New Europeans

A Test Site For Everyday Life

Deeply Emotional Playtime Mar10 2016, Amsterdam

Craftsmanship and Europe – Week 10 Quote Explained

This week’s quote, taken from Richard Sennett’s book The Craftsman, doesn’t exactly lend itself to obvious association with everyday life in Europe (the general theme of our project). But in the spirit of the conspicuously under-explained artistic intervention “Seven Easy Blank Wall Solutions” (a collaboration between Dina Danish and New Europeans Freja and Stefan, recently installed at the wall), I think it indirectly says a lot about our project’s theme.

The quote was first and foremost a reaction to the big strides we’ve lately been making at the wall in terms of changing the space. But there is more to it than that.

As my previous article on punk’s DIY ethic shows, the act of crafting a chair on your own from basic raw materials is quite political in its ability to empower. And this begins to shed some light on why this week’s quote is so relevant.

Europe is a big concept and people shy away from trying to grasp it. Peter Saville, the legendary designer of punk record label Factory Records, said of British popular music in the mid 1970s that it had ceased to be touchable. So too in the present day Europe has ceased to be touchable. According to Saville, what punk did is make music touchable again. Europe needs the same sort of revolution.

How can we make Europe touchable? By making European things by ourselves. And to start with, it could be as simple as building a chair, specifically, a chair designed by an Italian communist in the 1970s, that was intended to be made and used by the regular Italian worker. Said designer, Enzo Mari, offered us a beautiful set of designs for furniture that were meant to teach people the basic ideas that they would need to follow to make furniture for themselves. His hope was that the designs would start people on the road to independence from the centralised production process and thus give them greater independence from any central authority.

Taking our cue from his work, in showing how easy it is for the ordinary European to do something themselves we can also show how easy it would be for them to take greater control over their everyday life. And in the process we can rehabilitate something that has long been absent from most people’s lives, the joy of craftsmanship.