Ex-voto
(2023)
author(s): Anne-Marie Dehon
published in: Research Catalogue
A few months ago, I suddenly understood that my craft was a votive practice: a wishfull practice for a world without technology.
An ex-voto is an object that we offer to the divinity to thank the god for a gift or to prevent something from happening in the future.
In a way, my entire ceramic work is an ex-voto that carry the wish of a world with much less technology.
By defining it as an ex-voto I am questioning my practice: to make a wish does not mean that it will happen, neither that it has any impact on the reality. Is that not when the situation is desperate that we refer to a divinity? Is making ceramics a desperate whisper to protect an idealized nature? What is the meaning today to idealize nature while we destroy it by our way of life?
This reflects on my own practice of craft regarding to the destruction of nature by technology. The ceramic objects are the votive object, the wish carried by the craft. The picture represents the nature as it is (cf. Trolhättan project) or as we desire it to be (cf. Fragonard project). The project as a whole question the idealization of nature, the idealization of craft and his meaning today in a context of global warming.
Topographies of the obsolete
(2023)
author(s): Anne-Helen Mydland, Neil Joseph Brownsword
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Topographies of the Obsoleteis an Artistic Research project (KU Prosjekt) initiated by Professors Neil Brownsword and Anne Helen Mydland at Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB) in collaboration with partner universities/institutions in Denmark, Germany and the UK. Our main collaborative partner is the British Ceramics Biennial, who invited KHiB to work at the original Spode Works factory in Stoke-on-Trent, to develop a site specific artistic response as a core element of their 2013 exhibition program. More than 40 international artists and theoreticians have participated in this multidisciplinary project with a program of seminars, publications and exhibitions. Three residencies have accumulated individual artistic projects from which the overriding project has developed.
The project focus centres upon the landscape of post-industry, more particular; that of Stoke-on-Trent, a world renowned ceramic capital that bears in its city evidence of fluctuations in global fortunes. The original Spode factory, situated in the heart of Stoke-on-Trent, was once a keystone of the city's industrial heritage which operated upon its original site for over 230 years. Amongst Spode's contributions to ceramic history include the perfection of under-glaze blue printing and Fine Bone China. The factory's industrial architecture dates from the 1760's to the late 1980's, with spaces associated with all aspects of the design, manufacture, retail and administration in close geographical proximity. In 2008 Spode's Church Street site closed, with most of its production infrastructure and contents left intact.
Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil
(2020)
author(s): Riikka Latva-Somppi, Maarit Mäkelä, Ozgu Gundeslioglu
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Awareness of environmental issues, such as climate change and microplastics, has raised general concern about the state of the environment. Only recently has the discussion tackled the consequences of the human imprint in the contamination of the soil appropriately. In this artistic research, we use soil as the material mediator to explore and communicate the intertwined relationship between humans and the environment. This study combines environmental research with ceramic practice. We discuss how ceramic practitioners can use their knowledge and skill to meaningfully engage in the environmental discourse. The study was inspired by the call for Research Pavilion #3, which was organised by the University of the Arts, Helsinki, to be a place for ongoing artistic research during May-August 2019 in the context of the Venice Biennale. Working with Soil was presented as an ongoing research project taking place before and during the high season of Research Pavilion #3 in one of the six research cells: Traces from the Anthropocene.
Narratives of Imperfection
(2019)
author(s): Christina Stadlbauer
published in: Research Catalogue
Narratives of Imperfection is a series of explorations on repair, healing and transformation. The exhibition shows selected works that are part of a long term research with Kin Tsugi. This technique is a 16th century Japanese craft of visually mending broken ceramics where the crack or fault is emphasized and embellished rather than hidden. Kin Tsugi follows the philosophy of Wabi-sabi – a world view centered around the acceptance of transience and imperfection; beauty is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”
Traditionally, Kin Tsugi shines beautifully gold or silver; underneath it uses urushi, a plant-based adhesive. Narratives of Imperfection expands the concept and practice of Kin Tsugi with different materials.
Rudimentariness: a concept for artistic research
(2017)
author(s): Anik Fournier
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exhibition explores 'A Way of Making', an ongoing collaborative project in ceramics by curator Frédérique Bergholtz and performance artist Maria Pask. I propose that their investigation of making through ceramics – and, hence, through the hands-on encounter with the materiality of clay – is an intriguing instance of artistic research. Artistic research often refers to a discursive or scientific investigation that informs an artistic practice, or to an ongoing investigation within an existing practice. What interests me in this case is how the research is carried out in a parallel-site of investigation, one that is largely embodied. It is an empirical exploration of a medium and, as complete amateurs to the medium, an investigation of the various possibilities of ‘making’ with it. This form of artistic research aims to tackle the basics of what a curator and an artist are already busy with in their respective artistic professions.
My own formative and professional trajectory has meandered through various institutions, including universities, museums, and art academies. I have therefore operated in the tenuous fault lines between different creative practices and forms of knowledge production. 'A Way of Making' is of interest to me precisely for how it calls for an analysis of the relation between different ways of creating and ways of knowing. In following the many facets of 'A Way of Making' over the past few years, I began to see parallels between the artists' investigation of the material of clay and questions that arise for me as a theoretician when working with an artistic practice or artwork. I became particularly interested in the attitude with which the makers approached their site of investigation. This attitude can be identified in many registers of their project, including the way in which performers and audiences are interpolated somatically by the ceramic pieces in various staged encounters.
For this exposition, I adopted the concept of 'rudimentariness', as defined by Mireille Rosello in the field of comparative literature, to help define this attitude and to see how it can also operate in a largely non-discursive register. The exposition begins with the makers’ hands-on research, exploring how rudimentariness in making calls forth empirical forms of knowing. In particular, the notion of sensate thinking, as defined by Alexander G. Baumgarten, and theories addressing the intimate relation between the sense of touch and movement and modes of thought are key.
The exposition then extends beyond Bergholtz and Pask's project to propose how the attitude of rudimentariness, underpinned by an understanding of sensate thinking and workings of touch, helps articulate what is at stake in the present for artistic research more generally and, specifically, within the growing importance placed on economies of learning in the (Dutch) education system.
In creating this exposition, I attempted to follow the lines, curves, and cracks of 'A Way of Making' to investigate the feedback loops between the discursive and the non-discursive. I propose the not-yet of knowledge as a productive site for the emergence of new perspectives and critical standpoints, as well as the transformative effects of such emergent perspectives on existing habits, modes of making, and, ultimately, what is already known.