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Vessels of Disappearing Craft
Isola Tong
Video
Click to retrieve another preserved vessel
Vessels of Disappearing Craft
The browser is imagined as a vessel of disappearing Filipino crafts. Vessels of Disappearing Craft gathers tutorial videos on how to manipulate locally foraged materials into objects and building materials—often of dying and little-known weaving practices.
These videos uploaded by Filipinos living in the peripheries on YouTube present social media as a potential counter-archive. While the tutorials often only have a handful of views, perhaps platforms still serve as a partial tool to distribute knowledge in a sea of endless information. Knowledge work is thankless, but Isola Tong’s excavation can be its own exercise.
Isola Tong
Isola Tong (b. 1987) is a Filipino-Chinese artist, architect, writer, and theorist whose work spans various mediums, including immersive installations, community-based projects, fiber art, sculpture, and digital design. Inspired by indigenous craft and animal architecture, she gathers and weaves organic and industrial materials to create vessels that explore the relationship between bodies, technology, and the environment through a transcultural global-south lens.