Introduction to Utopic Impulses: Contemporary Ceramics Practice, edited by Ruth Chambers, Amy Gogarty & Mireille Perron, ix-xiv. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2008.

The spirit of this anthology derives from the editors’ shared belief that craft practices — in this case, ceramics — contribute to the development, support and diffusion of speculative models and creative endeavors that envision a better world. By framing particular ceramic practices as “utopic impulses,” we hope to foster new and stimulating conceptions of their contribution to the social and political fabric of their time. (ix)

Example of Cedric Price’s proposed project, “The potteries Thinkbelt” (1964-65) — “converting the declining English Potteries into a comprehensive, high-tech hands-on think tank, a visionary model for learning, living and working in a post-industrial society.” (x)

Medalta is another example of a socially conscious pottery project: “It similarly recycles and redeploys the apparatus of a bygone industrial era, making it available to the public […].” (xi)

The renowned cultural critic and theorist Peter Dormer (1949-1996) argued passionately for the value of craft practice as a living archive of tacit knowledge. Dormer distinguished tacit knowledge, acquired through the hands-on experience of doing things, from explicit knowledge, which allows one to talk and write about those things (147). *Dormer, Peter, ed. The Culture of Craft: Status and Future. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

The French curator Nicholas Bourriaud argues that all works of art produce “models of sociability.” Those works exhibiting relational aesthetics invite viewers to dialogue with the work in order to “learn to inhabit the world in a better way (13).* While encouraging participation, a number of these essays and projects advance pressing agendas and political perspectives, challenging stereotypeical notions that craft should comfort or placate. (xiii) * Relational Aesthetics 1998.

Quoting Claire Bishop: “[…] without the concept of utopia there is no possibility of a radical imaginary (66). (xiii)

The essays and projects in Utopic Impulses participate in a wider critique of aesthetic, political, ethical and social impulses worldwide. Echoing Jacques Ranciere, they call for new forms of participation and spectatorship modelled on viewers who are active interpreters, who “link what they see with what they have seen and told, done and dreamt.” Ranciere calls for “spectators who are active as interpreters, who try to invent their own translation in order to appropriate the story for themselves and make their own story out of it.” *Ranciere: “The Emancipated Spectator.” Keynote address, 5th International Summer Academy, Frankfurt, 20 August 2004. Online. 30 March 2007. http://www.v2v.cc/node/75 [page not found]

Note: I can’t believe I found a book on ceramics that brings in Bourriaud, Bishop, and Ranciere. Obviously, their ideas need not only apply to “participatory art” practices…