looking at the past through a rear view mirror

This video is mainly a response to Marshall McLuhan’s lines about the past’s recurring presence in the present, specifically examining craft and its revival. When craft becomes trendy, what part of it do we become aware of? The history of these objects seems to remain elusive. The revival of these craft traditions brings back a history, but one that's stilted and fragmented. We admire the work because of our fascination with nostalgia, but we don’t truly understand them. These objects become part of our present, but are now hollow and flat. A great line from Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Massage is: “we look at the present through the rear-view mirror.” What’s interesting here is the idea that history repeats itself, but also that each time it repeats, we have a lesser understanding of the past than we did before. Looking at history through a small mirror, we are bound to only learn a little about what we’re copying from the past. 

My video specifically looks at centuries old crafts like knitting and quilting, which remain popular today, but asking the question: what do we really know about these mediums and their histories? 

To start, I looked around my room to see what objects held associations with historical artistic traditions. A lot of them did. I was drawn to the handcrafted objects, ones that would take incredible care to create, that I’ve collected at thrift stores and antique sales. These works, which I’ve often bought cheaply, only take on a decorative role in my life. Even though my room is covered in lace and yarn, I never acknowledged how steeped in history these decorations are. For my video, I wanted to visually link these objects back to artifacts of their medium. I placed my possessions alongside objects from the collections of the Met and Victoria and Albert Museum. Some of the quilts shown are from the Gee Bend Quiltmakers. I rendered my belongings as 3d objects that look almost calcified, visually cueing them as artifacts. I also included audio from a working sewing machine, creating an audible connection to craft. Relying on two forms of perception, allows viewers to gain a closer, multifaceted relationship to history. I wanted viewers to see that when we look at our belongings, we should be aware of these things as artifacts of a past culture, not just the fascinations of our present.