Exhibition: The Homemade Revolution

All the links in this post are to German language homepages, sorry! But I’m sure that google translate does a good enough job for you to get the gist of a page. 

The Frankfurt Museum of Communication in Germany will be opening a special exhibition on the 25th August about the DIY revolution. The exhibition will look at the rise and relevance of the amateur crafters and why and to what end people have become involved. The exhibition producers also also have a blog which links to lots website, both in German and English. 

The exhibition includes examples from KnitHerStory, a yarnbombing project I was involved in for International Women’s Day in March this year in Vienna. 100 women knitted or crocheted objects that would decorate the route of the march (photos here). Unlike other yarnbombing projects undertaken by the same group, this time a license was sought and granted from the Vienna City Council, to ensure that the works wouldn’t be removed before the march took place. We received approval to decorate trees, street lamps etc to line the “Ring”, a road which circles Vienna’s First District and is often the site of organised protests, as many of the most important municipal buildings line it (Parliament, City Hall, University of Vienna’s main building, several major museums, theaters and the former Imperial Palace). The approval ran from the Saturday morning of the march until the following Saturday. We were warned after the approval ran out, if the works were still there they would be removed. 

However, during the night following the day of the march the MA48 (responsible for street-cleaning and rubbish disposal) were seen cutting down the wool with gardening shears. One of the women who had been involved in the project saw what was happening and protested to the men that they were allowed to hang there for another week. She was able to salvage some of the pieces, but that didn’t stop the MA48 from removing most of the items.

Following the controversy that followed and the debate about attitudes towards craft and women’s art work , the Frankfurt Museum of Communication contacted KnitHerStory and asked whether they could borrow some items for the exhibition. Mine - the patchwork-style rainbow flag - wasn’t saved, so I can’t pretend to be an internationally exhibited knitting artist, but it did hang veeeery close the the Vienna art history museum for almost 24 hours. Does that count? 

Campaign Zone opens at the International Slavery Museum

As you will no doubt be aware the International Slavery Museum has never been content just to reflect on the history of the transatlantic slave trade, its abolition and legacies. Anyone who has read the excellent blog posts by the head of the museum Richard Benjamin will know that it is an active campaigning museum which works to raise awareness of modern forms of slavery and how people can help in the fight against them.

This has led the museum to hold the Trafficked exhibition and acquire and exhibit thought provoking items such as the ankle bracelets worn by modern day slaves and the artwork ‘Missing’ (2007) by Rachel Wilberforce, all of which are currently on display.

An exciting new initiative at the museum is the creation of a dedicated Campaign Zone, which will focus on these the contemporary issues. The Campaign Zone includes a resource area and an exhibition space, with its first exhibition Home Alone: end domestic slavery opening today.

I caught up with collections development officer Stephen Carl-Lokko for a quick preview of the Campaign Zone yesterday and photographed him by his favourite quote in the entrance, which is an important and very fitting message:

 ”When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.” Desmond Tutu

This marks the start of a busy couple of months for the museum, which is hosting the inaugural conference of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums next week. Once that has finished staff will just have time to prepare for the special events planned for Black History Month in October.

Do It Anyway - Activism book

The blog post also contains some videos with two of the featured activist (one of which is the actor Rosario Dawson) and the author describing why she chose this subject and what it means to her.

I know our generation, though it is often identified as lazy or unmotivated, actually cares a great deal about making a difference, and I think this book – though it profiles activists who are definitely older than us - could still be inspirational for us. This leads me to pose the question(s): what does activism mean to you? Who are some successful activists that you know?