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Paper short abstract:

Grounded in my research with ceramic designers, rural potters, in a porcelain factory, and my pottery practice, the paper focuses on metis as knowledge opening up for an engagement with materiality that can contribute to anthropological discussion on objects, their qualities and modes of existence.

Paper long abstract:

The potter, while shaping a pot is rather negotiating with clay than imposing its form on the flexible, dynamic matter: human has to be able but the clay has to be willing. The process of fixing the pot's form in a kiln means forcing matter to slow down its constant changing for the humans to perceive it as arrested into something stable and unchangeable. Both processes of shaping and firing require very local and embodied forms of knowledge: practical intelligence, or ingenuity acquired only through a direct involvement, very difficult to generalize and render in words. Grounded in my research with both ceramic designers, and rural potters in the South East of Poland, as well as in a porcelain factory in Ćmielów (Poland), complemented with insights originating in my own pottery practice, my paper will focus on metis as a kind of knowledge opening up for an engagement with materiality that can be illuminating for anthropological discussion on objects, their qualities and modes of existence.