The New Gotham Ballroom: One night only! June 8th
Join us for our annual spring gala, The New Gotham Ballroom, a pop-up 1930s era night-club at the Stan Mansion with dinner by Chef Jared Wentworth and Longman & Eagle. Tickets on sale now!
the archives
Cat Mazza: Knit for Defense
OPENING: Friday, December 1, 2006, 6:00 - 9:00 PM
Knitoscope Testimonies: December 1, 2006 - January 6, 2007
Knit for Defense: January 12, 2007 February 10, 2007
SALON: Remaking Culture, Tuesday, December 12, 7:00 PM
OPEN CRIT: Thursday, December 14, 7:00 PM
What are the politics of crafting? Artist Cat Mazza, the founder of microRevolt, works in a series of art projects that engage the historical overlap of textiles as a technology leader with its equally crucial history in the labor movement. Combining knitting machines and digital social networks, Mazza seeks to educate audiences about the sweatshop crisis, demonstrating how DIY production returns agency to the maker.
On December 1st, Mazza will kick-off her residency at ThreeWalls with an exhibition of her Knitoscope Testimonies, a needle-point animation of garment worker and labor activist testimonies. Mazza will also exhibit logoknit stockings, just in time for the holidays, made with microRevolts knitPro web application a free web application that translates digital images into knit, crochet, needlepoint and cross-stitch patterns that mimic the pre-industrial tradition of free exchange of patterns (and innovation).
While in residency, Mazza will work publicly, bringing her studio into the exhibition space, opening up her project to a transparency that allows for communication and collaboration, furthering her efforts to mobilize a worldwide network of craft hobbyists in stitched projects that educate about the sweatshop crisis. Mazza will be working on NARCA (NEW AMERICAN RADICAL CRAFT ALLIANCE) - hack apparel as art practice - that seeks to develop an alternative micro-economy in the Americas by networking cells of craft hobbyists in DIY apparel production.
At the beginning of the New Year, ThreeWalls presents Knit for Defense, Cat Mazza's closing exhibition and culmination of her residency research. Continuing to explore the link between personal agency and political power, Mazzas studio knitting practice switches focus from sweat-shop labor to war-time effort, adapting World War II knit-for-the-troops knitting patterns to explore the tradition of war-time gift economy and doing your part. For Knit for Defense, Mazza designed and knit wool helmet liners from vintage knitting patterns for the contemporary public officials in charge of Iraq war policy decisions. She also continues to explore the relationship inherent between knitting and technology, exhibiting a new knitted animation generated from the cell-phone video interviews she conducted while in Chicago.
Cat Mazzas 2005 exhibitions include: Prix Ars Electronica, where she received a Digital Communities award; SESI gallery in So Paulo, Brazil; "Fuzzy Logic" at the Futuresonic Festival in Manchester, UK, and "Film to Fiber" at Artists Space in NYC as part of the Performa Biennial. Her project "Knitoscope Testimonies" was commissioned by Turbulence with partial funding from the Jerome foundation. Her work has been reviewed/published in Knit Knit, LEA MIT Press, Bust magazine, and the Eyebeam Journal. Mazza received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Links:
Mazza's interview with We Make Money Not Art
Mazza's interview with Eyebeam