KEYNOTE LECTURE
Lisa Claypool (University of Alberta),
The Trash Heap of History: Garbage and Design in Chinese Visual Culture
Moderator: Susanne Witzgall, Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (cx)
Conference (04. - 05.05.2023)
(Re)Made in China: material dis:connections, art and creative reuse
The creative reuse of ‘made-in-China’ materials has a short history in the daily practices of middle-class households, but a long history in art, craftsmanship and design. When Ming-dynasty potters in China’s ‘porcelain capital’ Jingdezhen made plates, cups and bowls, they could not have known that their work would be reused to decorate European sites, such as the ceiling of Lisbon’s Santos Palace and the wall panels of Berlin’s Charlottenburg Castle. Similarly, factory workers and ragpickers on contemporary Chinese garbage dumps may be unaware of artworks made entirely of discarded objects that are being exhibited in exclusive urban art spaces around the world. Despite material flows that span the globe, value and knowledge systems connected to such materials are disrupted in two main ways. First, these flows traverse cultural boundaries, allowing for radical changes in systems of material evaluation (e.g. enabling the perception of ‘trash as treasure’). Second, transcultural artistic research reuses and re-evaluates seemingly ‘meaningless’ garbage, turning it into a resource for multi-million-dollar art installations and prized design innovations. As one of the world’s leading waste-receiving and waste-producing countries, China is a particularly important case study.
*The lecture will be held in English. Please register via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.