Topographies of the obsolete: Trying to make the best of it.

Topographies of the Obsolete is an artistic research project that focuses on the closed Spode Works in Stoke-on-Trent, UK.

The first workshop Resurrecting the Obsolete took place in September 2012 in the Spode Factory, Stoke on Trent, UK organized by Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway (KHiB).

KHiB was invited as a Research Fellow Partner Institution by the British Ceramics Biennial 2013 and the first workshop included 33 staff and students from KHiB, The Royal Academy of Art Copenhagen, Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel, Sheffield Hallam Univerisity, University of Nottingham Trent and invited alumni/artists from KHiB. Together we explored the Spode site’s histories, industrial space and infrastructure.

The workshops have uncovered a variety of methods and strategies exploring the complexity of the site from different perspectives and practices particular to each of the artists/students involved. We had a great variation of expressions ranging from the performative intervention based to installation and object based work.

The second of the research residency took place in March 2013 as the artistic research project Topographies of the Obsolete. The third workshop takes place in August 2013.

In September a number of participants from the research project will present their works during the British Ceramics Biennial 2013.

This site will act as a meeting point for participants and others interested in our progress.

Monday, 11 February 2013

Trying to make the best of it.

To me the Spode factory is like an old friend or relative, not just a random factory, it's special. It has led a long and full life and if it had not been for us, the humans who have developed a certain relationship to it, it wouldn't mind to just die in peace. It is we who want it to get better, we hold on and try to clean up what we can while the factory is getting dirtier and weaker by the day. We want it to give us more, to tell us more stories about when it was young, about all the people it has known, but the factory is just a factory.

It's clear no one will ever be able to save it, maybe give some parts of it a facelift, but it won't be the same.

Works from the factory september 2012:

Ceramic tiles/cut-up decals from site.

Works from Rom8 in Bergen, October 2012:

Bone china from site/Limoges porcelain/self-made decals

Anne Stinessen

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What We Are Reading

"Dust, the archive and Cultural History." Carolyn Steedman
"In Ruins." Christopher Woodward. Vintage, Random House. 2002.
"One Place After Another: Notes on site specificity". Miwon Kwon.
"Our Mutual Friend." Charles Dickens.
"Performing The Archive : the transformation of the archive in Contemporary art from repository of documents to art medium." Simone Osthoff 2009 Atropos Press
"Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay; refections on art, family and survival." Christopher Benfry.
"Ruins." Ed: Brian Dillon. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press. 2011.
"Samtidsruinar", Marit Eikemo, Spartacus forlag, 2009
"Space and Place - the perspective of experience", Yi-Fu Tuan, University of Minnesota Press, 1977
"The Secret Life of Dust, from the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of little things." Hannah Holmes.
"Wedgwood and the Wilsons." A. N. Wilson, article in CRAFTS, December issue 2012.

Participants

Neil Brownsword, Anne Helen Mydland, Richard Launder, Øyvind Suul, Sabine Popp, Tøne Saastad, Johan Sandborg, Duncan Higgins, Rita Marhaug, Heidi Nicolaisen, Steven Dixon, Bjarte Bjørkum, Karen Harsbo, Kerstin Abrahams, Andrew Burton, Danica Maier, Traci Kelly, Toril Redalen, Caroline Slotte, Corrina Thornton, Anne Stinessen, Numi Thorvarsson, Erne Elinbjørg Skuladottir, Camila Holm Birkeland, Karin Blomgren, Sofie Knudsen Jansson, Margrethe Kolstad Brekke, Chloe Brown, Andrew Brown, Gwen Heeney, Laura Garbers, Yeongbin Lee, Lena Kaapke, Morten Modin, Sofie Holten, Ezra Shales, Andreas Fabian, Tina Gibbs, Laura Twigg, Christine Stevens, Ciaran Harrington, Katherine Hayward, Iona Dunshire.

Spode and Stoke-on-Trent History

With the industrialisation of ceramics during the eighteenth century, systems of segregated labour brought about a concentration of specialist skills and knowledge to specific regions of North Staffordshire. By 1800 the Six Towns of Stoke-on-Trent paralleled China as a world centre for ceramic production. Paradoxically, recent decades have seen centuries of this cultivated expertise being relocated to the Far East. Company investment in advanced production technology, has further contributed to a massive reduction of an indigenous work force and the closure/demolition of once prevalent sites of historic manufacture. To indicate the extent of Stokes accelerating dissolution, in 1948 around 79,000 were employed in the North Staffordshire ceramics industry, now there are just over 6000. In the current economic climate of rapid change, outsourcing, and innovation, the loss of traditional industry and skills is a matter of widespread public interest and concern.

The Spode factory, a keystone of Stoke-on-Trent's industrial heritage that operated upon its original site for over 230 years, was one of many world-renowned brands that has since fell into administration. In 2008 its Church Street factory closed, with most of its production infrastructure and contents left intact.

Monday, 11 February 2013

Trying to make the best of it.

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