Paper kiln for clay barbecue

Text: Clémentine Vaultier (2018)
All information about the event

Paper kiln for clay barbecue is a project centred around the confrontation between two practices with a mutual component: fire. One comes from the standardised imagery of occidental barbecues and the other from the experimental approach of the ceramic field.

While the product-based activity of barbecuing is soaked in stereotypes and normative uses, the creative practice of ceramic and more particularly the crucial step of firing can appear as an alternative and empowering way to approach fire.

Clay has always been linked to domestic uses by offering possibilities of shaping utilitarian objects in daily activities such as cooking or building houses. For me as a ceramist, this relationship to the infinite possibilities of shaping your own environment reinforces the question of standardisation and consumption.

The barbecue nowadays looks like the mere ghost of what it could be. A condensed version in the most effective and sellable shape (yet we always find small openings to be creative within it). Nourished by the ceramic practice, the project is an exploration of what could be a fulfilling creative and social event around fire.

The starting point of the project is a sculptural and semantic link proposed between the standardised barbecue and the potter kiln. One is ready-to-use, the other is vernacular and individually adapted. One is the result of a global acceptance of what defines the activity while the other becomes a tool to define one’s will. In one case, the object is made for serving as a standard commodity to roast food, in the other, the materials used offer an open frame and infinite platform for experimentation.

The core idea of Paper kiln for clay barbecue is to bring in tension a plan for reproducing a manufactured model and the craftmen’s procedures of molding, building and firing. But rapidly, the constructed ‘in-situ hand-built lookalike’ public barbecue becomes the epicentre of activities that requires transmission, collaboration and creativity. The firing event is therefore pro- posed as a social sculpture, a curatorial pretext around which gravitate social activities and tools that follow these collateral needs.

People will no longer be users of a standardised commodity but will take part into the conception and creation of the tool therefore are rethought as makers (therefore deciders). The the long-lasting and testing technical procedure of paper kiln making allows for a the time and space that can be experienced for real and therefore enables experimenting with a refusal of normative and efficient activities going for quick result but rather for the joy of sharing present time. All life activities such as eating, drinking, listening to music or socialising are integrated into the process and are attempts to make us reconnect with the essence of gathering.

The technic of paper kiln making is a really easy and light apparatus for the firing of ceramics. It is basically a ‘big pinata’ made from paper sheets and liquid clay wrapped around the sculpture. Usually the paper kiln is filled with wood and the combustion lasts until it is consumed and the structure collapses. Because the barbecue sculpture inside is thick and large, the firing has to be homogeneous, during a long duration and with high temperature. Our goal is to reach 1000°c in 24 hours, building a very thick skin for insulation and stacking wood in the main and the three secondary fireboxes. Once the temperature is reached, we let it cool down for 48h before unwrapping the ready- to- use resulting barbecue.

The firing will take place the last week of March: 26th to 30th. The ceramic barbecue will be built and people are invited to collaborate for the kiln construction, the firing and the opening of the kiln.

The collective event will take place during three days and one night. The event will shape itself evolving around the steps of the firing procedure.

At all times fire supervision will be organised, food will be cooked and served, resting will be possible in tents, music will be played. Collaborators can contribute to all of this as they want .

Once the firing is done and after the cooling down, the kiln can be opened and the ceramic barbecue discovered. A barbecue party is organised: a day, sharing reflections on the experience while being at the resulting public barbecue.