Fanny Schwarz – illustratör

What do we see when watching people make? What words can do justice to haptic and tacit knowledge and skills deployed by schooled and self-taught makers, at home, in the street, or in dedicated making environments? These questions informed “durational observation” workshops and a writing assignment at HDK-Valand, KHiO and Aalto university, in a transnational effort to develop a toolbox for looking at, and talking about, making. The project began at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, where we both teach. Our students have over the last few years produced excellent observation assignments, which contradict their own ambivalent feelings towards writing, and allow them to position themselves in relation to craft at large. Which craft they decide to pay attention to is a political decision: the situations they chose are imbedded in systems of extraction, consumption, transmission, and maintenance, and constrained by the policies that shape them. The essays and descriptions gathered in this publication will pay tribute to craft students’ fine-tuned knowledge, and to the precision of their observation. Sharing is a step towards promoting the art of noticing, and towards developing a literacy of the hand-made: a knowledge that we already have, but seldom articulate, about the way objects come into being, and the ecologies that make their existence possible. It is also the first step towards making observation, description and analysis part of critical studio practice. The texts are edited by Ben Lignel and Åsa Dybwad Norman (HDK-Valand), and three assistant editors: Carla Rotenberg Taboada (Aalto University), Iliana Papadimitriou (Oslo National Academy of the Arts), and Sofie Alm Nordsveen (HDK-Valand).