Venabygd, Norway Nov. 5. 2020

Keynote speech: New Trend of International Ceramic Art Development
Torbjørn Kvasbø

Dear friends and colleagues: a warm welcome to you!
The Complexity of earth, water, air and fire. 
The distance between these ancient building blocks and artworks in ceramics is suprisingly short.
(from «Eart, Wind, Fire, Water"», Arnoldsche Art Publisher ISBN 978-3-89790-603-7)

The goal of the IAC is to stimulate friendship and communication between professionals in the field of ceramics in all countries. The IAC develops and encourages all forms of international cooperation to promote ceramics and to encourage and maintain production at the highest level of quality in all ceramic cultures.
In November 2019, the International Academy of Ceramics signed a Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Beijing’s Guozhong Ceramic Research Institute (GIC) for the development of future projects. GIC is a nonprofit borderless institute for academic research, education and international exchange in the field of ceramics. GIC’s mission is to provide funding for specific IAC-initiated projects as well as other ceramic projects. GIC’s development objectives are consistent with the IAC’s goals and mission. 
The theme of this seminar needs to be sharpened: New Trend of International Ceramic Art Development :  there is much, or nothing to gape over here.
Trend is a word breeding different connotations, and I, for my part, will interpret the word as Tendencies, which is not much more precise, but reflects my attitude to art as a lasting value.

Since the topic is extensive, it will be very interesting to hear what the following speakers will specifically direct the content towards.
There is content behind all art, such as utterances, language, about events, about nature. There is content behind all our members' statements, be it visually or in words and text or actions. Artists are socially conscious, committed, and ceramic art deals with the same issues as all other arts. 
Everything has a content.

The climate and environmental crisis is a cultural crisis. How we understand ourselves in the world and in nature, how we organize our lives and our society, and what we think about the future, are questions that force themselves forward in the face of the great changes that are taking place across the globe.
Artists have long been concerned with climate and the environment. In literature, exhibitions and stage productions; the death of bees is made visible, plastic waste, the sound of whales, the consequences of oil extraction and the relationship between climate destruction and social injustice.
Does art have enough power to create change? Can cultural life find a new language for the challenges, promote action or come up with actual solutions?
Is the cultural field in danger of becoming a naive echo chamber, and art a purely political tool? Is there room for the dilemmas and contradictions?
What do young artists think about the art and life practice of the future?
Are we moving towards a bleak future - or is there just now a momentum to really act?

Ceramists use various strategies, skills, and a deep knowledge of materials to address ongoing environmental issues. Many of the works in the New Members Exhibition recognize the interdependence between humans, materials and organisms that we often overlook. Several works focus on the fragility of our earthly existence, where collaboration with materials puts the artist in deep connection with his surroundings, a piece of land, or with the material itself.
We live in a time of enormous changes in technology and science, at the same time as the environmental crisis requires discussions about our relationship with the material world. 
What crafts, and ceramics, represent, is a phenomenon relevant far beyond the field of visual art – the relationship between humans and materials. Craft artists  are specialists in their chosen material, spending their entire career pushing the limit of what is possible  within their materials boundaries. Using their extensive material knowledge to address issues relating to humans, materials and environment.
Ceramists play an active role in this philosophical discourse, as specialists  acting in the clay material.

Then, what is International Academy of Ceramics  in this world? 

The way we interact has already been changed since the worlds lock down, when the physical is  more closely intertwined with the digital, and  this development  will provide more sophisticated digital interaction platforms  as  Skype, Teams and Zoom  soon  become something everyone masters.

Crisis often make the values we build on stronger and the value choices we make clearer. And out of major crisis, a stronger sense of community can grow. We find that we need each other for the most important things in life and in society.

How do we develop IAC for the future?

What can continue as before the Corona pandemic, and what needs to change?
We will be able to continue to develop and adapt the IAC organization to become an increasingly relevant tool for our members?
Will we be able to create enough meeting places, or must we develop alternative ways of meeting and if so, which ones?
Do we manage to keep the conversations going to maintain and develop IAC's mission; empathy and thus peace, the interaction between people, and between nature and people?

The IAC will increase the communication between its members, more professional information about each other's work, exhibitions and projects.
We have the human resources in the frame of the IAC, in between makers, writers, curators,  collectors, institutions, in between all our members of all categories. 

We have to find ways to reduce our impact in terms of resource use and still develop ways to maintain or even increase cultural exchanges and cross cultures. 
This is also a question of survival for the IAC. 
We need to think about how to organize our activities, individual and institutional, to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. 

How to position IAC in a post-covid-19 society?

To name a few key areas:

-Develop a vision for the future of IAC, establish a think tank for tomorrow, mapping out the future  by identifying major lines in the development of the IAC:
-To be enlightened and sensitive to future cultural, environmental and social issues,
we must address future planning in a post-COVID environment  and develop reflections to respond to these issues.. This might include issues of sustainability, developing community, developing research groups, link research groups, publishing position papers as research, organizing roundtable sessions, developing ecological and social charters that map future activities of the IAC
-To achieve global representation of IAC members 
-Fundraising:  Strengthen IAC finances so that IAC is able to be able to financially develop meaningful actions, from locally to globally.
-To continue to develop the IAC/UNESCO partnership through diverse and proactive projects.

We are continously discovering new things about the world around us, and our place in it. The importance of being actively involved with our local surroundings in order to comprehend how even the smallest interventions in nature have direct and measurable concequenses, provokes our need to constantly rethink and reorganise our priorities and behavioural patterns.  

Thank you!