M/C Journal最新文献

{"title":"Porno","authors":"Lelia Green, Kelly Jaunzems, Harrison See","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3092","url":null,"abstract":"Is what constitutes pornography in the mind of the beholder? This issue of M/C Journal sought articles on “porno”: a deliberately informal, almost friendly, playful term for a content category which evokes many complex responses. Indeed, the categories of materials deemed to be “pornographic” offer rich insights into the cultures that classify, create, and circulate the materials that key publics consume, overtly or – more commonly – covertly. The clandestine dynamic is further heightened when the people consuming and discussing such content include those who are deemed too young to do so.\u0000The articles collected here are an outcome of a journey which began in 2016 with a submission to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee Inquiry into the Harm Being Done to Australian Children through Access to Pornography on the Internet (Environment and Communications). That committee prompted a return to data collected in 2010 which considered responses by over 25,000 9- to 16-year-olds across 26 nations around whether or not they had been “bothered” by accessing sexual images online. Revisiting the original reports (Livingstone et al.; Green et al.) raised a range of questions which coalesced into a grant application to the Australian Research Council, seeking the opportunity to talk with teens themselves about whether they felt they were being harmed by accessing sexual content online.\u0000In 2018, the Australian Research Council approved funding for a Discovery Project: Adolescents’ Perceptions of Harm from Accessing Online Sexual Content (DP190102435). This research aimed to examine children's perspectives from four different countries with relatively different responses to sexual content in the original 2010 investigation. Australia, as home to the project, received the lion's share of the attention. Australian children had indicated that they were more likely than average, across the 26 participant nations, to see sexual content, and also more likely than average to be bothered by it. The other countries in the project were Ireland, Greece and Norway. In Ireland, children had been less likely to see sexual content, but also more likely to be bothered if they did so. Children in Greece, in 2010, were both less likely to see sexual content online, and less likely to be bothered. In Norway, by contrast, children were more likely to see sexual content than the average case, and less likely to say they’d been bothered. Thus, between them, the four countries covered a matrix of more/less likely to see sexual content and more/less likely to be bothered if they did so.\u0000The ARC-funded research set out to interview 11- to 17-year-olds, and their parents and/or caregivers, about these issues. Four of the articles in this M/C Journal issue deal with aspects of what that Australian Research Council-funded research has found.\u0000At the same time, the project raised a number of questions around how cultures, and sub-cultures (such as teen networks), c","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"75 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141922323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pornification of Everything","authors":"Jordan Schonig","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3081","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction\u0000In recent years, the word “porn” has been increasingly used as a kind of descriptive suffix in aesthetic categories like “food porn”, “nature porn,” “trauma porn”, and “inspiration porn”. Some scholars in Porn Studies have commented on the phenomenon as a notable expansion of the concept of porn, noting the striking fact that almost none of the porn-suffix categories contain representations of sex. Thus, an obvious puzzle emerges: what is it exactly that makes food porn, nature porn, or trauma porn pornographic?\u0000While a number of scholarly publications have examined the sociocultural implications of some of these categories, such as the examinations of food porn within food studies (see Krogager and Leer), of inspiration porn within disability studies (see Grue), and torture porn within film studies (see Lockwood), few have examined the proliferation of such porn-suffix categories as a sociocultural phenomenon in itself (see, for example, Hester; Nguyen and Williams). One notable exception, Helen Hester’s book Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (2014), examines categories like war porn and misery porn, which are primarily used as negative evaluative judgments that insinuate the moral depravity of the aesthetic objects under consideration (not unlike trauma porn, poverty porn, and disaster porn), usually highlighting the ways that human suffering is sensationalized for entertainment.\u0000While this kind of category – what I call categories of moral critique – encapsulates a major component of the porn suffix phenomenon, this article will focus on a different side of the phenomenon: categories like food porn, travel porn, architecture porn, and nature porn. Unlike trauma porn and poverty porn, these categories – what I call categories of aesthetic indulgence – do not imply a negative moral judgment upon the aesthetic objects under consideration, but instead refer to a viewer’s indulgence in enticing or attractive images of objects. Such categories proliferate on social media platforms through hashtags (#foodporn, #architectureporn) and subreddits (/r/natureporn). What has come to be known as Reddit’s “SFW Porn Network”, in fact, includes 98 such categories, each devoid of depictions of sexuality or sexual activity – from the fairly self-explanatory “architecture porn” and “space porn” to the more nebulous “human porn” and “things-cut-in-half porn”. Such categories take on a valence qualitatively distinct from categories of moral critique, and thus imply a different social attitude toward porn. It is the aim of this article to examine what the proliferation of such categories reveals about our shifting attitude toward porn, entertainment, and gratification.\u0000Central to my investigation will be the examination of the role that aesthetic judgment plays in the formation of these categories and, by extension, porn itself. Within the principles of aesthetic theory, labelling an image, film, or novel as “pornography” is not a","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"48 47","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141923958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Firsthand’ versus ‘Secondhand’ Perspectives of Harm","authors":"Harrison See, Giselle Woodley","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3077","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction\u0000This article examines interview data from 24 Australian families, exploring how teens express perceived harms associated with online Sexually Explicit Material (SEM). For many teens, an encounter with SEM occurs prior to their first partnered sexual experience, often before their first kiss (Crabbe et al. 1; Power et al. 11; Woodley et al., Teen Perspectives 2). Of relevance was how teens expressed the potential harms of online SEM. Specifically, this article examines the difference between instances of teens expressing perceptions of SEM via the perspectives of others (secondhand perspectives) in contrast with instances of teens citing their own encounters with SEM (firsthand perspectives). Through thematic analysis, the authors argue that when making claims about teen experiences, firsthand perspectives should be emphasised where possible, given that secondhand perspectives often reflect media effects. Media effects refer to exacerbated fears in relation to the impact of media, often in the context that certain types of media are considered highly influential in shaping views and attitudes towards certain social and cultural phenomena (Tsaliki and Chronaki 402). As such, the authors aim to distinguish between teens' secondhand perceptions of potential harms – especially when observably informed by external influences – and their firsthand accounts of harm informed by their direct encounters with SEM. It is firsthand perspectives that the authors argue can lead to more effective policies. Further, the authors discuss how the use of loaded language during interviews can influence participant responses, particularly when collecting data on contentious or sensitive subjects such as SEM.\u0000Perceptions of Harm\u0000The potential risks associated with SEM are often described as harmful. Harm signifies content (or an experience) that is damaging, and often resulting in negative long-term consequences (Banko et al. 132; Livingstone et al. 14; Spišák 130). Public discourse frames online SEM, especially pornography, as inherently harmful to young people who are positioned as more vulnerable than adults (Spišák 130). In existing research, articles that identified pornography as particularly damaging specifically use the term harmful (Crabbe et al. 2; Hakkim et al. 111), whereas studies positioning pornography with more nuance – or even stating that pornography is undeservingly cited as a source of harm – position SEM as not harmful, or even acceptable, while commenting how these media are misrepresented by anti-pornography activists (Binnie and Reavey 178; Ley 208; Lišková 41; McKee 22). These varying positions on pornography illustrate how potentially contentious subjects can result in polarising views.\u0000The extent of harm caused by pornography, however, is unclear (Lim et al. 661); to justify investing resources into policies that restrict pornography, evidence of potential harms must be demonstrated, which, in turn, requires defining them (Banko et","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"59 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141929151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Weaving in the Threads","authors":"Christina Chau, S. Croeser","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3021","url":null,"abstract":"Textile arts and crafts have a longstanding history of being connected to femininity and domesticity. Prominent art historians Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock have been generative figures in highlighting the machinations and effects of patriarchal stratification which relegated women making decorative arts in domestic spaces. Particularly for Parker, women, domesticity, and textiles have become inextricably linked in western cultures, to the point that “to know the history of embroidery is to know the history of women” (ix). While Parker’s research was focussed on embroidery, other academics have since explored adjacent approaches in relation to broader creative practices with textiles, and have analysed ways in which the tools and materials of the textile arts have also been primary resources through which (mostly) women have expressed their social, political, and ethical values. When we wrote the initial call for this issue in 2021, we (Sky Croeser and Christina Chau) were discussing multiple intersecting socio-political events unfolding in the world, and their effects on our lives. Our city Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia) had dodged waves of strict isolation that other capital cities in Australia had endured, partially due to our geographical isolation and ability to control movement across neighbouring regions nationally and internationally. Even still we participated in debates and discussions around interpretations of civil responsibility, individual action for collective good, in relation to the ongoing pandemic and climate crisis, and more personally creativity and early parenthood during a pandemic.  While readjusting to ongoing interpretations of a ‘new normal’ and working from home, we also returned to making with textiles in our domestic spaces, as a way of practicing, enacting, and working through ideas around reparation, care, and ethics, in a time of global precarity. We noticed that many people were using similar materials to explore these ideas and communing online for a variety of reasons: from connecting with others to explore senses of community during isolation, to expressing and mobilising political action through communities interested in craft activism. Somehow there was a concurrent enmeshing of the conceptual threads being posted on social media sites and the discussion threads posted within them, and the actual textile threads people were holding in their hands to create all over the world were expressing and deliberating on their values and ethical positions through their creative practices.  The call for this issue felt very timely, and we invited scholars to reflect on ways in which online communities post, commune, and discuss current socio-political context through craft activism, making, and repairing, as well as reflect on the history that these creative practices have with feminism, political action, and domesticity.  Now that we are publishing this issue at the end of 2023, the socio-political contexts t","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"118 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139218338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ghost-Stitching American Politics","authors":"Caroline Veronica Wallace","doi":"10.5204/mcj.2935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2935","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, feminist and online craft communities responded with a call to arms (or needles) aimed at resistance through collective action in thread, yarn, and textiles. One such project, Diana Weymar’s Tiny Pricks Project, records the incessant barrage of Trump’s media coverage: tweets, journalist reportage, and statements in stitched thread. Weymar started Tiny Pricks Project on 8 January 2018, stitching the 45th President’s bluster of a 6 January tweet, “I AM A VERY STABLE GENIUS”, in yellow thread across a field of tapestry flowers. Issuing an invitation for contributions from stitchers around the world, Weymar accrued a vast archive of over 5,000 individual textile works which transform political rhetoric into thread. Although the project has been exhibited in its material form in galleries around the United States (particularly in the lead-up to the 2020 election), its primary display is online, where the textured and tactile objects are imaged and uploaded to Instagram. Drawing on the associations of a medium associated with intimacy and femininity, @tinypricksproject traces Trump’s presidency, rejecting the immediacy of the 24-hour media cycle with careful, time-consuming stitching that bears the imprint of its makers. As an attempt to reshape Trump’s violent utterances as a material symbol of resistance, Tiny Pricks Project has a close parallel in the bright pink hand-knitted “pussyhats” that became the symbol of the 2017 Women’s March. With a pattern distributed online through platforms such as Ravelry and sold on online marketplaces such as Etsy, the Pussyhat Project exemplifies the ambitions of twentyfirst-century craftivism, that “creativity can be a catalyst for change” (Greer, 183), but also the neoliberal commodification of these ideals. The contested legacy of the Pussyhat Project, lauded as a means of participatory politics but criticised for the whiteness and transphobic essentialism of its chosen symbol, demonstrates the challenges in harnessing craft as collective activism (Black), and suggests the need for individualised, responsive ways of connecting politics and hand-making. The same phrase that inspired the Pussyhats, Trump’s recording of 2005 admitting sexual assault (“They let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”) also appears across the Tiny Pricks Project as an embroidered text where it performs a very different role. In contrast to the performative use of knitted projects as a garment to wear in action, Weymar describes Tiny Pricks Project as a “stitched material record” and as “testimony”. Both acts, of stitching and posting, are acts of memory-making and communication, and as such, the cumulative posts of Tiny Pricks Project function as a feminist vernacular temporary memorial. Initially focussed exclusively on Trump, the project has expanded in both territory (with a dedicated Tiny Pricks Project UK) and politically to encompass direct statements ","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139235761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Stitchers of Instagram","authors":"Ümit Kennedy","doi":"10.5204/mcj.2994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2994","url":null,"abstract":"Embroidery: A Subversive History Embroidery has a long history as a woman’s craft. Traditionally, the gendered history of embroidery as domestic, practical (utilitarian), and relational has placed it firmly in the category of craft, resulting in its exclusion from the male-dominated arena of art in public space (Emery; Durham; Jefferies). This traditional view of embroidery, and textile work in general, has been thoroughly challenged over the last 60 years. The second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought women’s textile work, and its private, domestic, relational subjects and lives, into the public arena: into art galleries and public spaces, challenging traditional notions of what constitutes art, and highlighting the subversive act of women making (Emery; Jefferies; Parker). Women have been using “fancy work”, as embroidery was called, as overt acts of defiance, rebellion, social justice, care for self and others, and as a collective means of making sense of the world and changing it for good, for generations (Davidson; Minahan and Cox; Emery; Sawden and Etaati; Robertson and Vinebaum; Hackney; Vyas). The suffragettes famously used embroidery in their banners and sashes in their fight for the woman’s right to vote (Helland). In the 1970s, collectives such as the Sydney-based Women’s Domestic Needlework Group brought the work of everyday ordinary women into a public collection and exhibition of art (Emery). The exhibition highlighted the value of women making things together as a normal part of their everyday lives, and it positioned their domestic textile work as material artifacts of knowledge and significance worthy of observation, recognition, and analysis in public space. More recently, there has been a resurgence of young women engaging in textile crafts online signaling a “new energy” with radical potential (Hackney 170; Robertson and Vinebaum; Jefferies; Minahan and Cox). These women are socially engaged and tech-savvy, gathering online and in-person to use craft to explore and critique their everyday lives and experiences (Minahan and Cox; Hackney). Women are using the Internet to make space to gather, to create, to develop language, knowledge, and to generate change. From forums and threads to networked digital media (see Meikle and Young) such as Facebook and Instagram (see Leaver et al.), the material gallery is now online: a public space for collective voice and representation in progress. The international embroidery community on Instagram create art in dialogue with, and in reference to, each other. The art being created is collaborative as it was in the 1970s, relational, intimate and intentional, subversive, and confronting. It falls in a category known as “craftivism” (Greer; Corbett; Jefferies; Emery; Hackney). Stitchers of Instagram reflect what Fiona Hackney refers to as a new “super-connected (informed, skilled, reflexive) amateur” (170) who engages in “the quiet activism of everyday making” (169). In this ","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139236033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Spinning Circle at the Mill","authors":"Janis Hanley","doi":"10.5204/mcj.2936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2936","url":null,"abstract":"An artful Facebook post after a research event, a spinning circle held at a state heritage listed former mill, is used to explore the intersection of craftivism and the politics around the future of this site. This article takes a new materialism approach to explore the dynamic interactions (intra-actions) and shifting power relations around place (territorialisations). Both the spinning circle and the post were a gentle activism, or as Greer (12) describes it, craftivism, whose essence lies in ‘creating something that gets people to ask questions’. In 2018, I conducted the research event, the Spinning Circle at the Mill, inviting the Spinners, Weavers, and Fibre Artisans of Ipswich group to hold a spinning circle at the former Queensland Woollen Manufacturing Company, now an empty factory space on the state’s heritage list. The event was part of a larger piece of research considering the generative nature of heritage. As the fibre artists worked, we yarned about their connections with the mill-site, its largely female workforce, and imagined what the future might hold for this heritage place. Before the day’s events started, I was busy arranging a table for the morning tea and setting out some artefacts and books that participants had brought. I noticed a few of the fibre artists wandering around the factory with a spinning wheel. I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing, and called them back a couple of times, worried everyone would wander off into the cavernous mill space. They returned, eventually, and we got on with the session. After the event, one artist, Mieke den Otter, shared a post Facebook (see fig. 1). When I saw the post, I laughed out loud – and it has haunted me. Her curation of the text and carefully placed wheel in the post’s photograph negotiated time, space and political boundaries with warmth and humour. Here in the realm of Facebook was a piece of data that “glowed”, exerting “a kind of fascination”, that animates further thought (MacLure 228). Social media posts are performative – they affect. Images created and shared extend what heritage sites can do – provoking, expressing new perspectives, and challenging narratives playfully though art. Posts shift conversations. Fig. 1: Facebook post from the Spinning Circle at the Mill. What does this Facebook post create? What does this assemblage, this intentional cutting-together of [spinning wheel-graffiti – woollen mill heritage – Facebook – photograph – post text] do? Methods, Materialities, and Entanglements This article uses a new materialism methodological framing to consider the dynamics of the events. It draws on Barad’s concepts of agential cuts – the intra-actions of elements cut ‘together-apart’, forming together and separating from others. Barad (Meeting 168) describes the dynamics of intra-actions as diffractions. Diffractions conjure up rippled waves crossing over, each disrupting the other, creating new patterns, the two waves changed and inseparable through the tr","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"360 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139235994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crafts in the Time of Coronavirus","authors":"Anna Kouhia","doi":"10.5204/mcj.2932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2932","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction In March 2020, many societal functions came to a standstill due to the worldwide spread of Covid-19. Due to the rules set by public healthcare authorities that aimed at “social distancing” to prevent the spread of the virus, the emphasis on domesticity was heightened during the pandemic. As people were forced to spend more time in the home environment, more time was allowed for household pursuits and local activities, such as crafts and home repair (Morse, Fine, and Friedlander). While there has been a rising interest in craft-making as the medium of expression for the past few decades (e.g., Peach), crafts seem to have undergone a serious breakthrough during the global pandemic crisis. In recent studies, crafting has been noted for its usefulness in providing a dimension of comfort and security in a time of instability and isolation (Rixhon), eventually becoming a much-needed conceptual shelter from the threat of the virus (Martin). Sewing seems to have assumed a significant role early in the pandemic, when craft-makers began to mitigate the spread of the virus by using their own sewing machines and material stashes to make masks for their families and friends; some also donated masks to hospital workers and others in need (Martindale, Armstead, and McKinney). While other forms of crafts were also widely practiced (e.g., Jones; Stalp, Covid-19 Global Quilt; Wenzel), face-mask sewing has been at the core of pandemic craft research, highlighting the role of home-based hobby crafting as a means of social survival that contributed to people's agency and feelings of productivity and usefulness during the outbreak of coronavirus (Hahn and Bhaduri; Hustvedt and Liang; Martindale, Armstead, and McKinney; Richards and Perreault; Schnittka).  This article analyses two craft hashtags on Instagram from March 2020 to December 2021, which offer a perspective on shifts in pandemic crafts in a linguistically localised crafting community. The hashtags crop up in the Finnish-speaking craft culture, defining pandemic crafts as “Covid craft”, #koronakäsityö, and “Covid crafts”, #koronakäsityöt. By definition, the Finnish word “käsityö” (which derives from the words “käsi”, hand, and “työ”, work) is a broad concept for all handiwork: it is not tied to any specific craft technique, but rather affirms work made by hand, or with tools that are held in hands. In addition, the concept of “käsityö” has no intended emphasis in regard of the phase of the project, or craft techniques or materials being used: it translates as an entity including both the idea of the product that is going to be made during the process of crafting, the embodied craft know-how of the making of the product, and the product itself (Kojonkoski-Rännäli 31; also Ihatsu). However, as is also disclosed in this study, the “käsityö” seems to have a connotation of craft work traditionally made by the persons assumed female by society or other people, and thus, findings may build on domesticit","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"124 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139235973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Threads That Weave Me","authors":"Brooke Collins-Gearing","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3016","url":null,"abstract":"Fig. 1: A Start.   I could write or I could weave.I could write or I could weave…Write, weave. Weave.Then a colleague and friend says to me: why do you weave?I weave to put myself back together again.I weave  the pieces of me that are shattered and broken.I weave because the rhythm, flow, feel, pattern and solidity comforts me.I weave because my body tells me to.I weave to breathe more slowly, more deeply.I weave because the threads that create the strands of my life need a language.…   This article reflects on my relationship with weaving and what it offers to the remaining threads of my life. Weaving is embodied, procedural and experiential: it is personal, cultural, and spiritual for me. It is a language that allows me sacred time and space, whether by myself (although I’m really never alone) or with other people. It is an extension of my breath, from my body, in co-creation with earth and sky that manifests as a solid object in my hands. It was when my colleague suggested I write about why I weave that I realised such reflection could help me tap into knowledge. Nithikul Nimkulrat says that knowledge is generated from within the researcher-practitioner’s artistic experience. The procedural and experiential knowledge thus becomes explicit as a written text and/or as visual representations. … With the slow pace of a craft-making process, the practitioner-researcher is able to generate ‘reflection-in-action’ and document the process. (1) For me, knowledge becomes an embodied state of being while I’m weaving: while my hands move, my body grounds, my heart calms, my mind detaches from thoughts, letting one flow to the next, as I watch one stitch lead / follow the next. Until the row becomes the spiral becomes the base becomes the basket. Each stitch documenting my reflections in the process of weaving the whole. The regenerative aspect of this process has been powerful and impactful for me because of my relationship with time and space, my relationship with my Country, my relationship with people, my relationship with sovereignty. I don’t have the words to describe how weaving allows me to embody a relationship with that tiny little spark of creativity in me, so I weave it instead. I see that spiral fractal in everything around me. Weaving, for me, has become a way to listen to them speak. The spiral centre of each round woven basket is my favourite part. I love spirals. Fibonacci sequence. Golden Ratio. Fractals. I’ve heard stories about how some people can look at a specific symbol or drawing and immediately transform their reality from reading the immense wisdom it held. I can only imagine what that must mean and feel like, but when I look at a spiral, anywhere, in anything, I can see through space and time differently. I imagine that must be what our DNA looks like. I feel an immense sense of connectedness when I see that smallest spiral circle core. Reflection in action. I believe we carry our Ancestors in our DNA, or maybe they carry us. I","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139235187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Knitting Ladies Online","authors":"Marja-Leena Rönkkö, Henna Lapinlahti, Virpi Yliverronen","doi":"10.5204/mcj.3014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3014","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction People across all cultures and stages of life have an innate need to create, as demonstrated by the practice of craft-making. Crafting combines skilled handwork and intellectual creativity to produce functional or artistic items. It has been handed down through generations and encompasses a wide range of activities, including knitting, crocheting, quilting, woodwork, and carving. Historically, crafting has been integral to societal development, serving both functional and aesthetic purposes, but it also represents a tangible connection to people’s cultural heritage and often reflects the customs and values of a community. Since the turn of the millennium there has been a notable resurgence in textile crafts that can be attributed to a growing desire for personal expression and a return to hands-on, sustainable practices in a digitally dominated era. Research has shown that a lot of practiced knitting is now not only a meaningful leisure activity for various demographic groups (Myllys; Rosner and Ryokai) but also associated with feelings of empowerment (Myzelev). Furthermore, several studies have underscored its profound impact on health, well-being, and overall quality of life (Adey; Fields; Mayne). While traditionally seen as a predominantly feminine craft, researchers such as Beyer, Desmarais, and Morneau have studied the masculine perspective of knitting. Contemporary reasons for knitting can be categorised into three broad areas: personal motivations, group effects (knitting with others), and altruism (knitting for others; Rusiñol-Rodríguez et al.). Unlike many crafting projects that are bound to specific locations and tools, knitting offers the flexibility of a portable work in progress, allowing hobbyists to knit virtually anywhere at any time (Rosner and Ryokai). Traditionally, knitting communities, often organised around projects and events, were found in public spaces like cafes and libraries (Price). In addition, in recent years, there has been a noticeable shift towards knitting festivals and meet-ups (Orton-Johnson) that offer knitters opportunities to gather at events centred on yarn, fibres, and all things related to them (Gajjala; Orton-Johnson). Knitting in Online Communities It is quite common for virtual networks and environments facilitated by technological advancement to become an integral part of modern knitting practice (Myllys). A number of online communities focussed on knitting have emerged on content-sharing platforms such blogs, podcasts, YouTube vlogs, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (Orton-Johnson). Modern technology allows knitting to expand beyond the realm of material creation into an experience that can involve photography and blogging (Orton-Johnson) or sharing information with the recipient of the knitted item as the project progresses (Rosner and Ryokai). The first English-language knitting podcasts were published in late 2005 as audio recordings that listeners could download (Bell). Video-format k","PeriodicalId":399256,"journal":{"name":"M/C Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139235477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}