Serial Craft - KIT, 2024

Kinetic Sculpture & Education Kit

Serial Craft - KIT is a variation of the large-scale kinetic installation “Serial Craft”, designed as a kinetic sculpture and educational kit.

With Serial Craft - KIT the audience gets the chance to explore and experiment with the elements of a kinetic installation to produce their own kinetic forms and experience the effects of movement, light and shadow. Through this process, the audience gets acquainted with the possibilities of merging different disciplines in artistic expression and storytelling. Each audience-generated iteration carries on the story behind “Serial Craft”.

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“Serial Craft” highlights the mutually impactful relations between crafts and industry during the early industrialisation period of Turkiye.

Traces of adaptation  of craftsmanship to industrialized production and its subsequent transformation are still visible in many workshops in Istanbul. On their ceilings, you can see the hand-made pieces of old pulley-and-belt systems  that enabled the operation of multiple assembly stations thus increasing production.

In Turkiye, where industrialization began quite late compared to western countries, craftsmanship throughout the 20th century developed semi-industrial systems to meet the production demand and created the experiences cementing the foundations of today’s industry. With the progress of industrialization, the past role of craftsmanship, as well as its economic and cultural potential were ignored. Today, craftsmanship is romanticized by being reduced to an outdated cultural value; it is disappearing due to multi-layered problems and pressures caused by gentrification, urban transformation, population exchange, socio-economic policies and the industrial production system.

Produced in collaboration with craft studios around the city, the installation and kit also underlines the current potential of crafts for contemporary productions in a post-industrial society.

Commissioned by: Istanbul Modern Museum

Photos: @k0mancero