The State of Repair: Chatter Marks Journal Issue 3, Guest Editor for the Anchorage Museum

Abstract

Issue 3 of the journal Chatter Marks, “The State of Repair,” published by the Anchorage Museum and edited by Amy Meissner, is a polyphonic and intergenerational collection of narratives revealing the craft of repair through essays, poetry, and the work of craft practitioners via contemporary and historic repaired objects. Researching the craft of repair within the harsh and shifting environment of the Circumpolar North where seasonal abundance or scarcity of materials shapes activity, reveals a repair practice based on adaptation, prolonging, circular methods of production, and ongoing maintenance. It reveals the collapsing of time through generational learning, craft’s connection between people, objects, and methods across great distance, ways of belonging to a place, and an ability to foster an ethical response to the broken––whether an everyday object or a climate in crisis. Engaging in this craft considers repair, rather than discarding as a first response to brokenness. Whether short- or long-term fix, an act of repair is an expression of care for people and their possessions.