Catalytic Conversation: Craft and the Hyperobject

Discussants:
Anthea Black 
Garth Clark 
Sonja Dahl (Project Organizer)
Jovencio de la Paz (Project Organizer)
Brian Gillis (Project Organizer)
Bean Gilsdorf
Nicki Green 
Namita Gupta Wiggers
Anya Kivarkis (Project Organizer)
Bukola Koiki 
Stacy Jo Scott (Project Organizer)
Shannon Stratton
Lori Talcott 

About Craft and the Hyperobject:

Craft and the Hyperobject documents a Center for Art Research (CFAR) Catalytic Conversation held on January 29th, 2020 by Anthea Black, Garth Clark, Sonja Dahl, Jovencio de la Paz, Brian Gillis, Bean Gilsdorf, Nicki Green, Namita Gupta Wiggers, Anya Kivarkis, Bukola Koiki, Stacy Jo Scott, Shannon Stratton, and Lori Talcott to explore notions of craft through the structure of a hyperobject.

CFAR’s Catalytic Conversations serve the creative practices of individuals and groups by giving them an opportunity to engage a small body of thinkers in ways that contribute to a project or line of thinking that is in development. These conversations are recorded, transcribed, and archived as reference materials for those involved. This particular Catalytic Conversation was the first that CFAR conducted with intent to publish.

Craft and the Hyperobject is the latest of a series of engagements that our community has facilitated using practice-based research, teaching, and speculative discourse related to craft. After coming together as colleagues at the University of Oregon, we first organized a summer craft forum where people working in ceramics, fibers, metals, and printmaking came to Eugene, Oregon to work in the studio together, share meals, and hold public conversations related to participants’ work and thinking. After this forum we continued to work together through studio collaborations and exhibitions, conference panels, lectures, and workshops, by organizing public events, teaching at the University of Oregon and institutions around the US, working together on institutional and governmental initiatives, and collaborating with other UO colleagues to found the Center for Art Research.

The Craft and the Hyperobject conversation was convened to consider craft in proximity to the hyperobject, a term coined by Timothy Morton in his 2013 book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. In this text, Morton explores the idea of a hyperobject in five parts, or that which is viscous, undulates temporally, is nonlocal, phasing, and interobjective, to explain objects so massively distributed in time and space that they transcend spatiotemporal specificity or legible, tangible, or discretely definable knowing. We chose the framework of the hyperobject to initiate a thought experiment that might allow for the consideration of craft in ways that aren’t mired in previous discourse, disproportionately focused on valuation, or positioned as supplemental to other fields, but rather something that is of and in relation to craft on terms that are meaningful to related people and histories.

For this work, we assembled a group of people who represent a range of practices, stakes in the field, and thinking related to craft, and also have the capacity to think speculatively in a cooperative and rigorous think-tank environment. With each correspondence in advance of the Catalytic Conversation, the group received information about project goals, a primer outlining the structure of a hyperobject, and a schedule of events for the day we assembled. With our last communication we also sent the introduction to Morton’s text as a primer to seed the discussion.

This conversation was not intended as a space to perform knowledge, valorize ideas, or establish a new canon, but rather that which employs participants’ diverse experiences, knowledge, and perspectives to explore craft thinking in fresh and relevant ways. We assumed this short conversation would be inconclusive, and ultimately function more as a catalyst for future inquiry than a series of resolved thoughts. So, in addition to the conversation transcript, we have also included a bibliography of materials that were referenced in the conversation, inform participants’ thinking more generally, or are such that seem important to be thinking about at this moment.

By making this content available through the CFAR website and other forms of digital distribution, and by printing a limited-edition book to distribute to 400 individuals, educational programs, and libraries, we hope that this document serves as a catalytic object to seed further discourse.