Oxman rant

A revolution by any other name…

I wish to congratulate the lucky or insightful individual who suggested Neri Oxman as a speaker for the 09 SNAG Convention. It placed SNAG on the map of organizations recognizing emerging trends, innovators and the academic elite. Oxman proves that no mater how arcane or stagnant the academic environment may be, some good can come of it.

Her monologue appeared as one geared toward recruitment rather than enlightenment, invocation over advocation. Her microcosmic approach to a tradition of top-down management attempts to refocus a trade away from aesthetic formulation and toward the most essential material knowledge. As a humble interloper pursuing an infantile exploration of process Oxman plead intersection and spoke of a world of craft as the salvation of the planet. Calling for no less than the foundational restructuring of her field to the point of dissolution into biotechnological and medical realms, Oxman’s mission becomes one of inspiration as much as skepticism.

Oxman’s late revolution bespeaks of the failure of Modernism to subjugate the physical and mental world through a division-of-labor model and the use of categorization to over-specialize study to the point of über-jargon. Indeed the notion of Oxman’s trespass into the field of craft or art presents the very fallacy that plagues innovation and revolutionary action crucial to a survival of the status quo. I’m glad we only gave her forty-five, for her own sake. Our perimeter breached, we take no prisoners.

The history lessons presented throughout the conference merely exacerbated the Neri Ripple. Grey tales told meandering yarns of those long gone provided the perfect fodder for the fiery future that came from the East. Functional aesthetics, a fuller awareness of the materials beit historical, phenomenological, aesthetic or structural, all are leveled by the overarching purpose and the revelation of microstructural compositionally-designed materials.
My only question is one of ownership.
We (the royal corporate we) fashion new, patented saviour resources while concrete and steel markets dance ever upward toward the sun. Noble pursuits have found the terrors of anthrax, napalm, Lyme disease, Little Boy and Fat Man, and recently genetic pollution and life patents.
Harken to the joys and splendors for they may be as glorious as the plagues and misfortune.

As far as saving the planet I see the intimacy with matter possessed by metalsmiths as crucial in the final throes against our non-existent policy and unfulfilled action. As Cabarello spoke of our Attention Economy, some say hyperapitalist Knowledge Economy, most of the silent majority can only find a fatigue in mediated facts, mere perfunctory information. This debility solaces the greedy and mollifies the populace into inaction, where the only power realized becomes the creation of capital through a currency of their personal information and customized consumption. Only through a return of attention to a vertical and ecological understanding of structure and function, will our manufactured shopocalypse come to a close.

With this in mind, Oxman invokes the world of Craft to join her FABricology Crusade.
And I for one say, “Avast ye maties! All aboard the SS Materialecology!”

from the studio
-Rabo Karabekian