I finished another essay in Extra/Ordinary, Louise Mazanti’s “Super Objects.” Mazanti is a historian, curator and writer living in Denmark who, according to the contributors page, received the first PhD in craft theory in Scandinavia (she lives in Denmark). My goal here is not to offer a proper critique or review, just to jot down some thoughts.
One thing I love is Mazanti’s chutzpah in re-defining the term “super-object.” Garth Clark proposed it in the 1980s to describe highly refined, fetish-finish objects mostly coming out of California in the 1970s. It never really took off. Mazanti appropriates the term, redefining it as “an object that exists parallel to the design commodity, at the same time as it contains (super-) layers of meaning that relate to visual art.” (62) Another way to put it is that super-objects grow out of a design language in their relation to function but they are explicitly about something, “content is central.” (62)
Manzani then argues that super-objects embody the semi-autonomous state that folks like Hal Foster (whom she cites) say art should have. Semi-autonomous here means that art should offer a bridge to life, rather than hang isolated on a white wall for contemplation. Manzani connects this effort to bring together art and life to Arts and Crafts (obviously) and to interwar avant garde movements like Dada. This latter connection is excellent and she argues convincingly and revealingly how craft advances the avant garde through the “operational friction” that comes out of being neither a thing nor an artwork.
The only problem with this is her case study, Anna Tophoj’s Cultured Primitiveness (comes up in a googlebooks search of the book). Simply put, this piece is a group of ceramic objects, referencing function, in a museum case in Stockholm. Mazanti articulately takes apart how and why the piece operates semi-autonomously. I kept wondering, though: How is this more effective than actual pottery?
Real pots have the same semi-autonomous capacity to create operational friction, perhaps from the other end of the spectrum. They also take less thinking to get there, which to me makes them more effective. I would love to read Mazanti writing about utilitarian craft. I have not seen the Tophoj piece/pieces in person so I can’t really say, but they seem to me, if anything, to bridge the idea of art (museum-bound autonomous objects) and the idea of life which to me is just less interesting than the bridging to actual life, and then sort of disappearing as an expereince.
That said, I hope I get to meet Mazanti at some point. She definitely has her thinking cap on.
January 13, 2012 at 1:58 pm
After reading your blog, and then the Super Object essay, I have just read Louise Mazanti’s lecture delivered at Alfred last November – well, it’s still not utilitarian ceramics she’s writing about, but I’ll keep reading…..
January 14, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Thanks for the heads up about her lecture, a link is here:
http://www.ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_lect_series/mazanti/
January 14, 2012 at 1:44 pm
“the same semi-autonomous capacity to create operational friction…”
This is the kind of thing I was afraid that you were going to be concerned with when you announced that you were going to grad school. Instead of making appealing, nicely crafted pots that were affordable, you were going to become another one of these over-educated semantic hair-splitters that spouts theoretical puffery, whether in a lecture or in “scholarly” article.
It looks like my hunches were right.
It’s a pot, Sequoia. It’s a mug, or a plate, or a covered jar, etc. It appeals to you, or it doesn’t. It’s well made or it isn’t. All this talk about operational friction, super objects, referencing utlity, is a bunch of hot air nonsense. I’ll put it bluntly, who gives a f*ck about that? Only those who wish to to convince others that they are smarter than they really are, and who want to talk down to everybody else. The only time “operational friction” should concern anyone is when they are trying to achieve orgasm.
January 14, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Thanks for your spirited reply, Tammi. I love your definition of “operational friction,” definitely a contender.
I am interested in reading all of this kind of writing to see if it is, in fact, useful – to see if it changes or enhances my way of seeing and thinking about pottery (and objects more generally). To me it’s legitimate to wonder why pottery is consigned to a completely marginal, fringe cultural status. It makes covered jars wonderfully affordable, as you say, but confines us makers to poverty.
It’s great if you know that these issues are not useful to you, but you can’t decide what is useful or interesting to me. I hope it’s clear that I am not out to convince anyone that I am smarter than I am! I am just trying to make sense of the world.
Pottery is not inevitably a fringe activity. Why is it so bad to ask why??