Dirty ceramics

In articulation with Céramique funk, launched by Jim Fauvet, in 2016, with Céramique sale, the aim is to pursue a research project that places the medium at the heart of an exploratory device. The association of ceramics with the idea of “dirty” allows us to stand in opposition to its antonym “clean”, which would cover a universe of rules, know-how, and even respect for technique or tradition. Céramique sale is a program designed to place the peripheral, the accidental and the unexpected at the heart of research. It’s all about restoring the “untamable” character of matter, getting it out of its own way. To rediscover the Shakespearean problem of time going “off the rails” - Time is out of his joint, Hamlet (p.12).

In so doing, it also involves shifting the way we approach the medium, and sometimes encounter violence. This research will therefore choose to rely on the construction of a heterogeneous group of students with varying relationships to ceramics, ranging from no relationship at all to great intimacy with the medium. The constitution of the group helps to nourish the research. For this first year of research, 2017-2018, the aim is to approach and consider “the brick” as a research object, a matrix object so to speak, as Aristotle points out, the brick is the first form given, it crystallizes human shaping.

And as Farocki shows in Zum Vergleich, it is also a sign of human organization, the bearer of social forms. For 2018-2019, the brick becomes a thrown object, and the dirty can also tend towards the political question. Barricades and cobblestones will intersect with the “hushed” world of ceramics, continuing to work on the “dirty” side, while amplifying it through political or social questions. Céramique sale is a research program that has chosen to explore the “plasticity” of a medium from an artistic perspective, while at the same time forging links with the Tarbes engineering school, political science theorists, and encounters that explore the associations of thought and trajectories that can result from the “misuse” of ceramics. It’s also an opportunity to rethink the very question of the object in art, and how it contributes to a shared world.