Beyond Representation: Performance in the Craft Practice of Wire-Bending in Trinidad & Tobago

• In Event: No Paper, No Pencil, No Tape Measure: Situated Craft Practices, Computation, and Automation

Abstract

Recently there has been a call for art and design as new, challenging fields for future research in STS. This ranges from looking into art and design practices to extend STS concepts, to employing methods in art and design to explore issues in STS. In this paper, I extend concepts and explore issues in STS by rupturing and reimagining the craft practice of wire-bending in Trinidad & Tobago. First, by employing a nonrepresentational approach, I discuss concepts of sociality, corporeality, materials and materiality in the practice. Second, rather than a passive observation of the craft, I actively engage in the practice for knowledge to emerge through my senses, my body, and the materials. Finally, I create a series of long exposure photographs which record and illustrate my corporeal experience in wire-bending. The result is that a new definition of wire-bending that acknowledges the rituals and entangled materialities in the practice emerges from this reconceptualization. Wire-bending is not simply, “wire and other thin, flexible strands of material bent with hand tools to create 2D and 3D structures,” but it is instead “a milieu of interactions between material, community, senses, and the moving body in making with static and dynamic linear materials for concurrent expressions of each in three-dimensional space.”

Author

• Vernelle A Noel, Georgia Institute of Technology