Craft Attack: The Framing of Yarn Bombing (original) (raw)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which yarn bombers construct, or frame, their practice. Starting with a consideration of the legal framing of yarn bombing, the chapter explores some of the reasons why yarn bombing may not attract the attention of law enforcement in the same way other forms of graffiti do, before considering what yarn bombers had to say about the (street) art/graffiti divide. Following this, the chapter looks more closely at how yarn bombers conceptualise the practice in relation to themes of deviancy, subversion, risk, thrill-seeking, and carnival.

Notes

    1. While it does not appear that there have been any arrests, yarn bombers have certainly attracted the attention of law enforcement and local council officials, as I discuss further on in this chapter. A number have been asked to remove installations, but media reports of such interactions tend to suggest a sympathetic approach by officials. For example, in 2012 San Diego knitter ‘Bryan’ was asked by local officials to remove the 100 flower stem yarn bombs that he had attached to street signs around the city of Clairemont. City officials stated that there were ‘too many restrictions to overcome’ and that they ‘had looked through state law and local politics trying to find some way of allowing the flowers to remain in place’, but that this was not possible (Davis 2012). Bryan was given 10 days to ‘remove and preserve’ the creations and was encouraged to work with private businesses and individuals to ‘rehome’ his creations in locations that were not restricted by state and local laws (Davis 2012).
    1. As Hahner and Varda (2014: 305) note, ‘not all yarn bombers are white, middle class women…Rather, the discourses and practices of yarn bombing suture the enterprise to the white womanly body as a discursive, yet material, figure’.
    1. It is worth noting, however, that context is particularly important here. As discussed in a forthcoming publication (Fishwick and McGovern 2019), craftivist acts such as yarn bombing can be heavily policed and criminalised if and when it is deemed explicitly political or transgresses other laws. For example, ‘craftivists who engage in protest by attaching their work to machinery or across a gateway—as part of an environmental protest against mines or Coal Seam Gas exploration—or who simply sit and knit on land owned by the government, can now be subject to prosecution leading to imprisonment and heavy fines’ (Fishwick and McGovern 2019; see also Gotsis 2015; White and MacKenzie 2018; Environmental Defenders’ Office 2016).
    1. ‘Divvy van’ is Australian slang for Divisional Van, a utility vehicle typically used by police that has a cage on the back for holding arrestees.
    1. The Japanese word for balaclava (Oese-Lloyd cited in Moore and Prain 2009: 123)

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  1. School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
    Alyce McGovern

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  1. Alyce McGovern
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Correspondence toAlyce McGovern .

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McGovern, A. (2019). Craft Attack: The Framing of Yarn Bombing. In: Craftivism and Yarn Bombing. Critical Criminological Perspectives. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1\_4

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