapped to the soundtrack of a looped animation. Through bridging the act of crafting with a social performance this work engages users with queer crafting technology in the gallery space.