Yarn Bombing as Multimodal Rhetoric
Literature Review
A study of yarn bombing in the context of multimodal rhetoric requires an understanding of knitting, women, and material rhetoric. While the latter two topics are covered by incorporation in the majority of the general articles on yarn bombing, a specific piece on the history of women’s politicized knitting in America shall begin my discussion. While yarn bombing is not solely knitted, much of the study of yarn bombing focuses on knitted examples. For this reason, I too will focus on knitted yarn bombing.
Tove Hermanson focuses on women’s knitting in America in general with his "Knitting as Dissent: Female Resistance in America since the Revolutionary War.” While yarn bombing is not only knitting, female-initiated, or American, his overview of knitting is useful to understand the intersection through time of knitting, feminism, and politics in America. From the era of the Revolutionary War when women spun and knitted material to facilitate a long-term boycott of British goods (1), to the two world wars where American knitting was capitalized upon by the government to contain women in a domestic activity for the sake of patriotism (3-4), Tove reminds us that in the radical 1960’s and 70’s there was a split viewpoint that knitting was either a reclamation of women’s work or a symbol of drudgery. Handcrafts fell out of interest in the 1980’s, but revived in the 1990’s and 2000’s into the current appreciation that handcrafts now receive. The salient concluding point Hermanson makes about knitting is that knitting is becoming a mass performative activity, and that through social engagement, knitting has the potential to politicize (1-8). It is this politicizing potential, a potential for communicating and convincing that handcrafts possess, that allows yarn bombing to be rhetorical.
Bratich and Brush handle primarily the broader crafts and activism side of handcrafts in their “Fabricating Activism: Craft-Work, Popular Culture, Gender.” They explore three major areas of the handcrafting culture, termed “fabriculture”, examining the spaces of craft production in the context of gender, technology, and culture, revealing new political possibilities (233). The study overall looks at craft-as-power, a power that has the capacity to create community, adjust a perspective on time itself, and redefine contemporary activism activities (234). While discussing knitting specifically, the concept of taking knitting out of the private realm and into the public realm brings up a struggle of psychology when that which is interior is placed on the exterior (236-239), a challenge to traditional standards of domesticity in which women’s work was hidden away out of the public eye. This publicity of handcrafts in general, and knitting in particular, is promoted in part by the capacity of Internet connections, which becomes the base upon which much of the contemporary knitting community is developed (237-9). Crafts and activism combined, or craftivism, Bratich and Brush argue, pushes people to rethink binaries such as the oppositions between private and public, past and present, and old and new (254-5). It is exactly this challenge to established binaries and perspectives in general that allows yarn bombing to be such a powerful force in the social sphere.
Goggin writes several articles concerning yarn bombing, one of which is primarily concerned with the concept of rhetorical citizenship in public space as it relates to yarn bombing. She describes the nature of protesting as in itself laying claim in public spaces to rhetorical citizenship, and how yarn bombing fits into a claim of space in the context of protesting (“Yarn Bombing: Claiming Rhetorical Citizenship in Public Spaces” 94). She argues that yarn bombing as a feminist activity exists on a continuum of intentional crafting, with domestic arts celebrated on one side and public knitting for political protest existing on the opposite side. Goggin explains that a primary feature of yarn bombing is its existence in unexpected places, disrupting the genius loci or characteristic nature of a given space, demanding a response of some sort to a space transformed by color, difference, and publicized domestic work (96). This making and remaking of public space through yarn bombing is rhetorical and in its rhetoricity allows the yarn artists to mold a space to their intentions, for however short a period of time and in however large or small a way. When a place is yarn bombed, the space is transformed and the authority that typically regulates that space is subverted with the existence of the yarn bomb (101). Overall Goggin writes here that the rhetoricity of yarn bombing allows it to be used to political ends, specifically to claim rhetorical citizenship in a public space.
In “Knitting Social Identity: Yarn Graffiti in Transnational Craftivist Protests”, Goggin revisits yarn bombing to focus on the concept of social identity of yarn bombers. She explains that the rising interest and participation in knitting and crochet work is connected with forming social identities, drawing on the concept of embodiment and performativity playing vital roles in constructing an identity (3). Goggin writes here that identity can be developed and negotiated through the “becoming” process (3). Claiming that thing theory is an integral part of studying identity through making, Goggin explains that the things we make “bear knowledge of the world on par with the words we speak” (4), and that things are capable of replacing words themselves. Goggin examines specific instances of yarn bombing throughout the world to show how social identity is built and rebuilt through protests by craftivists, whether in response to war, economic situations, sustainability measures, or political decisions (7-10). Through this piece she demonstrates that in yarn bombing, social identity can be explored, formed, performed and reformed as binaries are challenged and overturned in the intersection of third-wave feminism, DIY popular culture, and contemporary art. In this intersection, the act of yarn bombing as protest uses knitting and crocheting as a rhetorical device to gently disrupt a space for a purpose.
Farinosi and Fortunati also argue that yarn bombing occurs at the intersection of different, unique realms. They explain that yarn bombing occurs at a connection of five different dimensions; activism, domesticity, handicraft, art, and feminism (140). As they review the characteristics of yarn bombing as a movement, they mention the role of knitters as citizens who create craft, use online platforms to present the movement internationally, and emphasize the process versus the product (148). Farinosi and Fortunati conduct a study specifically on one yarn bombing event, the Mettiamoci una pezza, or, “Let’s patch it” of L’Aquila, Italy in 2013 after an earthquake had devastated the city three years before. When action to repair damages to the city hall was troublingly slow, some citizens decided to yarn bomb the building (140). Farinosi and Fortunati approach the research with a combination of in-person interviews with participants themselves as well as a study of the online material published by the craftivists as they headed up the project. Their findings revealed that the participants were primarily women, that the participants were of widely varying ages across generations, yarn replaced words in the movement itself, the center of the community was online via blog platforms and Facebook pages, and via its online presence support was raised transnationally (148-56). Farinosi and Fortunati conclude that Mettiamoci una pezza was a feminist project that exhibited connection between the five dimensions they described and resulted in a product of protest characterized by gentleness, positivity, and an aesthetically pleasing nature (155-6), a project that fundamentally promoted social change (157), taking the values of beauty, solidarity, and consolation and projecting them through the strategy of “a fierce and active peace” (139). This instance of a yarn bombing in Italy that drew transnational support and attention through the material rhetoric of the yarn bombing itself and the online presence of the knitting community alongside it demonstrates the intersectionality of yarn bombing as a rhetorical project and the changes that it can effect.
While yarn bombing does tend to have positive effects and feedback, Hahner and Varda bring a critical challenge to the view of yarn bombing in their study that examines the interactions among gender, class and race involved in yarn bombing trends. In “Yarn bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism”, Hahner and Varda argue that the warm response to yarn bombing has been at the expense of recognizing the validity of other forms of street art, and that the exceptional treatment that yarn bombing receives is due to its nature as a feminized form of traditional paint graffiti, one that is glorified for its beauty, temporariness, and benefit to the space it exists in, established as an ideal (302). The argument raised here is that yarn bombing is beneficial to a public space because it brings with it feelings of the suburban home (307). The concept of disrupting the binary of domestic and public aesthetics is challenged by Hahner and Varda as a choice afforded to women of the privileged class, who can choose to publicize their domestic work as a statement, in contrast to underprivileged women whose domestic work is typically public regardless of their preferences (306). Hahner and Varda also point out that it takes extensive cultural capital to be able to participate in yarn bombing, since yarn may be expensive and the preparation for a yarn bombing may be lengthy (307). Another issue noted is that the act of paint graffiti is usually punished by authorities while the act of yarn bombing, while technically breaking the same laws as paint graffiti, is typically celebrated (317). Overall Hahner and Varda argue that the popularity of yarn bombing is at the expense of validating other forms of street art, and that the current modes of yarn bombing are elevating the concept of the white, middle class woman at the expense of other participants (305). While this take on yarn bombing provides a vastly more negative view than the other articles included here, the observation that yarn bombing requires cultural capital and has undertones of class and race politics certainly must be addressed.
Mann brings a more lighthearted analysis to yarn bombing. She explains that while yarn bombing may be political, it can also be performed without political intentions. She focuses on this form of apolitical or unintentionally political yarn bombing, arguing that there are micro- political implications of yarn bombing to its “whimsical nature” (66). For her research, Mann created her own yarn bombs and dropped them around the city of Bristol, England, photographing the installations and posting the photos along with narratives on a blog (68). She then covertly observed passers-by and their reactions to her yarn bombs, as well as opening up comments on her blog posts. She found that the unexpected nature of the yarn bombings had a visceral effect on people, as people reported that they felt “made” to smile by the encounter with the yarn bombs (69). While the majority of responses were positive, Mann reported reactions of annoyance and anger as well (69). Taking into account the nature of whimsy, Mann argues that yarn bombing can be political in that it “reclaims and reconfigures urban space” (69) when it causes people to stop, see, and think. The danger, however, of yarn bombing as whimsically political material is that it is then subject to being captured, and being stripped of its whimsy through intention and utilization (70). Overall, Mann demonstrates that there can be political action taken through yarn bombing that does not have an explicitly stated reasoning, and that the whimsical nature of unexpected things in unexpected places can disrupt the everyday response to one’s surroundings and challenge them to look around with a reimagined sense of space.
Goggin addresses the methods of analyzing yarn bombing as material rhetoric in her “Joie de Fabriquer: The Rhetoricity of Yarn Bombing.” While yarn bombing may indeed be whimsical, it is usually turned to more intentionally politically rhetorical ends. Goggin explains that there are five questions with which one should approach material rhetoric, involving questions about significance, durability, reproductive or preservative possibilities, interaction with other texts, and effects on people (146). She argues in her paper that yarn bombing is “a ... third-wave feminist rhetorical practice steeped in new roles for rhetors and interlocutors” (147). Overall she describes yarn bombing as characteristic of the third wave of feminism, as yarn bombing events tend to demonstrate a grassroots style of leadership, peaceful tactics, and a presentation of soft power (162). She discusses how yarn bombing challenges the hierarchy of art and craft, challenging the idea of who decides where what kind of art is displayed. In this process of destroying the barriers between art and craft, the traditional distinctions between the artist and their art are also remodeled as the process becomes valued over the product (161-2). Goggin concludes that yarn bombing challenges the barrier between public and private, the barriers between labor and domestic skills, the barriers between high and low arts, handmade and mass produced items, among other traditional binaries (163). Yarn bombing empowers those who engage in it as well as those who view it as it challenges people to rethink assumptions.
Overall these authors agree that yarn bombing conveys messages. From this literature the facts that women are the primary crafters of yarn bombing, that yarn bombing has effects on its viewers, and that yarn bombing involves multiple forms of rhetoric in its creation and presentation, arise as themes. Yarn bombing is developed from a historical knitting tradition that then meets street art in the form of street knitting. Yarn bombing is primarily done by people, women specifically, who are reclaiming and reforming a type of traditional feminine labor and turning it into a means of activism, reinforcing a conception of yarn bombing as feminist, activist craft, leading into craftivism. Yarn bombs are often achieved through group effort mediated by internet platforms, drawing out an idea of yarn bombing as multimodal rhetoric in the rhetoric surrounding its process as well as its product. These themes will now be examined in greater detail.
What Yarn Bombing Is: Fiber Street Art Born of the Domestic Knitting Tradition
The Knitted Tradition. Throughout the history of knitting in America, the level of recognized politicization of knitting rises and falls. Throughout different eras the political potential of knitting has been harnessed by different groups and utilized for different reasons, while the domestic and apolitical uses of knitting have also been enjoyed by many crafters. In the Revolutionary War era of America, knitting was utilized as a means of dissent against oppressive British taxes. Tove details that women would come together in groups to spin and knit, openly engaging in necessary and useful craft as a method of rebellion. Their purpose was to provide their own thread, yarn and fabric so that they could maintain a boycott of British goods (1). This example of rhetorical knitting incorporated a challenge of the appropriate spaces for knitting, a congregating of community knitters, and a proclamation of protest. While the finished product in this case was valued just as much as the process, the process had a message that carried weight.
According to Tove, by the Victorian era and the turn of the century, knitting had shifted from a necessary domestic chore to a hobby engaged in by women with plenty of time to spare (3). Knitting fell out of favor entirely in the 1920’s, but saw a revival in the World War I and II eras. Knitting was again politicized overtly as “a patriotic helpful effort” (3), an act that women and girls could engage in to offer support to the soldiers and “help win the wars” (3). After the World Wars era, knitting again receded to the domestic sphere as housework and hobby. Popularity arose again during the 60’s and 70’s, when “knitting’s role remained contested, as both reclamation of feminine history and pride, and a symbol of historical and female subjugation” (4). This split approach demonstrated an acknowledgment of the potential for knitting’s political and rhetorical ability to make a point and send a message, while also acknowledging the history of women’s knitting as domestic labor that remained private and unacknowledged. This dichotomy need not exist, due to the fact that knitting can well be domestic work, hobby, art, craft and protest all at once, but at the time the feminist movement had incentive to distance itself from traditional femininity and it is now, later, in the context of the foundation of respect for women’s work that is now acknowledged, that we can look back and note that there need not be a fight amongst knitters at the validity of the angle they choose to view knitting from. There was a slump of handcrafting in the 80’s (4), but in the 1990’s and 2000’s craftivism began to arise. Since the post-9/11 War on Terror, public art statements that involve knitting have become a component of the DIY and fabriculture movement. Tove describes the DIY movement as a “movement where people—typically women—reclaim old- fashioned skills to rebel against the mass-produced” (5). Despite this DIY movement and embrace of fabriculture, there does continue to be tension between a view proclaiming knitting as “necessarily feminist, anti-capitalist, and radical”, and a view that judges knitting as a “marker of feminine repression as related to domestic drudgery” (5). Yarn bombing definitively separates itself from an atmosphere of domestic drudgery in its public nature, challenging the norm that domestic work belongs hidden in the home, and manifests its radical nature in the soft power it possesses. Yarn bombing is an act of “reclaiming pride in a feminine craft as part of a strong female tradition, while encouraging knitters to do so thoughtfully and publicly” (5).
Yarn bombing as Fiber Street Art. Yarn bombing is a combination of two art forms, fiber art and street art. While the genre of fiber arts struggled to gain validity as a form of fine art, fiber arts experienced a period of growth and attention in the 1960’s that continued with increasing growth in the 21st century. Yarn bombing demonstrates its fiber art nature in its material, whether yarn or thread, as well as in its form, which can be whatever the crafter can imagine and design (2). Koppelman mentions in an encyclopedic entry on women in the fiber arts that “color is a large component in the work of many fiber artists” (2), a fact evident in yarn bombings that utilize striking colors deliberately for effect in an installation. While yarn bombing in general exhibits elements of fiber art, it is also street art in practice, since yarn bombing is exhibited on public property, usually illegally, and is often installed anonymously and secretively.
Street art in general is technically considered vandalism. Whether or not paint graffiti and street art are the same type of art cannot be determined here, but Ross offers a definition for street art that includes “all unsanctioned art that is not graffiti and is applied to outdoor surfaces” (2). With street art, “the material existence of the city is essential to the significance of a specific artwork” (Farinosi & Fortunati 143). Yarn bombing is specific to a place, and it is nearly always unsanctioned. Street artists are able to “establish a specific and meaningful relationship with the place and, at the same time, disrupt and temporarily redescribe everyday common uses of the public space, engaging with social, economic, political, and legal aspects of the urban context” (143). Here, the element of street art is one of subversion, and the political power of knitting in yarn bombing is evidenced through the public but sneaky installation of art on the streets, challenging the divide of high and low art by combining fiber art and street art to create a political statement. The domesticity of knitted work combined with the publicity of street art offers a startling moment of psychological incongruity, compelling a viewer to reform their sense of space on the spot.
Yarn bombing as street art is presented as an ideal graffiti. It is temporary, beautifying, peaceful, and non-violent. Hahner and Varda bring up an issue with yarn bombing’s status as exceptional street art, arguing that yarn bombing “is positioned as a tactical form of gentrification” (308), elevating the suburban aesthetic as the ideal of comfort and pitting it against the aesthetic of the working class (308). It is perhaps a darker struggle that yarn bombing provides, as yarn bombing challenges established views of what is and is not domestic and comforting, and perhaps what should or should not be considered comfortable. While this issue with yarn bombing does merit further study, it is mentioned here simply as an acknowledgment that we must use caution in viewing yarn bombing as the ideal street art simply because it is easily removed and caters to the middle class aesthetic of a warm and comfortable knitted blanket. That acknowledged, this feeling of serenity from knitted material can be used to convey protest and/or subversion, just as paint graffiti may, since through history knitting has been seen as “so cozy and unthreatening that its very execution has been used to cover subversive deeds” (Tove 2). Since yarn bombing usually conforms to a generally bright and comforting aesthetic, city officials and citizens tend to overlook the illegal nature of yarn bombing installations and appreciate the art for the art that it is. This softness provides a practical expression of soft power, utilized by craftivists to protest and raise awareness peacefully and beautifully.
Who Yarn Bombs: Fabriculture Crafters + Activists = Craftivists
Fabriculture. The concept of yarn bombing arises from a background of cultural shift regarding material crafts. Bratich and Brush examine the idea of “fabriculture”, overlapping with the DIY movement, which includes the traditionally feminine and domestic arts and crafts such as knitting, crocheting, and quilting, among others, and focuses on the surrounding elements of the culture of women who are leading a resurgence of these arts (233). Fabriculture sets the tone for yarn bombing, as craftivism is a subset of fabriculture itself. Bratich and Brush present an analysis of fabriculture focused on the gendered spaces of production, the meshing of old and new technologies, and the new modes of political activism possible through the combination of folk and commercial culture, culminating in a view of craft as power in the sense of ability or capacity to act, in the context of current political possibilities (233-234). The first element of fabriculture that Bratich and Brush deal with is that of the spaces in which people craft, both traditionally historical and currently changing.
Yarn bombing challenges normalized views of the spaces of crafting. The spaces of craft, in broad and general terms, have phased from home, to guild, to factory, primarily through industrialization. Women had traditionally been the crafters in the privacy of the historical home, and as industrialization forced craft out of the home, men took over in some areas as crafters (Bratich & Brush 235). Now, with the modern refocusing on valuing process rather than product and personal expression over a homogenous mass produced set of objects, the specifications of gendered space of crafting have shifted again (235). Specifically, knitting in public challenges the ingrained pattern of domestic work being hidden at home. “Knitting in public is out of place” (237). Knitting in public is a manifestation of the idea “that the home was always crisscrossed with social relations” (239), challenging the sharp divide between domestic and public and suggesting that the two are more closely intertwined than it might seem. Yarn bombing takes women’s knitted craft and presents it in public, challenging the traditional space of women’s craft in the home and established gender of public crafters. This reworking and reforming through challenging traditional divisions is partially enabled and promoted through the meshing of old and new technology in the combination of craft and cyberculture. If it were not for a strong virtual presence of a crafting community, yarn bombing would not have quite the same global effect that it does.
The combination of old and new technology has effects on the spaces of production just as the spaces of production influence the combination of technologies, or multimodal nature, of crafting. The spaces of craft have shifted from being concrete to involving a significant amount of online presence. As Bratich and Brush put it, “virtual crafting is an exchange of information, skills, and even products ... the knitting circle now meshes with the world wide web” (242). This element of virtual community is significant to yarn bombing since the nature of the internet allows yarn bombing installations to be shared by and for those who do not exist in the same space as the physical yarn bombing, and allows support and conversation surrounding the important process of a yarn bombing installation throughout the entire crafting life cycle of the installation. This serves to bring craftivists together in their crafting endeavors.
Craftivism. Of special import to discussing the term “craftivism” is Betsy Greer’s definition of craftivism in “Craftivist Manifesto.” This manifesto, organized in a block of text with one statement following the other, is found at Greer’s website craftivism.com, and have been cited with line numbers for simplicity. The statements in the manifest have overtones and undertones of political rhetoric, thing theory, activism, and feminism. From statements that “your craft is your voice” (l 2), equating the rhetorical capability of material crafts and the spoken word, to defining a craftivist as, “anyone who uses their craft to help the greater good or in resistance to a greater societal ill” (l 8-9), the “Craftivist Manifesto” expresses the ideas that surround the concept of yarn bombing in neat and catchy phrases. Craftivists are “makers, hackers, menders, and modifiers of material things” (l 12), embodying a feminist material rhetoric in reworking material to make something new (Farinosi & Fortunati, 144). There is a message of acceptance and equality in, “my craftivism can be different than your craftivism and that’s okay” (l 14). Of grandmotherly stereotypes of craft, craftivism intends that by “taking these stereotypes and subverting them, craftivists are making craft a useful tool of peaceful, proactive and political protest” (l 16-9). This sentiment sums up the soft power of yarn bombing itself. The attitude of craftivism as activism is revealed deeper with the statement that, “craftivism is about reclaiming the slow process of creating by hand, with thought, with purpose and with love. Because activism, whether through craft or any other means, is done by individuals, not machines” (l 20-
2) This exhibits the fundamental turn back toward the crafting and making process and away from the mass-produced product that characterizes the movements of fabriculture and craftivism themselves. “Craftivism is a tool to instantly create a small part of the warmer, friendlier, and more colorful world we hope to see in the future” (23-4) this whimsical statement, when applied to yarn bombing reveals the fiber street art’s intentions of protesting through beautifying, softly powerful in process, product, and effect.
What Yarn Bombing Does: Material Rhetoric in Process and Product
Process. The yarn bombing process is often a community endeavor and involves a group effort. Since previous sections deal with the community nature of craftivism and yarn bombing through crafting groups and the internet, the focus here will be on the general effects of the yarn bombing process. Goggin explains that yarn bombing can be a significant tool regarding the formation of social identity, since making things is a way of experiencing the conglomerate nature of one’s self-identity and the navigation over time in the context of place that such a self-assessment and understanding of identity involves (“Knitting Social Identity 2-4). Goggin goes on to say that yarn bombing fits a pattern for being used in identity-making since it is an “ephemeral, transient art and the yarn installation is temporal” (11), allowing for the art itself to be as fluid as the sense of identity that is formed and reformed through the making process. The social identity of the crafter is also validated through yarn bombing, as street art itself “expresses meaning and confirms the presence and reality of the maker in a public space that is typically controlled and reserved for those in power” (“Joie de Fabriquer” 148). This combination of effects to accommodate a fluid identity ongoing and changing through time allows the yarn bomber to explore the subversive self through street art crafting.
Product.
Political
A common theme of all yarn bombing is that it is a very public expression. It is carried out socially, sociably among people and in relationship with the city itself. Knitting has through yarn bombing “become a social activity carried out in public and in interaction with the city” (Farinosi & Fortunati 143). Yarn bombing, as a way to combine creativity and politics, typically has a distinct purpose per installation. Farinosi & Fortunati explain that yarn bombing can disrupt trends in contemporary society and reclaim devalued feminine craft at the same time, influencing current political issues in a new way characterized by visual force rather than violence (145). Following is a presentation of several documented yarn bombings that presented a specific political message, rhetorical in their nature as pieces of protest.
Goggin analyzes examples of yarn bombing installation used to make specific political statements. One of the most iconic examples is the 2006 “Pink M.24 Chaffee Tank” of Marianne Jorgensen (“Knitting Social Identity” 7). This yarn bomb was in direct protest to Western involvement in the Iraqi war (7), and consisted of a pink patchwork blanket that was draped over a World War II tank in the Netherlands. This yarn bomb challenged the machinery of a device of war with the stitched yarn of many crafters, in a color associated with delicacy and femininity, raising a softly powerful voice of dissent to the violence of a war.
Farinosi and Fortunati study a yarn bombing called “Mettiamoci una pezza.” This yarn bombing installation was in L’Aquila, Italy, several years after a devastating earthquake hit the city. When the government was slow to rebuild the city, numerous protests were performed, the yarn bombing of the city center being one of them. A community came together through online discussion and crafted the yarn bombs, gaining permission from authorities to enter the damaged city center building, allowing the women leading this yarn bombing endeavor to maintain an audience for the protest. Through the mediated public of the internet, worldwide support was raised for this community knitting project. This brought color and a symbolic stitching together of fiber to proactively demonstrate the repairing that they hoped to see in the city hall.
There was a yarn bombing in Los Feliz, California in 2012 consisting of 99 little knitted houses hung on a clothesline outside a bank (Goggin “Knitting Social Identity” 9). This yarn bombing, called “HomeSWEETHome”, included a multimodal approach of knitted house patches as well as paper tags attached to the backs of the houses with information about representatives, foreclosure help, and useful website addresses relevant to the housing crisis (10). This homey clothesline design, with each house held up with clothespins and in close proximity to the bank, is a powerful example of the imagery that yarn bombing has to work with.
Goggin describes a 2010 yarn bomb in Germany created by university students in protest of legislation allowing German nuclear power operations specifically and against nuclear power itself in general (“Joie de Fabriquer” 160). These yarn bombs consisted of yellow squares with black nuclear hazard signs worked into the square, as well as a contrasting couple of flowers in a corner (160). There were various sizes of these squares that the craftivists hung all around various important city buildings. The contrast of the deadly nuclear symbol with alarming bright yellow and black with the colors of the little flowers portrays a paradox between the danger of nuclear power and the soft beauty of colorful flowers.
Whimsical
Toward the other side of yarn bombing is the concept of a yarn bomb created not for an explicit political protest, but for fun. Even in this form of yarn bombing, Mann argues that there could be political undertones. In her study on the politics of whimsy regarding yarn bombing, Mann herself created yarn bombs for the sake of her research, yarn bombs that were completely playful in nature and did not have a distinct political message visible through the placement or design of the pieces themselves. Her yarn bombs included “furry monster paws for signposts, snuggly scarves for statues, a five-foot-tall cover for a tree trunk and fibrous hot-air balloons for school gates” (68). While there was an agenda behind her yarn bomb project, namely to discover how people respond to yarn bombs in the context of possible micro-political change (65), the yarn bombs themselves could be perceived as purely creative fun by the viewers. This form of yarn bombing is a nearly exact opposite in intent compared to craftivist yarn bombing installations. A yarn bombing installed for the sake of creative appreciation is more like a hobby engaged with for personal fulfillment or the joy of making (Goggin “Joie de Fabriquer” 157) than a particularly overt act of protest. While an intentionally apolitical yarn bombing might be installed for the sake of joy, a tiny bit of political social change might be achieved through it, however unintentional, as people look around the city and see with fresh new eyes, perhaps allowing a playful yarn bomb to be an agent of reworked and reimagined reality. The rhetoric of whimsical yarn bombing is to slow down, to take notice, to see and imagine at the prompting of an incongruous, unexpected piece of knitted color in the city.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have presented a study of yarn bombing in terms of what it is, who engages in it, and what it accomplishes. This form of craftivist street art uses a range of visuals from subtle to exuberant, from small to enormous, in order to convey messages. These messages might be direct and specific, related to political issues, or they might be whimsical, simply carrying a message of a smile. The making and remaking of a space, transforming the feeling of an area for a short period of time, helps people express the making and remaking of their identity and the identity of the place, challenging established binaries and divides and adopting fluidity. Yarn bombing presents a soft power, domesticity rewoven and redefined, capable of creating community with something as simple as a few stitches of knitting. This craft is important, because it demonstrates that women are able and willing to take the old-fashioned domestic knitting into the public space, and in this publicity, open up the craft to be engaged in by everyone whether visually or physically. Whether yarn bombing brings attention to a specific issue or offers the joy of making to the crafter and the joy of seeing to the viewer, it is a reimagined part of the craft tradition. While there is room for further study on the issues of class and race that surround not only yarn bombing and its status as the supposedly ideal street art, but also the class and race dynamics of fabriculture and the craftivist movement themselves. Since yarn bombing has been able to spread across the world, it is important to continue to discover how yarn bombing is being used in other places, where politics and citizen voices are perhaps more tense, where a politics of whimsy might be more powerful and useful to yarn bombing citizens than a direct and overt political statement. Yarn bombing is in itself a form of multimodal material rhetoric, one that is full of communication as people come together to stitch and build during the process and as a piece of finished material product that communicates with its reader, with softness, texture, color and placement. This text of yarn bombing tells a story of togetherness, interconnectedness, representing the community of crafters who have come together for the lengthy process of making the yarn bomb as well as the community of those who will see the yarn bomb as finished product.
Works Cited
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Alexandria Bako is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate of Arts in English with a concentration in Secondary Education.