safe/brave –shit craft goes collective

a reflection on making zine #2 by Judit Csobod

The idea was simple: co-produce a zine with the improvisers from Improvising Across Boundaries. Something raw, collaborative, handmade — not a product but a process. A space. A pause. A way of resisting institutional and capitalist logics of what counts as valuable, worthy, or finished. I imagined something like a Riot Grrrl throwback — “crafternoons” where we’d get together, hands busy, ideas floating, making something that lived between conversation, collage, glue, and thought. I am now calling it “shit craft”: a term to describe anti-polish, anti-perfection practices that embrace vulnerability, mistake, contradiction — practices that build human connection rather than products for approval. I first thought I was offering risk. But of course, improvisers are already fluent in risk. The stage is brave space by definition. My offer wasn’t to introduce them to danger — it was to join them in it, on different terms.

Our first crafternoon? One improviser showed up. The rest: scheduling conflicts, caring responsibilities, health stuff, distance, burnout. The usual feminist project logistics. Still, we crafted. A trained visual artist from our partner organisation, a fellow PhD subbing for the project lead, and I made a kind of improvised day out of it — including a quartet music session beforehand (where we each took turns on a cymbal-less drumkit with no sticks; we make do). It wasn’t what I planned, but it was real, intimate, and grounded in the same spirit: gluey fingers, open-ended making, no wrong answers.

My invitation was loose (this is the e-mail version I sent out): 

“All you need to do is 

1, grab an A4 (standard) size paper and fold it in half along the shorter side. 

2, Now when you open it again you will have a right side and a left side. On one side I would like you to "craflect" on the idea "safe" and on the other side the idea "brave".

You are welcome to use any technique you are comfortable with or feel the calling to. Drawing, montage, collage, painting, etc. 

For inspiration, check out either Candice Breitz's Rainbow Series or/and Gerhard Richter's overpainted family photo series. 

You are welcome to ignore the inspiration and also the division of the A4 paper if you feel your ideas of the concepts overlap or are the same.”

The second crafternoon brought more participants, but even across both sessions only four improvisers crafted in the room together. Others participated later, or from afar. Some dropped off pieces for me to collect later and some mailed them to my address. Some are still intending to contribute. That’s the reality of the lives we live — fragmented, overcommitted, expensive, exhausting. Especially for queer, non-male, racialised, or musicians with disabilities. 

And the mess became the shape of the zine itself (this seems like a tendency now).

Just like no pain no gain, there were technical fuck-ups. I forgot to ask people to leave space for binding. A “normal” zine format would have mutilated the work — folding, cropping, punching holes through the middle of people’s reflections, and with more contributions likely coming in, finalising it into a bound object would have closed the door.

So I didn’t.

Instead, I created a folder — a crafted container, inspired by something from my childhood. When my father left, all he left behind were his books, ceramics, and art. Among them were these small-format art history books with pockets at the back — holding removable postcard-size images of the paintings discussed inside. As a kid, I pinned them to my walls. I wanted this zine to feel like that — something that can be taken out, held, gifted, returned to. I felt a deliberate refusal to bind. Binding implies finality. A finished product. An output. But what we made is not finished. It’s still forming, still open.

This is what shit craft is: process over product, intimacy over polish, vulnerability over authority. It’s anti-expert. It’s anti-capital. It’s not interested in clean outcomes. It holds the discomfort of the in-between.

And it’s political.

Shit craft lives in the undercommons — the fugitive spaces where knowledge gets made in collective, messy, and unconvertible ways. The academy loves to take what we make together — our struggle, our improvisation, our joy — and convert it into individual achievements. Credit. Status. Lines on CVs. Shit craft refuses that conversion. It doesn’t clean itself up for recognition. It shows its debt — to the people, to the process, to the mess that made it.

Creative practice is the site of conflict. That’s the point we are trying to make. It doesn’t smooth things over. It holds its contradiction. It forces you to sit in the discomfort, to push through, to improvise again. And again. The folder we made isn’t just an object. It’s a holding space. A proposal. A provocation. It says: you don’t have to be good at this to have something to say. You don’t need to wait until it’s perfect. You don’t need to finish to be valid. The door stays open. 

Because this is brave space —something that contains the sharing of the safe, but also transpires it -  brave in the sense that it is honest, difficult, transformative. Brave space isn’t about making everyone feel good. It’s about staying present when shit gets real. That’s what shit craft holds. It’s not decoration. It’s method. It’s theory. It’s refusal. 

And yeah — the floor was covered in glitter. So what? And yeah — the venue might not have appreciated that. So what? That’s what happens when you prioritise process over tidiness. When you make something with your whole body. When you let the mess in. This isn’t the last one. Two zines down. Two more to go. A film. An exhibition. A performance.( wow how are we gonna make all those open-ended??..) This is just the middle. A fragment.

Wish us luck.

@girlwithoutaruler

A virtual version of safe/brave zine is available to read below.

The original safe/brave zine can be loaned and b+w copies are also available. Please contact Judit through the project email to request – info@improvacrossboundaries.ie

Judit Csobod is the PhD Researcher on Improvising Across Boundaries and based at UCD. Follow Judit on Instagram (@girlwithoutaruler).