A Chinese puzzle

We are lost in translation once again.  I blame the extruder. The materials for the residency are supplied by the brick and tile factory, and the artists are encouraged to use the clays, glazes, and often the bricks and tiles themselves. These are surprisingly beautiful – think of the curving complexity of a traditional Chinese roof, willow-pattern style, with elegant repeat patterns and decorative ridge tiles. The factory itself is as romantic as an old steam engine – puffing smoke and fire and coal dust – and almost everything that it produces passes through the digestive system of the extruder. This huge dragon of a machine is constantly fed with scraps of clay by a couple of sweaty sinewy men, strenuously shovelling into its gaping maw. And out of the other end comes an endless extrusion, moulded into whatever shape the factory happens to be producing. This week it's a curved ridge-tile with great creative potential – the ridge-tiles of temple are decorated with little animal sculptures, each with a symbolic meaning. One of the makers went to ask for some lengths of the tile before it was fired. The man in charge of the extruder said yes, but only gave her half the amount that she wanted. It seems that he gets paid for the amount that he produces. He is expected to help the museum project – it is his duty – but what he gives effectively comes out of his own pocket. From an Irish point of view this seems exploitative and it's unpleasant to exploit someone poorer than you that can actually see (much easier at a remove). But can we do anything about it? We don't want to insult either our hosts or the factory worker.  Is there a risk that we could make matters worse for him? There are definite risks in applying Western ethics in a country that we neither know nor understand... The way through this one is not obvious.

To add to the complexity – none of us are getting paid for this either....

Sound roadside advice

Black clay day

Day three of the residency began with a disappointment. The brick and tile factory through which the clay is sourced makes black tiles, and more than half the makers were looking forward to working in black clay. Yesterday, they were assured that it would be delivered. Today, they were told that it was unavailable. Black clay is used in the factory periodically, but it would take two weeks to strip down the machines and change the clay – not to mention the disruption to production. So a number of makers had to rethink their plans. This was another lesson in cultural communications: when our helpful translators are asked if something is possible they will often say yes first, and then go and find out if it really is possible – a slow process fraught with many levels of rank. The translators – high heels, mobile phones – have little in common with the factory workers whose work is intensely physical and who have no interest in being disturbed on their tea-break to satisfy artists' whims.

Another discovery -  the Museum of Irish Ceramic Art in China hasn't actually been built yet (somehow we travelled over with the idea of a spanking new museum eagerly awaiting Irish work). The main hotel will shortly be demolished, along with the Scandinavian Museum and the Eastern European Museum, to make room for a bigger, better hotel and museum complex, where the Irish collection will ultimately be housed. In the meantime it will go into the Visitors' Centre, currently a craft shop selling kitsch Chinese ceramics and ice-lollies, but about to be transformed into a promising exhibition space.

The brick and tile factory in production

It's been a reorientational time...

The neon-pearly gates of Fule Pottery Art Village, Fuping

Irish hands on Chinese clay

At last - Fuping! The residency has started and thirteen Irish makers are up to the elbows in Chinese clay. It is a jubilant, confusing, chaotic time. The Ceramic Art Village is a vast complex of museums and hotels spread out among groves of apricot and persimmon. It's a madly grandiose dream and far bigger than we had imagined. The museums are monumental brick structures with massive domes and undulating curves. They are organic in shape and also in their cycles of construction and decay - there is a sense that if a building falls down they will just build another one. They were built to house the collections of ceramic art made on previous residencies, which ranges from the spectacular to the refreshingly panicky. It's a tough call - the brief is to respond to the Chinese experience, to shape this into an idea executable in clay, and to complete a body of museum-quality work with five weeks.

A few anxious lost-in-translation moments regarding the sourcing of equipment and materials. Our interpreter bombarded by anxious people urgently requiring clays and glazes and plaster moulds and throwing bats and internet access and coat hangers and fresh fruit and pouring slip and information about the firing ranges of kilns (she went somewhere else for an hour or so after that).

But all is well - time and urgency work a little differently here. We are treated like royalty - luxury far beyond the experience of most of us, let alone most Chinese people - so it seems a little churlish to fuss about the availability of Ethernet cables and extruders. On the other hand, we are expected to put on a good show. And so the see-saw of expectations and understanding continues. But all is well. Spirits are high and mud has not been slung. It is, as Alex said, great to be taken so seriously, because 'at home people think that you're a bit of a fool to be working in ceramics'...