Instructionals is an ongoing art & research project which reconsiders work done while on Fellowship with the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork project concerning the documentation and communication of specialized craft knowledge across different frames of reference.
Drawing from observed conflicts and parallels between the worlds of commercial/hobbyist craft, STEM research, academia, and contemporary art, Instructionals revolves around a growing geometric surface made of thousand conjoined beaded triangles.
This beadwork has a comple x surface geometry created by a threadpath developed during my fellowship. Original techniques like this are closely-guarded assets in craft communities reliant on selling proprietary patterns. In contrast, Instructionals includes a series of technical drawings, charts, and texts which detail precisely how to (re)make the beadwork. Further, this is a cheeky response to the tendency to reduce specialized craft to novelty of technique or gimmick. Echoing the repetition of beading, I these ‘instructions,’ will transform as the project develops into artworks through mass accumulation of coded notation and increasingly dense or cryptic illustrations. Inspired by the absurd thoroughness that characterizes research and studio reports often required for institutionally funded creative projects, these instructions will be pushed to the point of losing their coherence, and therefore, their utility. Theoretical touchpoints are Sianne Ngai’s concept of stuplimity (Ugly Feelings, Harvard University Press, 2005) and Eugenie Brinkema’s Life-Destroying Diagrams (Duke, 2022), each of which draw a line between form and affect, illuminating the parallels between stupefying accretion of documentation and buildup of tiny beads into dazzling complexity. Conceived in a climate of endlessly increasing institutionalization and intellectualization of the arts born of neoliberalism and steadily worsening precarity, Instructionals takes a distinctly making-based look at the contemporary genre of art-as-research.
Drawing from observed conflicts and parallels between the worlds of commercial/hobbyist craft, STEM research, academia, and contemporary art, Instructionals revolves around a growing geometric surface made of thousand conjoined beaded triangles.
This beadwork has a comple x surface geometry created by a threadpath developed during my fellowship. Original techniques like this are closely-guarded assets in craft communities reliant on selling proprietary patterns. In contrast, Instructionals includes a series of technical drawings, charts, and texts which detail precisely how to (re)make the beadwork. Further, this is a cheeky response to the tendency to reduce specialized craft to novelty of technique or gimmick. Echoing the repetition of beading, I these ‘instructions,’ will transform as the project develops into artworks through mass accumulation of coded notation and increasingly dense or cryptic illustrations. Inspired by the absurd thoroughness that characterizes research and studio reports often required for institutionally funded creative projects, these instructions will be pushed to the point of losing their coherence, and therefore, their utility. Theoretical touchpoints are Sianne Ngai’s concept of stuplimity (Ugly Feelings, Harvard University Press, 2005) and Eugenie Brinkema’s Life-Destroying Diagrams (Duke, 2022), each of which draw a line between form and affect, illuminating the parallels between stupefying accretion of documentation and buildup of tiny beads into dazzling complexity. Conceived in a climate of endlessly increasing institutionalization and intellectualization of the arts born of neoliberalism and steadily worsening precarity, Instructionals takes a distinctly making-based look at the contemporary genre of art-as-research.