A Year of Ceramic Conferences

Dateline: 10/19/98

he year 1999 looks like it will be 'The Year of the Ceramic Conference', with at least three major international conferences coming up in the USA, Europe anmd Australia. At 'the end of the millennium', the international ceramics community is gearing up for the conference to end all conferences - well at least for the 20th century! Themes seem also to be influenced by the 'millennium fever', with a particularly strong view towards new developments in the ceramic field, particularly digital technologies. The logo of the Ceramic Millennium conference by Dutch ceramic artist Jeroen Bechtold is a computer generated image that displays a series of floating cups. Bechtold will be part of a Design and Technology segment, which will look at these new developments. Education and History, Architecture and Public Art, Aesthetics and Criticism and Meaning and Desire segments promise to make the Ceramic Millennium a challenging conference. These segments will be supplimented by 'Focus Meetings', Social Events, a Ceramic Arts Festival and more. Check out these events at the Calandar Page.

For some a bit further away, but in some respects rivalling the 'Ceramic Millennium' conference, the 9th National Australian Ceramics Conference, 'The Edge' will be looking at similar issues that we as ceramic artists face at the end of the millennium. While workshops will be dealing with many traditional ceramic art forms and methods, the view towards 2000 will also be strongly represented by a series of events drawing on computer technology and panel discussion themes such as 'Where to from here? Nostalgia and Innovation', 'Communication - Caught in the Net?' and 'Technology - Vitrifying the Virtual'. Themes focusing on contemporary theory, aesthetics and other topics will supplement and round off this diverse programm. A call for individual papers is still open, so if you are interested in being part of the 'edge', get in touch.

Other conferences happening in 1999 are the NCECA Conference in Columbus, OH March 17-20, Co-hosted by Ohio State University and the American Ceramic Society (little online info available at time of writing), Different Stokes, an International Woodfire Conference to be held at the University of Iowa (September '99) and an Australian Woodfire Conference in May '99, Lorne, Victoria.