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Uncrafting Worth: using crafty labour to renegotiate worth

Andrea van der Kuil

2020-2022

Uncrafting Worth is a craftistic research that hypothesises that when the female crafter’s body, her craft object, and her crafting process all become opaque bodies, the ability to renegotiate the worth of these bodies becomes possible. Placed at the intersection of feminist theory, craftivism, and performance practices, the research interrogates the concept of worth by offering a new subsection to craftivism called crafty labour, investigating the idea of unreclaiming, and eventually uncovering an alternative approach to durationality. Where feminist theory focuses on exposing the mechanisms of gender, performance practices encompasses the body in performance, and craftivism highlights craft as a form of activism; this research focuses on how the intersection of the three creates a space where fixed identity definitions are queered and a fluid freedom in discussion between bodies may take place.

Supervisor: Fenia Kotsopoulou
External Mentors: Casey Jenkins, and Nishant Shah.

Keywords: Craftivism, crafty labour, women’s work, domestic craft, performativity, gender studies, feminism, feminist studies, duration, performance practices, autoethnography, process, labour, worth.

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