Friday, July 18, 2014: 10:00 am (Manning): Mending (or fixing/repairing) - part of the spectrum that includes hacking, alteration, and making - can become a political act in a time of cheap goods, outsourced labor, and low wages. What is mending's role in a new model of production and consumption, one where artisans and individuals face off, perhaps quixotically, against mass production? Can repair become economically viable? How does mending contend with goods that are poorly made in the first place, when globalization undermines local resources, when companies design objects and supply chains to be repair-resistant? Panelists from the repair movement will discuss the opportunities as well as the barriers to making repairs in the human realm: social (habits and systems), economic (prices, labor), and technical (parts, design). Repairing things, rather than discarding or putting up with broken objects or systems, connects deeply to the hacker/maker movement and to sustainable ecology. Panelists will address how repair can be beautiful as well as potentially disruptive. This panel includes activists and artists, attorneys and organizers - drawn to repair as process and performance. An act of repair has the possibility of political significance or an act of resistance, and brings the possibility of transformation to ordinary objects and larger systems alike.

Sandra Goldmark, Vincent Lai, Miriam Dym, Tiffany Strauchs Rad