Abstract

This thesis considers everyday experience as the defining condition of craft that has largely escaped scholarly attention. Critically responding to craft’s theoretical stance as the ‘other’ of art and industry, I turn to philosophy to examine how non-Kantian strands of aesthetic theory might enable art historical study of craft to encompass the experience of ordinary making. Through an examination of flat ontological frameworks put forth by New Materialism and its older iterations in John Dewey and Indigenous thought, I argue that aesthetic frameworks deriving from flat ontologies, or what I call “flat aesthetics,” provide a way to return to a less fragmented creative landscape in which craft is the ground for all creative practice.
Drawing inspiration from art historical examinations of the counterculture and neo-avant garde movement Fluxus, I focus on how flat ontologies provide the philosophical basis for an everyday aesthetics that recognizes the ordinary experience of making in relational terms, as part of a dynamic network of agential forces. I conclude by speculating that understanding everyday craft in this way holds potential to renew its relevance and pertinence to the ethical pursuit of “the good life,” pointing to new directions for further work to be done in this area.