The clatter of subversive knitting

UMass Boston’s Cat Mazza perfectly represents the newest directions in art, now served by computer networking, modeling, and simulation. An Assistant Professor of New Media, she developed a software program that encourages the 54 million knitters in the United States to make "logoknits"--knitted garments with the logos of sweatshop offenders.

Mazza is featured in a provocative exhibition of international artists using fiber in unexpected and unorthodox ways, Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting, which originated at The Museum of Arts & Design, New York, and is now on display at the Indiana State Museum.

In the exhibit, Dave Cole knits with backhoes and telephone poles, while Althea Crome makes her "nano-knit" garments using fine medical wire as "needles." Niels van Eijk uses lace techniques to create a lamp out of optical fibers. And Mazza translates video images into knitted images to educate about sweatshop labor.

"These are not your grandmother's crocheted doilies and knitted legwarmers," says Museum of Arts & Design Chief Curator David McFadden, in an introduction to the show on the web site, IN.gov. "The traditions that have defined both knitting and lace-making for centuries are suspended in this exhibition. Each piece bears a political or personal message, invites public participation, and encourages the viewer to reconsider how fiber functions on a tangible, spiritual and aesthetic level."

Mazza’s Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting entry is the collectively crocheted “Nike Blanket Petition,” decorated with a Nike “swoosh”, and made by knitters from more than 20 countries. To make the “swoosh,” Mazza used Knitpro, a special software program she designed that lets anyone create a knitting pattern out of a graphic image. She has since developed Knitoscope, a software program that translates digital video into knitted animation.

Mazza is a recipient of a 2007 Media Arts Fellowship funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, awarded to innovative and pioneering filmmakers and media artists. She founded microRevolt to “investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor.”

Inspiring micro revolution, Mazza says, in an interview on the blog We Make Money Not Art, “in many ways began as an experiment more than a conviction. What is the political potential of craft and can it be an avenue for pleasure as well as organizing for social good?”

In knitting circles, participants not only knit but also chat about social issues. When pieced together from numerous individual contributions, as many knitted protest projects are, the works become a sort of handcrafted petition. Mazza's creative works are part of the re-emergence of knitting as a hip hobby that makes statements.

Last year, Mazza launched Stitch for Senate, a new twist on wartime knitting. During World War II, as part of the Knit for Defense movement, women knit a variety of gear for men on the front. Mazza’s Knit for Defense makes helmet liners for U.S. troops. She is encouraging senators to send the liners on to soldiers abroad. Research for this project will accumulate into Knit for Defense - her experimental animation about the history of wartime knitting, funded by Creative Capital.

Cat Mazza holds an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her work has been exhibited internationally in England, Italy, Russia, Brazil as well as throughout the United States. She was also a founding member of Eyebeam, a new media art and technology center in New York City.