CLOSE READING – INTERMINGLED BODIES

• “through making we constitute the way we are in the world” 
• Connections between the body and the universe 
• Extend across space meaning synchronous and across time which is diachronous 
• Keywords: agency, material, narrative, tact, apparatus, network, meshwork 
• Everything is man-made, artificial, constructed 
• Understanding what the artificial vs natural entails when we’re born into a world like this 
• What we make changes the world around us whether that is on a large or small scale 
• Object orientated ontology (O.O.O) – philosophy 
• Social sciences and material culture- why we make and the way we make 
• “early making was prompted by the body’s awkwardness and fragility” – making things to fit in easier into the world and easier for our bodies 
• Referencing “The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), Elaine Scarry” 
• Making a chair is for a body- and the body adapts to the changes of sitting down, while being accustomed with extra artificial man-made legs 
• “altered surrogate” – body being awkward and not able to function I terms of sitting or holding stuff- which is why things are made to accustom the body – like a prosthetic 
• “pain is without object”, desire is to desire SOMETHING, fear is to fear SOMETHING, pain is pain 
• We do not feel the pain of others, or things that are not in our own bodies 
• “in any real understanding of making there needs to be an appreciation of the unmaking that shadows it”- counter reactions, or what would happen if this thing wasn’t made, or you tried to do the thing you want to do without the thing being made in the first place 
• Scarification of the earth through deforestation is pain on the earth which affects us bodies who exist on the earth and therefore allows us to become intermingling bodies with the events that occur where we exist even though we do not physically feel this pain- it will affect us and our successors etc. 
• Bandage= substitute for skin, aids pain, protects wound= making helps pain 
• “trans-corporeal pain” meaning the idea of pain beyond the physical sensation 
• “we may consider touch that has sensitivity, delicacy, diplomacy and seeks to produce harmony” 
• “tact is both ethical and poetic” 
• Ethical- aiding, helping bodies function etc., poetic tact meaning political, economic, social and cultural context- making takes place in those spaces 
• Making is the relationship between pain on one side and the imagined objects that help on the other side 
• Craft is dependent on unconscious skill from practice and repetition 
• Good that the usually provide physical examples of what philosophy they are talking about in order for me to understand and visualize a theory 
• Tacit knowledge is like understanding how a human can make a tool work from action to reaction and finished product/ reaction of the tool 
• Making pots is possible by a history of pottery- limitations of pottery make incredible reactions but when the skill is detached from the reason why they are making something, then you can question and reconfigure their work for new motivations and create things with more purposes. 
• “tacit knowledge is an incomplete theory of thinking and making” 
• Design elevates making- concept to outcome 
• Design based making vs craft-based making 
• Design based making – material engagement, strategically motivated  
• Know how vs know why 
• A design will detail the making of something without necessarily having the practical skills to complete the making of it 
• ‘Toaster Project’ making a toaster from scratch when he could only make a sandwich; getting materials, refining them, working them into a toaster design, modelled on a toaster he found= worked but not well, failed after one use= proving that it had to make something by yourself that is essentially made by an entire civilization 
• “only distinction between craft and design based making is in the primary motivation”- know how vs know why 
• “everything and nothing shoulders blame and credit” 
• Material invention between the materials and the craft from the beginning of the construction to the end, while designing takes place and an affect is made- a solution. 
• Connection between the materials, the process of transforming the materials, the design of how to use the materials, why it is being made, who is making it and how they learnt these skills as well as the execution of the final product as well as years of improvement and areas to expand on this as an entire process 
• A situation and circumstance that produced the aesthetic 
• Craft work- like someone making pottery or china etc. relates to authentic tradition and history- such as Korean narratives and symbolic images- patterns relating to the actual product and design 
• A maker needs to appreciate where they are acting from 
• Economic apparatus acts on practice meaning that you make to sell and what you make is determined by what you sell 
• Needing to sell (or make money) can affect the maker’s motivations negatively, affecting quality of authenticity. 
• “Making should first make sense to a maker and second resonate with others” 
• Nicholas O’Donnell Hoare – MA Design Critical Practice at Goldsmiths connected his jewelry making to the practices of goldmining 
• Origin of the metals that he sourced to use, truth about gold mining/ gold extraction – learned about toxic environments within the production of gold, mercury is banned in gold mining but the price of gold has increased x3 since 2001, mercury is the easiest way to extract gold, still used where it is illegal because it is cheap, small scale gold mining is the second worst source of mercury pollution in the world, fossil fuels are worse, in the Amazon Basin village they use mercury to extract gold, mix it into the river with bare hands- exposing themselves to potential mercury poisoning, positing the river and environment = wanted to give up making jewellery, created mercury condensing kits to combat the problems he faced, making it safer as gold mining is crucial to their survival 
• Nicholas O’Donnell created a service where people could redesign their jewellery (such s if they had a divorce or outgrown the design)- cost extracted from the piece of jewellery, each new design is created with less gold than original,  
• His narrative for that was an ethical concern 
• All making practices are done in a 4d meshwork; spatial, temporal 
• Production and consumption – mining, extracting, exporting, wearing gold – and different geographies – river, village, Brazil, England 
• Poetic making – ethical – uses that within his practice to solve problems – social and environmental 
• Critical perspective into making is important = think through how what we make influences us  

Doing these close reading tasks have proven to be a challenge for me as I hadn’t read something this academic in so much depth for quite a while. I really enjoyed taking the time to read through this text although I found it very difficult; this is a good thing because it means that there is room for improvement and teaches me that I need to stretch my academic reading further as my skills are not the best as they should be at a third year level. During lockdown I became increasingly more interested in philosophy and different theories as I started to read more philosophy-based fiction books and became fascinated by the ideology that people came up with. The never-ending questioning of a topic made me engrossed because there is never a right or wrong, only thousands of possibilities as well as thoughts and feelings to back up these claims. 

One of the concepts that engrossed me was the idea that currently, almost everything in the world is manmade and carefully constructed, little is natural anymore and anything that has been constructed, has been constructed as an extension of our bodies to exist comfortable on this earth. An example of this being a chair made to aid us in sitting down on   desk, allowing us to rest easier by giving us an artificial extension of legs to support us in doing an everyday task. We would need to do the everyday day to survive and therefore using the chair would assist us in making our lives more comfortable, as one of the themes in this text was stating that our bodies our awkward and unable to do certain things, which we have fixed using the art of craft and making. 

Another concept that came to light in this text was the idea that pain, unlike fear or desire, is without object. Pain is internal and emotional, yet fear is motivated by fearing something in particular and desire is similar. However, you could argue that a material object could cause pain, something you can see could reflect an emotional reaction of pain as it’s known that you can sometimes feel pain physically when you’re emotionally affected. On the other hand, you cannot feel someone else’s physical pain, but you can empathies with their fear or desire as pain is not only subjective, but also dependent on what inflicts the pain or what is deemed as pain.  

Design based making versus craft-based making was something that I had not previously explored before. The idea that something is made to solve design problems, to improve on previous designs and to construct something visually pleasing whereas there’s craft design, which is physical and tactile; that “only distinction between craft and design-based making is in the primary motivation”- knowing how to construct something, using materials and craft processes versus knowing the reason that something is being made, the effects it would solve and who it would be used for. However, you could argue that these two work in conjunction with each other as opposed to juxtaposing. The design would influence the way that something is constructed and the way that something is built could suggest that there would be improvements for designing it. 

Nicholas O’Donnell Hoare’s work for the MA Critical Practice at Goldsmith’s proved the point of ethical means of production would come in handy with my business project in learning how to source materials and using machinery in an effective manner. He discovered that with gold mining, which is what he based his final major project on, people in Brazil use mercury to extract gold which is illegal in most places as well as incredibly dangerous with the risk of mercury poisoning. He identified a problem and worked to combat the problem and find a solution; therefore, allowing his craft to become ethical and solving social issues worldwide. 

Overall, I found the text difficult to get into but found that eventually I was getting used to the language and understanding the different concepts being discussed. I didn’t agree with everything said but that is the beauty of philosophy in my eyes because everything can be argued upon and different people have alternative solutions to the problems that are brought up within philosophy. I enjoyed doing this close reading, but it has shown that I need to pick up more academic texts especially for writing my dissertation as it allows me to explore more complex subject matter, and really delve into the specific and obscure topic to relate back to art, design and fashion.