bring contemporary meaning in a society dominated by mass production and fast-
food-like surplus, such as the “McFashion”. Craftivism comments on how we de-
fine work and productivity in a time of consumerism and as mentioned by Leah
Cramer, from the Internet community craftster.com, craftivism is a socially consci-
entious practice,
There is a sort of anti-brand/anti-corporate feeling growing stronger as people become
aware of what goes into mass-produced goods. And making things yourself helps you
appreciate how much work can go into things like clothing and can make you wonder
how they can be sold so cheaply. (Spencer 2005: 69)Old crafts find new meanings through adapting them to new uses and patterns,
and reinserting the activity itself into contemporary society, bending the sign sys-
tems and making craft mean something else than what we usually see at the tradi-
tional craft museums. It is modulating and tuning the practices to manifest mes-
sages that matter today, and often combining them roughly with street culture,
making them “cool”. Craft is in this sense not a passive domestic act, but this form
of reformed craft takes on a revolutionary role (Spencer 2005: 66). As the artist
Faith Gillespie puts it:
There is clearly another imperative at work now in our exercise of the old crafts. It has
to do with reclamation, with reparation. The world seems not to need us any more to
make ‘the things of life.’ Machines make more and cheap. The system needs us to do
the maintenance jobs and to run the machines that produce the so-called ‘goods,’ to be
machines in the consumer societies which consume and consume and are empty. Our
turning to craftwork is a refusal. We may not all see ourselves this way, but we are
working from a position of dissent. And that is a political position. (Gillespie 1987:
178)As argued before, from a feminist perspective craftivism does not let the tradi-
tional needlecraft be seen as part of an oppressive patriarchal culture, but instead
turns it into a form of liberating feminist action. Craftivism is a practice that shows
that there are many roles to impersonate and take on when “performing gender”.
This play of manifold tactics is especially seen in established feminist magazines,
such as Bitch, or Bust and in events such as Stitch’n Bitch, which is now also a best-
selling book.
Craftivism can thus be said to reclaim the practice of craft and return to the mate-
rial aspects of production. DIY activities here become a critical re-view of tradition
and an activity where craft is taken back from museums or conservation to become
Lisa Anne Auerbach’s Body Count Mittens
memorialize the number of American soldiers killed in
Iraq at the time the mittens are made. Worn together
the mittens show the escalation of dead as the pair has
different date of production on each hand and thus
different number of dead. By spreading the pattern
of the mittens Auerbach offers a tool for participation
in a protest against the war. She encourages knitting
in public as these mittens easily become a token for
political discussion. The mittens are a material point of
gravity around which a small public is formed to discuss
knitting and the “War on Terror”.