IAC Member Lectures, editorial

The call for proposals for IAC Member Lectures resulted in a large number of excellent submissions. Due to the limited number of spaces in the conference programme, the Jury decided that certain topics developed by the members were too interesting and relevant to pass up, and that these lectures would be included in this Editorial section.

Vlad Basarab

Lecture Title: “Ceramic Memory”
Alchimie: matériel et transformation, céramique

The attempt of transposing the human and the natural environment into Vlad Basarab’s work is deeply connected to the embodiment of memories in matter, for clay renders both human and geological memories. The transformational qualities of clay through the ceramics process allows him to draw parallels to how memory forms. The metamorphosis of ideas is directly linked to the inherent memories and history of ceramics. Clay records human gesture as an attempt to conquer the ephemeral of the maker’s movement.

Ray Chen

Lecture Title: “Feminism In Artistic Expressions and Its Multiple social Statuses – Co-Existence of “The Culture of Gender” Identity Distinctiveness”
Identités en mouvement: anthropologie

The nature of gender in our society and family identities of women intertwine have led the cultural norms to cross over. Feminism is a tangible representation that unifies life’s purpose to positive social movements and a quest for gender equality. Feminism addresses and shares its emotional and psychological drives for artistic expressions, ultimately elevating the established perspective of cultural, social and family’s multi-dimensions standards to an co-existence interactive process.

Paul March

Lecture Title: “The Archeology of Cognition”
Identités en mouvement: anthropologie

In this presentation, Paul March proposes that the mind does not exist in the brain but in a dynamic realisation of materials. Thus, the artistic process gives us a way to conceive of a material culture that does not use the framework of language, but of palpable expression. Here, art serves as a tool to explore the links between ancient Egyptian funerary rituals and the metamorphic life cycle of the zoological order, Lepidoptera.

> TEXT (in English)

Heidi McKenzie

Lecture Title: “Legacies of Indentureship”
Identités en mouvement: anthropologie

In her talk, Heidi McKenzie contextualizes the migration of half a million Indians to the Caribbean in the mid-19th century as indentured labourers by showing the ceramic works that she has researched and created over the last three to four years. These workers replaced the emancipated Africans and became “the new slaves.” This is her father’s history, and she discusses multiple generations’ stories, and the legacy of post-indentureship which she has inherited and rendered through her ceramic practice.

Pim Sudhikam

Lecture Title: “Making Breccia – what’s happening in the box?”
Alchimie: matériel et transformation, céramique

Pim Sudhikam discusses her way of high temperature saggar firing with porcelain and glaze. The result from that process yields a melting, bubbling, rock-like surface together with deep black vitreous body in porcelain work. Sudhikam’s artworks are conceptualized based on these sets of visual language of the material and firing. They refer to the rock cycle phenomena in nature and to time.