Video | Ceramics that Go Smashy for Art, Performance and Therapeutic Relief

Welcome again to Friday videos, where we scour the internet for great ceramic films and organize them by theme. Artists like to wrap in the weaknesses of clay into their practices. There are pieces that play with the ephemerality of clay, artists who work in raw clay and allow the pieces to fall apart over time.

Destruction is similar in that clay’s fragility is a weakness that can be wielded by a clever artist to make something exciting and temporary— like a clay fireworks show.

Who hasn’t thought about doing this? Ángel Aznar Studio baked a bad kiln full of ceramics and decided to vent publicly.

This is me, breaking pottery from a bad cooking. I feel terrible, because it was really important, and decided to break everything that was wrong in an act of maximum art pleasure.

This is a gift for all the potters who knows what it feels (like).

I like the dainty taps from the fork at the very beginning. Feels like foreplay, as strange as that sounds.

Keith Harrison Channels Keith Moon in Moon

This video is a throwback to a post from when Cfile was a wee little baby blog. I wrote about Keith Harrison’s residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Keith did this killer performance with the grindcore band Napalm Death that ended with the crowd jumping over a barrier and destroying a tile effigy of UK tenement high rises.

Destruction and music were themes across Harrison’s residency. Inspired by a The Who performance in which drummer Keith Moon blew up his drumkit with cherry bombs, Harrison recreated the moment in clay. I like how clinical everything looks, from the white rough-hewn drums that look more like icons of drums than a sculpture to Keith’s white coveralls and goggles. The ascetic presentation lifts it further into concept.

Cannupa Hanska Luger Breaking the Stereotype

Cannupa is an artist living in the Santa Fe area whose work often deals with Native American issues. In fact, he was involved with the Dakota Access Pipline protests by creating these mirror shields, designed to protect protestors while forcing police and security to confront themselves.

A few years earlier Cannpua worked on Breaking the Stereotype, a series of ceramic radios that were smashed at the end of the exhibtion. From the exhibition:

Stereotype: Misconceptions of the Native American exhibited at the MoCNA in Santa Fe NM from Aug. 15- Dec. 31, 2013. Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger addressed several preconceived notions about Native people supported by popular culture that have been invented, imagined and rooted within the American public’s social conscience. During the performance, Destroying the Stereotype, the artist let go of the stereotypes embodying his sculptures and invited the community to witness their destruction. The remains of the destroyed ceramic sculptures are on view for the duration of the exhibition (December 31, 2013).

Holy Saturday in Kefalonia

Here’s one that appeals to my nerdy obsession with myth. I like traditions that persist even after Christianity became the dominant religious force in a particular region. You can watch this video of villagers in the Greek island of Kefalonia breaking pottery and sense that this is an older religious practice that was preserved in amber after Christianity came through.

That’s my guess, anyway. I’d love to read more about it.

That’s all we have for this week! Check back soon for more smashing videos in seven.

Bill Rodgers is a writer for cfile.daily. 

Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.