Post Craft: Post What and What’s Next?

What is meant by the term "post-craft" and how can it be useful to make sense of craft today? This talk will explore how we can understand craft following its re-entry into the economic, political and manufacturing mainstream in the 21st century.

This new centrality has been aided by the synergy between craft and digital technologies, the advocacy for more ethical, local, and environmentally conscious cultures of making, the desire for 'authenticity' in a seemingly inauthentic world, and a decolonialising critique that re-evaluates craft’s place in a global context.

The craft revival of the 2000s, which saw craft once again embraced by design, art, architecture and other art forms, is now not just another revival but seemingly the start of a long-term reconfiguration of craft’s place in the world.

Rossi will explore some foundational ideas of modern and post craft in the seminar, before exploring how to consider craft in the tumults of 2020s, from the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements to Covid, the climate emergency and growing global conflicts.

About Professor Catharine Rossi

Dr Catharine Rossi is Professor of Architecture at the University for the Creative Arts Canterbury, where she leads research in the School for Architecture and Design. Focused on design history, her research interests include contemporary design, post-war Italian design and architecture, craft, club culture, and feminism.