Dark Mountain: Issue 8 – Technê is an anthology about technology in its broadest sense: tools and techniques that we use for creativity, for craft, for life. It was the first issue I worked on and I still return to it as a beautiful tome that speaks to the human relationship with tools.
My first selection is Jay Lovekin’s piece ‘My Pocket Knife’. When I was 13 my dad gave me a penknife and I remember it was a big deal. For the first time, I was allowed to carve arrows unaccompanied. I still own and use that penknife. It’s been invaluable for camping trips, DIY, crafting and more over the years, so when I revisited Issue 8, the poignancy of this short and sweet piece jumped out. It speaks of Jay’s relationship with his own first penknife: receiving it as a child and then imbuing this precious tool with meaning and significance through repeated use. My own making practice has changed over the years but I am grateful that I was encouraged to use and trust my own tools at a young age. It’s given me the confidence to pick up new ones as an adult and the audacity that I think I can work out how to use them! I wonder how many children now dream of a penknife, or whether a phone or tablet is now the tool they are keen to be trusted with?
As we descend into late stage capitalism, more and more people are being soothed and empowered by the simple acts of making and crafting, both as a counter-response to over-consumerism and as a way to quieten the mind. The second piece in my archive selection is Cate Chapman’s gorgeous poem about knitting, ‘A Pattern for Happiness’. I am not a knitter, but relate wholeheartedly to the sentiment of this poem when thinking about my own crafting practice of stitching and mending – the rhythmic, communal and joyful aspects of it are all vital to the process and the product. Cate really captures the many reasons why creating one’s own things (in this case knitted socks) is not just a beautiful and peaceful thing to do but also has significance in a world orientated towards convenience and speed. (AO)
My Pocket Knife
It was always there, hidden in my pocket, like a useful secret to be drawn out and opened up with a kind of nonchalant delight whenever it was needed. Getting your first knife was like a small but unforgettable rite of passage. Your parents would make a judgement call, perhaps near your birthday or on holiday, and then there it was, nestling in your hand, and life would never be the same. You progressed eventually from pen knives to bigger and better lock knives, and on to the splendid and slightly intimidating sheath knife, hanging all showy from your belt; or perhaps a survival knife, with a compass in the pommel, and a hollow handle filled with fish hooks and plasters and matches, essentials for pretending to get lost in the woods.
Knives were talismanic. I well remember thrashing around, retracing steps in search of a knife lost while out playing in the hills, returning home with a weird, slightly lonely feeling, having given up at dusk. I knew I could probably replace it exactly, but the countless hours of doing and making and wielding, and my sweat soaked into the handle and the scars on my fingers, had imbued it somehow with what could not be bought. It was no longer merely an object that I happened to own. It had mysteriously become something more. I couldn’t articulate that then, but I badly wanted it back.
It was always there, hidden in my pocket, like a useful secret to be drawn out and opened up with a kind of nonchalant delight whenever it was needed.
So knives were for me and no doubt many others, our first real and interesting tools as children. They were an introduction, smooth and uncomplicated by guidance or rules, to using our hands skilfully. An entry point into the world of raw manual dexterity. The subtleties and frustrations and delights of experimenting with tools and materials came to us effortlessly, artlessly, at a time in our lives when fear of failure was largely a vague shadow on the distant future horizon. We used these sharp-edged tools freely, and with gradually increasing care and skill, because we could, and because we needed to. We needed to because they were part of the ecology of our childhood – because for kids who were encouraged and often ordered outdoors, away from the limited watchable TV back then, they were a necessary and appropriate tool for doing the things we liked to do.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t still ample opportunities today to do the same things, in the same way as we did back then. But fewof us would claim that the way we pass much of our time has not altered radically in a few short decades. That not just the rules of the game, but the games themselves, have changed.
– Jay Lovekin
A Pattern for Happiness
- Cast on one idea. Let it percolate into your consciousness like good coffee. Feel the texture of the thing in your mind; will it into being.
- If knitting, choose good needles that your hands love to touch. Choose a good chair, good light, and good company.
- Ideally, create clothing and conversation together. Observe the capacity of shared rhythm to loosen tongues. Piece together cloth and meaning confidently, and with care.
- Make time. Find a stitch pattern that feels right. Maybe seed stitch: k1, p1; alternate rows. Let the thing grow to fill the space your mind has made for it.
- Talk, make. Unpick any dense areas of thread or thought, and tie up loose ends. The Latin root of our words for story (text) and cloth (textile) are the same: texere, to weave.
- Make with love, or defiance, or whatever you find. Be steady and purposeful. Stay firm in your original intention or allow things to take their course, as you wish.
- As each stitch passes through your fingers, like time, make it count.
- Bind everything you are into the things that you make. This garment/blanket/cloth will beat with the rhythm you give it, its colours and irregularities will be your own. Perhaps someone will love it because it is beautiful, or because you have poured yourself into its making.
- Allow the quietness of repetition to penetrate your thinking. Make the rhythm of your needles a mantra. Allow your secret heart to spool out, calmly and quietly and endlessly.
- Revel in your capacity to create, slowly and with care, things that can be made quickly, brutally, and without conscience. You could, of course, have bought those socks, and with far less effort.
– Cate Chapman
John Hartley is an artist and researcher based in London and Cornwall. He registers the collapse and emergence of varied apparatuses in marine and social milieux. He has shared his work internationally and has previously directed curatorial projects and worked at Arts Council England.ambivalency.net
Dark Mountain: Issue 8 – Technê (PDF)
The Autumn 2015 edition is a special issue of non-fiction and artwork on the subject of technê and technology.
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