LUDDITE: A Maker's Market. Creative Director + Producer.
INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART SANTA FE

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They said Ned Ludd was an idiot boy, that all he could do was wreck and destroy, and he turned to his workmates and said, “Death to machines! They tread on our future and they stamp on our dreams.”

 

– Robert Calvert (1985), from the album Freq; recorded during the time of the UK miners' strike (1984-1985)

 

• Luddite | ˈl əˌdīt | noun 

• 1) derogatory a person opposed to new technology or ways of working: a small-minded Luddite resisting progress.

• 2) historical a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed threatened their jobs (1811–16).

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The Luddite movement, named after the mysterious historical character Ned Ludd, was an early 19th-century workers' movement protesting mass production and the dawn of the industrial era. Now used as a derogatory term to describe someone who is somehow behind the times or not forward-thinking, we hope to embrace this idea of being against progress and recontextualize it not as a weakness but as a strength. What is progress? Who determined that more is always better and when?

 

LUDDITE at the ICA Santa Fe is a platform that will frame an ongoing conversation around making, makers, use objects, and the spaces between craft and fine art with an emphasis on current labor movements and their respective histories. 

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LUDDITE at the ICA Santa Fe is a store, a market, and a support mechanism for local makers in Northern New Mexico and beyond that will privilege the impulse to re-orient ourselves against progress… Against progress to the detriment of hyper-capitalism. Against Progress for the benefit and respect of all living beings.

2024

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