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Craft A secret history of craft told through lost and overlooked texts that illuminate our understanding of current art practice.
“Craft” is a contested concept in art history and a vital category through which to understand contemporary art. Through craft, materials, techniques, and tools are investigated and their histories explored in order to reflect on the politics of labor and on the extraordinary complexity of the made world around us. This anthology offers an ethnography of craft, surveying its shape-shifting identities in the context of progressive art and design through writings by artists and makers as well as poetry, fiction, anthropology, and sociology. It maps a secret history of craft through lost and overlooked texts that consider pedagogy, design, folk art, the factory, and new media in ways that illuminate our understanding of current art practice.
Recently, the idea of craft has been employed strategically: to confront issues of gender or global development, to make a stand against artistic academicism, or to engage with making processes—some distinctly archaic—employed to suggest the abject and the everyday. Craft activism, or craftivism, suggests a new political purpose for the handmade. Deep anxieties drive today's technophilia, and artists, designers, and makers turn such anxieties into a variety of dynamic engagements. The contributors' reflections on new technologies and materials, lost and found worlds of handwork, and the politics of work all throw light on craft as process, product, and ideology. Craft will serve as a vital resource for understanding technologies, materials, techniques, and tools through the lens of craft in contemporary art. [editor summary]
The art of collectivity : social circus and the cultural politics of a post-neoliberal visionAmidst epidemics of youth alienation and cultural polarization, community-based artistic practices are sprouting up around the world as antidotes to policies of austerity and social exclusion. Rejecting the radical individualism of the neoliberal era, many artistic projects promote collectivity and togetherness in navigating challenges and constructing shared futures.
The Art of Collectivity is about how one such creative social program deployed this approach in service of a post-neoliberal vision. Focusing on a national social circus initiative launched by a newly elected Ecuadorean government to help actualize its “citizens' revolution,” the book explores the intersection between global cultural politics, participatory arts, collective health, and social transformation. The authors include scholars and practitioners of community arts, humanities, social sciences, and health sciences from the Global North and Global South. Sensitive to hierarchical binaries such as research/practice, north/south, and art/science, they work together to provide a multifaceted analysis of the way cultural politics shape policy, pedagogy, and aesthetic sensibilities, as well as their socio-cultural and health-related effects.
The largest study of social circus to date, combining detailed quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based research, The Art of Collectivity is a timely contribution to the study of cultural policies, critical pedagogies, collective art-making, and community development. [editor summary]
The other within : the genius of deformity in myth, culture & psycheDaniel Deardorff knows otherness firsthand. This highly regarded “singer” in the old sense of that word—musician, storyteller, maker of ritual—had polio as an infant and has used a wheelchair most of his life, giving him a lived perspective that deeply informs his views on this subject. In The Other Within, Deardorff starts with a radical notion: to disclose the blessings of outsiderhood, the many gifts and insights contributed to culture by the marginalized and outcast. Unlike studies that stress the plight of the outsider, this one asserts that to be cast down and out of the consensus-worldview affords a difficult yet significant opportunity: to encounter oneself, not as defined by society but as one actually is. An eloquent spokesman for “the man or woman on the weird road,” Deardorff presents dozens of powerful examples from myth and literature to illustrate his message in a richly allusive, complex series of essays. Drawing on the work of mythologians, poets, psychologists, and scholars, The Other Within takes readers on an initiatory journey, uncovering the roots of human identity and imagination and offering insights–including “trickster wisdom”—revealing the mythic underpinnings of everyday life. [editor summary]
Acrobates L’exposition Acrobates est réalisée par les musées municipaux de Châlons-en-Champagne en partenariat avec le Centre national des arts du cirque (Cnac) et en co-commissariat avec Pascal Jacob, historien du cirque et directeur artistique du cirque Phénix et du Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. À travers les collections des musées municipaux et l’incroyable collection privée Jacob-William, le thème de l’acrobate se décline sous toutes ses formes.
Acrobates met en lumière une sélection d’œuvres de typologies, époques et origines différentes, qui mettent toutes à l’honneur le geste acrobatique. Depuis les sculptures étrusques du ve siècle avant notre ère jusqu’aux œuvres de Picasso, Matisse ou Derain, le thème de l’acrobate est une inépuisable source d’inspiration.
Ce catalogue présente également des prêts de grands musées nationaux et internationaux, grâce à la participation de nombreuses institutions : Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (Paris), MUCEM (Marseille), Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet (Paris), Musée Picasso-Paris, Musée du Louvre (Paris), Musée des arts et métiers – Cnam (Paris), Musée Rodin (Paris), Bibliothèque municipale d’Angers, Musée Rolin d’Autun, ainsi que la collection privée « Circus Art Museum J.Y. et G. Borg ». [résumé de l'éditeur]
Créer, c'est exister : comment développer une pratique créative au quotidienDans ce manifeste résolument moderne et optimiste, Valérie Belmokhtar invite chacun à laisser entrer la création dans sa vie.
Que ce soit pour en faire une pratique professionnelle, pour s'y consacrer plusieurs heures par jour, ou bien pour lui donner une petite place dans sa vie, la création est une rencontre avec soi-même. Elle permet de sortir de « l'avoir » pour entrer dans « l'être », elle nous fait grandir et nous amène à plus de partage avec les autres. Un programme réjouissant et libérateur !
À partir de son expérience d'artiste et d'enseignante, l'auteure guide son lecteur sur les chemins de la création. Depuis la question de l'inspiration et de la confiance en soi jusqu'aux problématiques matérielles (installation d'un atelier, facturation de son travail...), en passant par les différentes méthodes créatives, Valérie Belmokhtar nous accompagne pas à pas tout au long de ce passionnant voyage. [résumé de l'éditeur]
Contemporary circusIn this volume, twenty-four creators come together with three scholars to discuss Contemporary Circus, bridging the divide between practice and theory.
Lavers, Leroux, and Burtt offer conversations across four key themes: Apparatus, Politics, Performers, and New Work. Extensively illustrated with fifty photos of Contemporary Circus productions, and extensively annotated, Contemporary Circus thematically groups and contextualises extracts of conversations to provide a sophisticated and wide-ranging study supported by critical theory.
Of interest to both practitioners and scholars, Contemporary Circus uses the lens of ‘contestation,’ or calling things into question, to provide a portal into ways of seeing today’s circus performance.
Conversations with: Lachlan Binns and Jascha Boyce (Gravity and Other Myths), Tilde Björfors (Cirkus Cirkör), Kim ‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers (Hot Brown Honey), Shana Carroll (The 7 Fingers), David Clarkson (Stalker), Philippe Decouflé (Compagnie DCA), Fez Faanana (Briefs), Mike Finch (Circus Oz), Daniele Finzi Pasca (Compagnia Finzi Pasca), Sean Gandini (Gandini Juggling), Firenza Guidi (ElanFrantoio, NoFit State Circus), Jo Lancaster and Simon Yates (Acrobat), Johann Le Guillerm (Cirque Ici), Yaron Lifschitz (Circa), Chelsea McGuffin (Company 2), Phia Ménard (Compagnie Non Nova), Jennifer Miller (Circus Amok), Adrien Mondot (Compagnie Adrien M and Claire B), Charlotte Mooney and Tina Koch (Ockham’s Razor), Philippe Petit (high wire artist), and Elizabeth Streb (STREB EXTREME ACTION). [editor summary]
Support and alignment : in search of balance : sensation, development and creation in equilibristrics : pedagogical guide"It is on the basis of field observations and concrete pedagogical issues that several texts are suggested to deepen, explain or question the notions linked with balance, while giving the floor to those who have animated or participated in the training. While this book is not meant to describe the exercises involved in these practice times, their observation has made it possible to draw threads and to propose different tools that can be transferred to the pedagogical practices of each one. The two main parts of the manual are: building balance and developing a connection with balance. More than methods that impose rules or protocols, these sensitive approaches allow, at a given moment, to formalise the practices and to spread them. For all that, they go far beyond speech and writing and find their full realisation only when the body is in motion. "
The manual makes it possible to formalise the practices of the professionals of today and to disseminate them. The proposals are transferable from one apparatus to another and from one practice to another and allow to start a transversal reflection on aerial skills or, more generally, on the way in which the circus arts are constantly facing, the stakes and difficulties of vertical work, weight and gravity. [editor summary]
Un vaisseau de joie : paroles d'artistesPropos d'artistes recueillis au fil des mois, parfois avec des correspondants du bout du monde, un vaisseau de joie est avant tout une suite de témoignages émouvants, touchants, mais aussi passionnants pour ce qu'ils révèlent des mystères de la création, du sens de l'acrobatie aujourd'hui et... des méfaits du trac de participer à l'un des plus formidables évènements artistiques de l'année!
Un vaisseau de joie donne la parole à des artistes issus des sélections des dix dernières années du Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. Ils se confient avec sincérité, enthousiasme et courage et soulignent leur volonté de se mettre en danger, qu'il soit métaphorique ou bien réel. Ils parlent du danger de se blesser, de ne pas faire rire, de laisser s'échapper une balle, mais ils évoquent aussi celui de ne pas être aimés, peut-être le pire de tous...
Un vaisseau de joie reflète également les émotions de celles et ceux qui les admirent, les font briller, les accompagnent dans leurs carrières et les soutiennent en leur donnant, au propre comme au figuré, la vie. [résumé de l'éditeur]
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