On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers–including artists, critics, writers, and curators–to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ehren Tool, ceramicist.
Keyword: Making
I have made and given away 14,000+ ceramic cups since 2001. All of the cups have something to do with war, violence and the places military and civilian cultures collude and collide. The cups started as autobiographical but now have overlapped with past and current stories connected to war. I have very little hope that my small cups will affect any real change but nothing relives me of my obligation to try. A cup (hand to hand, hand to lip) seems the correct scale to discuss war. I am looking forward to hearing how other people have tried to make real change and connections to each other.