A-B Projects State of Ceramics -- Cultural Objects & Ritual

This new ".edu edition" is designed as a collective curriculum specifically for ceramic educators and students operating in digital space, and offers a menu of hands-on clay exercises, readings, resources, and collective discussions generated by visiting artists. This discussion, guided by Cathy Lu, is the first in the Fall 2020 series.

Our objects—who makes them, how we use them, and how we preserve them—are indicative of who we are and to which cultures we belong. Depending upon our relationship to those objects and cultures—whether we are generators and/or consumers, whether we are participants in power structures and/or marginalized by them, whether we are ‘insiders’ and/or ‘outsiders’—we can misrepresent and misunderstand entire communities. In this discussion we will question the validity of an ‘authentic’ object, examine how value and values change across time, and delve into the fine line between cultural sharing and cultural appropriation. How can enduring ceramic objects contribute to representing, reflecting, and revising our understanding of ourselves?

Visit www.a-bprojects.com/state-of-ceramics to download the exercises, readings, and discussion guide developed by Cathy; wrap them into your curriculum or pursue them individually, and then join us online for collective discussion. This discussion and these materials are open to all—teachers, students, the clay community and the clay-curious—and are offered as a menu of components from which you can choose what is right for you. State of Ceramics is intended to be a point of engagement, so we ask that all participants who attend the discussion please keep their video turned on (if possible), show their faces, and consider contributing their voices. State of Ceramics is an opportunity for us to take responsibility for how we want to shape our field; this work can only be done together.