To make is to care

Abstract

This essay argues that the act of making forces one to simultaneously care about oneself, the places within which we exist, and the other people that we share ourselves and our places with. We find ourselves working and living within a social, economic and cultural condition that is fearful of ideas and agency, and where the general public have been conditioned to consider and believe acts of making are either lifestyle or spectacle, or something done by others to create things for us to con- sume out of either need or desire. Even acts of care and repair – acts that are essential to sustaining ourselves emotionally, physically and mentally and essential to the sustenance of collective life – are more often consumed as services or products from others rather than generated by oneself.