Craft(ing) The Body
UCA Farnham 22 May 2019
CALL FOR PAPERS : ABSTRACTS TO BE RECEIVED BY 11 MARCH 2019
In the 21st century technology has established an extraordinary relationship with the body: its crafting and its representation. Textiles, metals, and ceramics are used to replace interior body parts, while fibres can 'read' our most intimate details, acting as diagnostic tools. How does this affect the ways we construct our identity, process information about our bodies, move those bodies through space?
The conference asks if craft knowledge and haptic understanding have roles to play in this debate. How can craft reflect on the body as a means of literal and poetic understanding of ourselves, our narratives and histories, hopes and concerns?
We invite proposals from makers across all fields of craft practice; also from curators; performers; architects; interior designers; scientists; historians; theorists and researchers.
Successful proposals will also go forward into a further selection process for inclusion in the book Re-configuring Craft, alongside chosen Papers from previous conferences and symposia interrogating the position of craft in the 21st century and organised by the Crafts Study Centre and the International Textile Research Centre UCA.
Please send your Abstract, of no more than 300 words, for a 30 minute illustrated Paper that reflects upon and develops these ideas. Abstracts to be received by 11 March 2015.
To be sent to both:
Professor Simon Olding: solding@uca.ac.uk and Professor Lesley Millar: lmillar@uca.ac.uk
Keynote Presentation will be given by Catherine Harper, Professor of Textiles and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Chichester. Editor-in-Chief of the Routledge journal TEXTILE: Cloth & Culture, she is also editor of and contributor to the four-volume Textiles: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury 2012) and author of a monograph, Intersex (Berg, 2007). She has published several chapters and scholarly articles, most recently in O’Brien and Moran’s Love Objects and Millar and Kettle's Erotic Cloth; also Taylor & Francis’ Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.
Professor Catherine Harper,
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Chichester
