“Melting Pot. From Alchemical Crucible to Cultural Crucible.”

The less human cultures were able to communicate with each other and thus corrupt each other through contact, the less their respective emissaries were able to perceive the richness and significance of this diversity. Claude Lévy-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955)

The theme of the Geneva 2022 Congress “Melting Pot. From Alchemical Crucible to Cultural Crucible” draws on the international dimension of Geneva, a city where 184 different nationalities mingle and which hosts international organizations such as the UN, ILO, WHO, WTO, Red Cross, WIPO. This theme is also linked to AIC’s official partnership with UNESCO as a non-governmental organization, thus emphasizing the universality of working with clays, in its diversity.

The crucible is a container used to melt mainly metals and glasses. The tool of the alchemist, metallurgist, glassmaker or ceramist is a cradle for fusion, transformation, even transmutation by exchanges and combinations.

In sociology, the melting pot is a metaphor used to designate a society becoming homogeneous and universal, the different elements combining to form a single harmonious whole, with a common culture. The term “cultural melting pot” came into use at the beginning of the 20th century to describe the fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities. But this concept seems nowadays to have become a myth in the face of communitarianism and clashes between cultures.

In the crucible, forces and elements unite to transform and imprint on materials or processes – as well as on the social and cultural body – various compositions, re-compositions and decompositions.

Your actions are born in the melting pot of your heart. If it is pure they will be pure, if it is not pure they will be vitiated. William Blake McEdwards