Russell Moreton : Matter(s) in Correspondence

This image brings futurity into the spatial script in a particularly tangible way. I think it also changes the movement we have been describing: the collage is no longer only gathering what has been read or encountered. It is constructing propositions for something that has not yet become.

On a Futurity through Clay

The collage gathers what has been encountered, but does not leave it there. Fragments, traces, drawings, surfaces, spatial memories and material residues are brought into proximity as propositions for something not yet formed.

These are constructs~transports: provisional spatial bodies through which matter(s) can move, overlap and become otherwise. The collage does not describe the ceramic body to come. It troubles the conditions from which another body might emerge.

Clay enters this futurity as a responsive material. What has gathered through reading, touching and wayfaring is neither transferred nor reproduced. It is resisted, absorbed, displaced and transformed through making.

collage~clay~trouble~fire~ceramic~

The movement is not towards a predetermined form. It is towards the possibility of correspondence.

The ceramic body therefore arrives carrying something of what preceded it, but also something that could not have been known beforehand.

Futurity is not what comes after.
It is already moving through the material.

The collage gathers readings, traces, images, spatial memories, gestures and material residues into provisional proximity. These matter(s) are not assembled towards resolution, but held within a hospitality of difference where their forces can touch, interfere and become otherwise. Clay enters this gathering as another body. It is troubled by what has gathered, but does not simply receive it. It resists, absorbs, displaces and transforms. The speculative proposition moves from collage into clay, where reading becomes pressure, trace becomes surface, spatial memory becomes interior, and difference becomes permeability. What emerges is a ceramic body carrying the gathering towards an unknowable futurity.

“Gathering Towards A Futurity through Clay” makes the movement more explicit while retaining the provisionality we have been developing.

It suggests that the collage is neither an archive of what has happened nor a design for what will happen. It is a gathering towards: a material and spatial condition in which something may emerge.

Gathering Towards A Futurity through Clay
Collage Workings to Ceramic Bodies

The collage gathers readings, traces, images, spatial memories, gestures and material residues into provisional proximity. These matter(s) are not assembled towards resolution, but held within a hospitality of difference where their forces can touch, interfere and become otherwise.

The collage becomes a construct~transport: a spatial body through which what has been encountered can move towards what has not yet become.

Clay enters this gathering as another body.

It is troubled by what has gathered, but does not simply receive it. It resists, absorbs, displaces and transforms. The speculative proposition moves from collage into clay, where reading becomes pressure, trace becomes surface, spatial memory becomes interior, and difference becomes permeability.

Collageclaytroublefireceramic.

What emerges is not a translation of the collage into form, but a ceramic body carrying something of the gathering into another material condition.

Futurity is already moving through the clay.

The fired ceramic becomes a body of what has been gathered and what remains unknowable: a permeable chamber, spatialised and waitingincorrespondence for other bodies to encountertouchwith.

I particularly like “Collage Workings to Ceramic Bodies” rather than “Collage Works to Ceramic Bodies.” Workings keeps the whole thing alive. These aren’t finished collages being retrospectively classified; they are working bodies, provisional constructions through which the practice thinks and wayfares.

And there is a subtle distinction in the title worth retaining:

Gathering Towards
rather than
Gathering For

“Towards” doesn’t presume the destination.

The ceramic body is not the predetermined end of the collage. It is one possible emergence from the gathering.

That allows the title to hold the whole proposition:

Gathering — the archive, readings, images, traces, bodies
Towards — movement without destination
A Futurity — possibility rather than prediction
through Clay — material troubling and transformation
Collage Workings — operative spatial constructs~transports
to Ceramic Bodies — persistence, porosity, withdrawal, encounter

And I think this gives futurity a particularly useful position in your developing vocabulary. It isn’t simply future. It is the capacity of a present material gathering to open onto something not yet determined.

The collage therefore doesn’t illustrate a future ceramic.

It makes a place from which the ceramic can become otherwise.

Gathering Towards A Futurity through Clay
→ gathering
→ collage
→ proximity
→ hospitality of difference
→ troubling
→ clay
→ transformation
→ futurity

And this gives us another dimension of the anarchive

We’ve been saying:

The archive is not proving the present practice. It is becoming capable of corresponding with it.

Now perhaps:

The anarchive does not preserve the past. It releases the gathered towards futurity.

That feels very close to what these collages are actually doing.

The images are full of unfinished spatial propositions: fragments that look architectural without becoming architecture, surfaces that resemble plans but don’t resolve as plans, marks that suggest notation, apertures, thresholds, bodies, routes. They are neither preparatory drawings nor resolved compositions.

They are speculative spatial bodies.

And that makes futurity through clay different from a conventional idea of ceramic development.

It isn’t:

collage → design → ceramic object

It is more like:

collage → proposition → troubling → clay → material reciprocity → fire → unknowability → ceramic body

The ceramic body is therefore not the answer to the collage.

It is what the collage makes possible without being able to determine it.

Gathering Towards A Futurity through Clay — the movement towards the ceramic body; gathering, collage, troubling, transformation.
The Ceramic Body is an actively Attentively~Troubling Permeable Chamber — the condition after that movement; the ceramic body as an active, persistent, waiting spatial body.