[Themaintainers] Talk: Bridget Harvey "Tending to: Material and Social Practices of Care" Maintenance & Philosophy SIG (Thursday March 14th 1800-1915 UTC+1)

[mark young]

Dear all,

Hope this email finds everyone well. We’d like to announce the next session
of the SPT Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology SIG on Thursday 8th of
February (1800-1915 UTC+1). In this session, we’re very excited to welcome
Bridget Harvey who will be drawing on her experience as an artist and
repairer to guide us through a curated discussion on material and social
practices of care. In her talk, Bridget will demonstrate how the analysis
of the practice of mending objects in a range of different contexts - from
repair cafes to the artist’s studio - sheds light on the relationships
between materiality, care and skill. You’ll find an abstract below - if
you'd like a link for the talk, email me at mark at markthomasyoung.net

*Tending to: Material and Social Practices of Care*

Bridget Harvey

Thursday 14th March (1800-1915 UTC+1)

*Abstract:* SciFi writer Philip K Dick’s character, the *Variable Man *(1969)
is accidentally brought forwards to a time when knowledge is
compartmentalised, people highly specialised. He crosses these boundaries
by working with his hands, knowing about processes and techniques rather
than specific disciplines. Parted from his Fixit cart, he lands in a lab
and sets about using their tools to solve a problem adjacent to the one
suggested to him. One of his clearest characteristics is that he cares
deeply about his material practice - that of keeping things working
(itself, care in practice). The ability to look at what we have to hand
through a new lens when faced with repair work (as suggested by eg,
Sennett, 2009 amongst others) also suggests care sensibilities - firstly in
knowing what we have, and then in thinking how to extend or expand its use.
This creates the dynamism that Sennett assigns to certain repair works
(2009, p238) through bricolage practices and a variable, flexible approach
to repair and maintenance work (eg, Harper, 1987). In the workplace
(fictional or not), skilled maintenance work is respected, and socially it
becomes respect for skilled colleagues in the workplace (eg. Alasheev,
1992-93, in Adamson, 2018). However this does not always extend to domestic
material care work (Schwartz Cowan, 1983) where these care practices may
take on different meanings (Gregson, 2009), and might have been designated
to particular persons to free another of the material care burden (Lippard,
1978 in Adamson, 2018). The ‘personal production’ of repair/maintenance
work (done by oneself without recourse to industrial
processes/products) (Alasheev,
1992-93, in Adamson, 2018, p295) socially positions people and objects, and
is imbued with privileges.
Overall, I will use the characteristics and positions of the Variable Man
as both needed - skilled, caring and vital, and as a threat - able, agile
and unwanted, to pull together ideas of how care and repair/maintenance
practices help shape the world materially and socially. Presenting the
Variable Man as an archetype, I will discuss repair and maintenance as a
material practice, adjacent to making practices, yet deeply embedded within
them, as inherently cross discipline and multidiscipline. I will discuss
this in conjunction with ideas about material and conceptual practices of
care for objects, drawing from my own practice and a series of research
podcasts I have been recording with makers, curators, and conservators
(conversations funded by the CCW Staff Research Fund, University of the
Arts London; and the Centre for Circular Design, to be released summer
2023). The Variable Man used his work to explore and expand objects and
worlds. We embody care, exploring and expanding objects, skills and
relationships, through repair and maintenance. As practices, they allow us
to acknowledge our tendencies and to tend to each other and our things
endlessly.

(In order to avoid confusion regarding the timing of the talks - the
following table clarifies when the talks begin in different locations)
New York:   12:00
San Francisco: 09:00
London:   17:00
Amsterdam:   18:00


Mark Thomas Young
Associate Professor
University of Bergen
https://univie.academia.edu/MarkThomasYoung
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