The Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporay Art
Tiziana Casapietra
As the undeserved myth of Ligurian inhospitality is so deeply rooted, I would like to begin by drawing your attention to the embrace of our mountains and the open expanse of our sea, but also to this harsh, rugged land from which over the centuries countless Ligurians have emigrated, a land from which the controversial figure of Christopher Columbus once set sail. Just as our farmers do with this terraced land, I would like to sweeten and debunk this perceived harshness and following the example set by the sea to open myself to our guests by speaking in English.
The story behind the project
When, in the summer of 2000, Roberto Costantino, Danilo Trogu and I began to invite artists to come and work in Danilo’s workshop, all we had to offer was our enthusiasm, the clay that firstly Danilo and subsequently Tino Canepa put at their disposition, a place to sleep at our friend Adelina Robotti’s and a meal at the café Pilar. Despite of this situation, the artists we invited, all accustomed to being fought over by the most important international artistic institutions, enthusiastically embraced the project, the places and the people who welcomed them. Moreover, many of the artists who accepted our invitations to participate in the first edition of the Biennial have since returned of their own accord on a number of occasions to develop works for other exhibitions in London, in New York, etc.
After some time, we have enjoyed the opportunity of working with local institutions such as the councils of firstly Albisola Superiore and then Albissola Marina and finally the city of Geneva to where the first edition of the Biennale migrated in the June of 2002. The tiny seed planted with the first edition of the Biennale has now taken root and grown into a sturdy tree, perhaps one of the olives from the Ligurian hillsides. Its branches have stretched out to embrace increasing numbers of ceramics factories and the institutions that today support the Biennale and without which all this would not have been possible.
The invited artists are asked to establish a relationship with ceramics by spending time in our workshops and developing works together with the local craftsmen. All of these works are produced locally over the course of more than a year, during which time the area witnesses a coming and going of artists. The Biennale is not, therefore, reduced to a final exposition, but above all identifies with the period of “gestation.”
For most of the invited artists, ceramics is a completely unknown medium. Once in contact with the material many of them are initially intimidated by the way it has to be manipulated. Clay, in fact, imposes certain restrictions, it requires times and there is always the risk that the piece may be broken. These are timescales and methods very different to those of contemporary art with its ceaseless shifting from one city to another, very different to the frenzied consumption of life, of artists and of works of art. I believe that it is this very difference that is so appealing to our guests. Accustomed as they are to working in the world’s largest, most chaotic cities, they arrive in this spot on the Mediterranean coast and respectfully put themselves on the line.
Contemporaneity
Lately, we have been witnessing a wave of collective insanity on a global scale and for me this project has taken on even more radical connotations. We are living in the breathless, raging world of the third millennium. We are caught up in a perennial state of inebriating confusion and tragically we appear to have lost the ability to reflect. Diversity simply irritates us, distracts us from our mindless rush and we begin to fear all that is different. However, the velocity that is the fruit of globalisation also has positive connotations if it has given us the potential for rapid and almost cost-free global communications via the Internet and has brought you here today after flights of a matter of just hours. These are, of course, still privileges restricted to a minority: while it is true that mobility is easy for capital and information (albeit only the information we feel like divulging), as far as human beings are concerned, it still the privilege of a very restricted elite. For every action there is a reaction and mobility at all costs has fed a sense of anxiety and precariousness from which the perception of constant threat derives. Fear makes us obtuse and even allows us to believe that scientific warfare conducted with intelligent bombs, surgical offensives and futuristic weapons can truly eliminate the source of our anxieties, arising from sudden changes and diversity.
Proposals
Our project, responds to this situation by proposing its own “human scale”: a Biennale organised with minimal resources, the development of which involves true encounters between human beings. I like to think of a kind of peace being established here through ceramics. While the violence of the G8 summit was being played out in Genoa last year, on the 21st of July 2001 we were inaugurating the first edition of the Biennale, which we subtitled The Happy Face of Globalisation because we would like to believe that a different world is possible, one in which we begin to give a voice to culture.
This Biennale is thus meant as a kind of experiment in which we hypothesise a different world. We are flanking the raging pace of our contemporary world with longer time-scales, those of ceramics and intellectual reflection. We are hypothesizing a heterogeneous world in which alternatives and diverse and perhaps discordant or dissonant voices may be heard. It is only through being open to confrontation that we can hope to grow and evolve. Thanks to ceramics, this region thus becomes a centre of international discussion regarding respect for local traditions but also for all diversities. In this way ceramics becomes the stimulus for a wider discourse embracing respect and therefore peace.
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the “Local ceramic traditions and globalisation of contemporary art” conference, 19/20 October 2002, Fortezza del Priamàr, Savona.
Conference proceedings Local ceramic traditions and the globalisation of contemporary art
