063 - The Secret Life of Craft
“Knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the muscle.” - Asaro Mudmen Tribe
I am enjoying watching the UK’s portrait artist of the year series lately. It’s fascinating to see artists looking at the same subject, but come up with so many different interpretations. Portraits are always propaganda, and in the absence of a provided narrative, the work speaks as much about the artist as the subject.
In every episode the celebrity sitters get to pick their favourites to take home, and almost always those portraits don’t make the final shortlists. And in every episode as one firms an opinion and starts picking temporary favourites, the paintings also begins to speak for us.
What does this say about the paintings? What does it say about all the viewers - the subjects, the judges and the audience? The answers are subjective, and art is not meant to be subjected to a functional scrutiny.
But what about craft?
What is the role of craft in all of this then? Shouldn’t craft lend itself to creating a common denominator for all eyes? If not, then why should it matter?
I am afraid, this issue of Bombay Daak holds no clear answer, but it does venture into some attempts.
Time Spent Well
The Memoir That Found Me // Michaele Weissman on craft, but also on food, identity and relationship, but above all on craft —
I had a sense that some of the problems I faced were craft-related. How to frame a story that has no obvious beginning and no end? How to build scene upon scene in order to create a clear and dramatic narrative arc? How to use sensory detail to add immediacy and specificity to people and places
The story of the subversive power of Calypso music // A portrait of Calypso that breaks its history and its characters in its most pivotal points —
“I could write a song to make government strong, / I could write a song to bring government down”
Annotation Tuesday! Teju Cole on “Far Away From Here” // Worth every minute of the hour it might take you to read this —
…I want to give an account of what everybody who does photography knows, but no one ever talks about. Photo critics sometimes act like they’re above it all, and they never attend to the material conditions of the art. It was a little bit of inside baseball, and Sasha thought it was good; she thought it gave a sense of craft…
Daak Web Beat
In an earlier issue I spoke of how disappointing it was to not see a lot of Indie web projects. Either I am ignorant about cool new things web, or plain ignorant about what is cool. Either way, this is a dispatch of one such cool, nerdy, indie thing that looks every bit the projects of that I now miss - A History of Jazz Music.
A fundamental attribute of New Orleans was the perennial party atmosphere. This was not New York's melting pot, very competitive in nature: this was a melting pot that allowed for a lot of fun. New York was a cosmopolitan financial center. New Orleans was a cosmopolitan amusement park.
Time Spent Elsewhere
Brew me a Story - On Ghachar Ghochar and the Indian Coffee House
The History of Marginalia: medieval manuscripts - Surprisingly fascinating subversions and storytelling on the margins
Walkies : Mini animation by Julian Frost - Temporarily transfixed
On carrots and the underground - “If I want boring carrots, I’ll buy them.”
Issue #55 of Bombay Literary Magazine - Looks exciting, especially the visual narratives features
Sunday Matinee
Took a chance with Diego Lerman’s Argentine film The Substitute1 this week, and loved it! The movie is bookended by the questions on literature that we all grapple with, but in between is a tender tale inside the harshness of urban Argentinian life.
The movie’s symbolic use of glass and windows and mirrors, frames and threads the reflective arc of its protagonist, and all the frames, even when it captures urban decay, is beautiful.
Ways of Seeing
Corner shop: A visual archive by Alisha Kruse
As I traversed from the outskirts of London, into the more gentrified areas, I noticed that the bright and vibrant imagery and typography in the shop windows was being slowly replaced with minimal ‘clean’, greige typography. I was interested in looking at how design can signify something a lot greater than just ‘aesthetics’.
Watching the movie is what prompted all my questions on craft in this issue, that then coloured my watching of the lovely portraits of the series.