David Gill joined a day workshop at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge last week to explore themes emerging from Artful Crafts, co-written with Michael Vickers. The day, “Not praising, burying” had been organised by Dr Alana Jelinek, Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Participants will then attempt to understand its implications through a process of making, not replicas of past red- and black-figure pottery, but renegotiations of the proposed type of object in the light of this new understanding. Other formal contributions to the discussion will include an art historian’s and a philosopher’s response, though every participant is expected to participate fully in the discussion in order to understand afresh these supposedly well-understood objects. The process of making and thinking, where thinking informs making and making informs thinking, will be highlighted in this workshop, not the newly created vessels as product. These are to be understood as mere by-products of a larger artistic process. The process used in the workshop will be documented and presented as an artwork at a later date.
There is a follow-up seminar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge on Thursday 8 November 2012 (see BBC).
Heritage Futures 