JINGDEZHEN, China — Earlier in this issue we ran a post about an alternative history project in which designers from Tel Aviv created ceramics for a company that closed its doors way back in 1990. In a way that project speculates on how the intervening 25 years may have been different. With this project sent to us through our submissions page, the artists appear to be looking back. It’s more of an excavation, a “what happened?” more than a “what if?”
Above image: Nick Geankoplis, Untitled Sketches. relic plaster slip casting molds with under glaze decal prints found in numerous locations around the vacated factory
Nick Geankoplis, Jesse Ring, Joey Zhao and Brian Caponi came up with a multi-pronged art project that uses site-specific ceramic installations to explore the post-Industrial landscape in a now-defunct ceramics factory in Jingdezhen. They tell us (though they admit this information was obtained over drinks and not concrete research) that the Jingdezhen Porcelain factory was designed in the Bauhaus style by a Czech architect in 1954. It was built over a period of seven years, running it straight into China’s Cultural Revolution. The factory was closed, but was later reopened by the state, which used it to produce porcelain tiles. The factory went broke for good in 1996. For a time small workshops moved in, but over the last year the local government decided to tear up the factory along with three additional city blocks to make way for something new.
The artists had this to say about their project, Vacated Ceramics Factories — Jingdezhen PRC:
This past spring, while teaching a ceramic design course in Jingdezhen, I was trying to find an old shortcut that I had used years before when studying there myself. I did not find my shortcut; instead I came across a large, half a square mile or so ceramic factory gutted and vacated, with the last trucks being loaded with ware as I wandered through the Bauhaus-style concrete structures.
This was a space to return to.
-Nick Geankoplis
Jesse Ring, Drying Rack; draped porcelain slabs stamped with folded cloths, a bamboo rack, chalkboard with workers’ daily schedule
Site image by Nick Geankoplis.
Jesse Ring, Gilded Baijiu Bottles, nine baijiu bottle variations found on site, electroplated gold, re-installed in factory. From the artist: “I found nine distinct bottle forms in the factory stored in large piles on the floor. During the day nearby workers would eat lunch in the warehouse and then smash the bottles in the piles for entertainment. I wanted to make a gesture that elevated their value. I did this by electroplating them in gold and then returning them to the site. They were found and taken that night, perceived as being seemingly more valuable once cheaply plated in fake gold. I viewed their theft as a success.”
What
As artists we work across disciplines to highlight or re-imagine a history within a given place or space. Ceramics is a nexus point for our different practices; whether it is a conceptual lens that we use to work through other materials or an exclusive medium used from inception to realization. Our ceramic history, knowledge, and concerns are our collective’s foundation.
Where
The impetus for this project began after stumbling upon the recently defunct and vacated Jingdezhen Ceramic Factory. It was built in the early 1950’s by Czechoslovakia for China and it specialized in ceramic tile production. This state-run factory was closed in 1997. The Jingdezhen Ceramic Factory was part a lager group of ceramic production called “The Big Ten Ceramic Factories.” These are all now defunct state factories, many of which have been occupied by small independent workshops. Others have been left to ruin.
When
Our project began in late spring/early summer 2016 and will continue through summer of 2017, culminating with a short series of exhibitions beginning in the factory spaces then moving outward to more traditional gallery locations in Jingdezhen and Beijing.
Why
The abandoned factory has gravity. This inertial energy preceding intervention originates from the fixed motion of the molds, decal scraps, massive casting tanks, kilns and seconds piles that fill whole rooms. This ceased production derby creates its own fields, topographies that stretch across each of the half dozen, hundred-yard-long buildings of the factory compound. This material was poised, only needing alteration, adjustment or attention to become a re-authored artistic gesture. Our project grew from there as an opportunity to address many contemporary issues around a postindustrial landscape including a historical amnesia, ceramic process, tradition and dogma. It has developed into a 3-phase project to exercise two very different approaches to site-specific work where one derives from intuition and inference, and the other originates from specific quantifiable histories and forecasted futures.
Jesse Ring, For Tomorrow, worker’s coat and glove, saturated in slip, hung on slip tank wall
Jesse Ring, Stage with Post for a Clothes Line; worker’s bed as a stage, porcelain crown molding, vase mold partially pressed, post, worker’s shirt and pants, saturated in slip
Jesse Ring, Monument to Every Worker; worker’s coat, pants and glove saturated in slip, stacked molds for plinth, collapsed porcelain crown molding, slip basin with rag, slip tank, porcelain floor and sky light.
From the artist: “Although the majority of the walls had been demolished there was still a sense of separate spaces in the factory. The light from the skylight and porcelain crusted floor gave this space a quiet air. To me, it seemed like the ideal space for a monument.”
Nick Geankoplis, Pillars & Pedestals; hand-thrown traditional bowls, unfired. Placed on concrete pillars around the vacated factory sight.
How
Through a 3-phase project initiative, we will conduct historical research and create site-specific installations and work relating to a series of vacated ceramic factories in Jingdezhen.
Phase one was completed in late spring 2016 with work by Jesse Ring, Nick Geankoplis and Joey Zhao. It focused on reacting to the raw space and its contents; initial research of historical facts and forecasted futures were conversational. The work we made happened intuitively. It was quick, ephemeral and performative.
Phase two is scheduled to take place over the fall and winter of 2017 and is a historically-based inquiry. We will research the specific histories and personal narratives from the factory, its workers, its objects and its production while delving into some of the socioeconomic changes that did and are affecting these ceramic production sites. We are also interested in the future of the physical factory sites as well as tracking where the most recent productions were moved.
Phase three, reinterpretations, will take place during the spring and summer of 2017. We will again be working onsite and across disciplines, generating work and gestures relative to specific histories, physical space and projected futures. This third phase will have a public face during a popup show in various factory spaces as well as a more traditional gallery exhibition in JDZ and Beijing.
Nick Geankoplis, Fired Forms in Absentia; relic plaster slip casting molds, stacked, stuffed and smoked. Post firing sculpture stacks, left in place at the factory site.
Nick Geankoplis, Coffins & Confetti Cannons; raw clay, relic molds, fire crackers. The pyrotechnics began from the wall piece and returned to it.
Nick Geankoplis, Coffins & Confetti Cannons; raw clay, relic molds , fire crackers. Detail: distorted finger/hand marks and impacts are evident up close.
Phase One Reflections
“The factory was filled with compositions set candidly in the space, like still lives from the factory’s last day of production.
Walking among the disheveled stacks of molds, piles of glaze ware, partial kilns, and thick clay crusted floors I continued to find workers clothing strewn throughout. Using the format of monument and still life I sculpted compositions to be left in the site alongside the candid scenes of the abandoned factory, like ghosts or fossils that framed the presence of the workers with the uniforms they left behind.”— Jesse Ring
“The material was already there and only needed some small adjustment, placement or edifice for it to become an authored, artistic gesture.
“As an arena, the five ceramic factory buildings provided and abundance of content and context. It was the opposite of the white box.
“My work, the sculpture and installations, grew directly from the ritual procedures of the ceramic process. Molds as chimneys, forms fired in absentia — concrete coulombs as ware board pedestals; the work was an echo, like an artifact out of place acting as a proxy reference to the vacated production and outsourced tradition.” — Nick Geankoplis
The Group
Nick Geankoplis is a Beijing based artist and professor of ceramics in the Alfred/CAFA Ceramic Design for Industry program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Jesse Ring is an artist currently working at the University of Cincinnati, College of Design Art Architecture and Planning as the resident artist and term adjunct faculty in ceramics. He recently completed a residency at the Alfred/CAFA program where he worked in Jingdezhen and Beijing. Joey Zhao is mixed media artist and historian living fulltime in Jingdezhen. He is also a faculty member at The School of Art and Design, Hunan Normal University. Brian Caponi is a Detroit based artist and former artist in residence at CAFA. He is currently instructor and chair of ceramics at the Oakland Community College, Royal Oak, Michigan.
Text (edited) and images courtesy of the artists.
Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.
While doing a residency at the Pottery workshop early 2016 I visited this site during the time these photos were being taken and briefly met these artists. I had previously in 2014 visited these factories while they were still operational. They were fascinating but definitely Dickensian in terms of the working conditions. It was quite eerie and sad trudging through the industrial waste and doing some modern day archaeology with fellow artists from Australia. It was great to see this documentation taking place.
Jingdezhen is an endlessly fascinating city and its transforming rapidly in terms of its urban infrastructure. The old factories and buildings are disappearing at a tremendous rate as factories are moved to new industrial estates and apartment blocks arise in their place. Lets hope some good documentation has been made of these old workshops and some are cleaned up,restored and re purposed to hold onto their history.
This looks like an interesting project. I have been to Jingdezhen many times, and I remember visiting one of the last coal fired kilns in the city.
I plan on returning next year. I will keep my eye out for this project.
Bravo.
Is this a ceramic practice or ultimately a photography practice?
I wonder how these photographs are any different than a photograph of a functional vessel or ceramic sculpture that are seen via the internet everyday, and which I imagine you would consider to be of a ‘ceramic practice’?
We believe in a big tent not a small kiln.