Social Making Thursdays: Amy Franceschini/ Futurefarmers’ Shoelace Exchange

Social Making Thursdays are where we make things together as a way of practicing a different way of being. We ask: How can crafting together change the vibe of how we show up? What can collaboration and cross-pollination teach us about ourselves and each other? Social Making Thursdays is not just about learning a new craft for yourself, but about rehearsing ways of being in relationship with materials we use and one another.

This week, join us for an afternoon of making, dyeing, and exchanging. Participants will learn how to create natural dyes using local plants and food scraps and use these colors to hand-dye shoelaces and cotton fabric. Each lace becomes part of a larger story—an experiment in exchange, community, and connection. Designed by Amy Franceschini of Futurefarmers, Shoelace Exchange explores ideas of cultural solidarity, resourcefulness, gift economies, and local ecology while grounding us in the everyday act of tying our shoes. Together, we’ll transform shoelaces and fabric into vessels of memory, conversation, and collectivism. No prior experience necessary!

Amy Franceschini

Amy Franceschini is an artist and designer whose work facilitates encounter, exchange and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the "certainties" of a given time or place where a work is situated. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between "humans" and "nature". Her projects reveal the history and currents of contradictions related to this divide by challenging systems of exchange and the tools we use to "hunt" and "gather". Using this as a starting point, she creates relational objects that invoke action and inquiry; not only to imagine, but also to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.

In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers as a collaborative platform to consider the social, political and environmental organization of space. Futurefarmers use various media to deconstruct systems to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics; food systems, public transportation, education... Through this disassembly they find new narratives and reconfigurations that form alternatives to the principles that once dominated these systems. They have created temporary schools, books, bus tours, and large-scale exhibitions internationally.

Amy received her BFA in Photography from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Stanford University. She has taught in the visual arts graduate programs at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Stanford University and is currently faculty in the Master of Eco-Social Design at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy. Amy is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, a 2019 Rome Prize Fellow and a 2017 recipient of Herb Alpert Award for Visual Arts. She received a Creative Work Fund grant for New Media in 2010 and Graham Foundation support for Victory Gardens (2007) and A Variation on the Powers of Ten 2011.

Futurefarmers

Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an interest in making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding us. Founded in 1995, a design studio serves as a platform to support art projects and an artist in residence program. We are artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers, computer programmers and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of "not knowing".

While we collaborate with scientists and are interested in scientific inquiry, we want to ask questions more openly. Through participatory projects, we create spaces and experiences where the logic of a situation disappears - encounters occur that broaden, rather than narrow perspectives, i.e. reductionist science.

We use various media to create work that has the potential to destabilize logics of "certainty". We deconstruct systems such as food policies, public transportation, campus design and rural farming networks to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics. Through this disassembly new narratives emerge that reconfigure the principles that once dominated these systems. Our work often provides a playful entry point and tools for participants to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry- not only to imagine, but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.

Futurefarmers have published A Variation on Powers of Ten, Sternberg Press, 2012; For Want of a Nail, MIT Press, 2018. They have exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim, 2010, New York Museum of Modern Art 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, Biennial 2000, Sharjah Biennale 2017, Taipei Biennale 2018 and the Walker Art Center 2009.

Host or Publisher Design for Social Intervention