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Encountering Fragments

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posted on 2022-10-19, 01:14 authored by Rosemary Woodcock
My creative practice involves collecting broken glass from discarded bottles and jars along the Merri Creek walking tracks in Melbourne’s North (Victoria, Australia). The glass pieces emerge as weather and human foot traffic disturb the topsoil, exposing an industrial history of rubbish dumping in the area. Sadly, the signs of Indigenous presence are long gone. It is mostly in the form of historical texts that one finds the Wurundjeri people who had lived along Merri Creek for thousands of years before white settlement.

This chapter describes how the practice of picking up broken glass produces further ‘findings’: many pieces of glass contain fragments of text which take on poetic and political contents. “… REMAINS THE PROPERTY…” and “…NOT TO BE…” make portentous claims. In a mode of dramatic irony, one unbroken brown bottle of bleach, sealed but half empty, proclaims “WHITE KING”.

I will examine the distinction between Epistêmê (knowledge) and technê (craft or art; practical making), to consider how the process of collecting, classifying and contextualising the contents of the glass pieces produces ‘findings’ in the context of Art-Science practice-led research. That there are no funds for ‘Craft-Science’ projects is an interesting point to consider in this context.

History

Source title

Craft Shaping Society: educating in the crafts the global experience

Pagination

tbc - tbc

Publication classification

B1 Book chapter

Editor/Contributor(s)

Lindy Joubert

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