Sennet on Craft

30^th of November

I just found a the perfect text to accompany my exhibition in Belfast ! My idea of showing a movie with crafters working in clay, transforming a lump of clay into a beautiful object, as the ultimate touch display , but also relating to craft :

'Richard Sennet writes in his book : The Crafter : 'It taxes the powers of the most professional writer to describe exactly how to tie a slipknot (and it is certainly beyond mine). Here is a , perhaps the,

fundamental human limit: Language is not an adequate ''mirror-tool'' for the physical movements of the human body. ( ) One solution to the limits of language is to substitute the image for the word. The many plates , by many hands that richly furnish the encyclopedia made this assist for workers unable to explain themselves in words , and in a particular way. In illustrations of glass blowing, for instance, each stage of blowing a glass bottle appears in a separate image ; all the junk in the workshop has been illuminated , and the viewer focuses on just what hands and mouth need to do at this moment to transform the molten liquid into a bottle. ( In my case this would be the clay bulk into an sculpture ). The images, in other words, illuminate by clarifying and simplifying movement into a series of clear pictures of the sort the photographer Henri Cartier -Bresson called' decisive moments'.

He continues to say that : 'It might be possible to imagine an experience of enlightenment strictly as a visual experience following this photographic procedure, one that enables our eyes to do the thinking about material things . In silence , as in a monastery , communication among people would be reduced to a minimum for the sake of contemplating how an object is made.

Zen- Buddhism follows this non verbal path , taking the craftsman to be an emblematic figure who enlightens by showing rather than telling.'

This text, (The Craftsman, p. 95 ) I would like to be blown up in a big text in proximity of the film shown, perhaps even on the outside of the space where the film is going to be seen..