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Paper short abstract:

I propose approaching the topic of the panel from the perspective of dialogic meaning-making, offering reflection and interpretations grounded in my research collaboration with highly knowledgable craft specialists, especielly a potter from a village in Mazuria region in the North of Poland.

Paper long abstract:

Already for over a decade I have been engaged in research of embodied/tacit knowledge involving craft, especially ceramics [eg. Klekot 2020; Klekot2021]. In my contribution to this panel I would like to propose approaching the topic from the perspective of dialogic meaning-making. A substantial part of my research has been based on collaboration with highly knowlegdable craftspeople: a contemporary village potter, highly qualified workers in a porcelain factory, designer-cum-craftspeople with their own practices and studios. I have been also using my own experiences in ceramic making, aquired under the tuition of some of my reasearch collaborators. Currently, I am developing a book project tentatively called "Pottery Dialogues", mostly in collaboration with a potter from Mazuria region in the North of Poland whom I met in the course of my reseach. Presenting the way we collaborate on the project, with references to my previous craft research experiences (resulting in both anthropological writing, as well as exhibition curating and filmmaking), I would like to reflect on the process of making/negotiating senses and meanings of craft within the framework of "living (with) uncertainty".

[Klekot 2020: Ewa Klekot, The Craft of Factory Labor, “Journal of American Folklore”, Spring 2020, vol. 133, no. 528, pp. 205-227.

Klekot 2021: Ewa Klekot, Acquiring mētis in ceramic Production: Patterned changes and peripheral participation, in Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits, F. Martinez, L. Di Puppo, M. Demant Frederiksen eds., London and New York: Routledge 2021, pp. 81-93. ]