Phase 1: Syllabus Module / Masterclass Workshop Plan

This syllabus outlines a high-level masterclass module for Postgraduate (MA/PhD) Fine Art, Architecture, or Craft Materiality courses.

Module Title: The Anarchival Object: Material Outliers and Spatial Poetics in Contemporary Clay

• Level: Level 7 / Master of Arts (MA) & Doctoral Research
• Duration: 4-Week Intensive Studio-Seminar Block
• Module Description: This module explores the interface between process philosophy, radical archival theory, and three-dimensional spatial practice. Taking artist-researcher Russell Moreton’s practice as a central case study, students will re-evaluate studio waste, failures, and shards ("material outliers") as live, feed-forward projectiles for generative form. Through seminars on Bachelardian spatial dynamics and hands-on studio tasks, participants will construct porous physical installations that deconstruct traditional structural boundaries.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      WEEK-BY-WEEK WORKFLOW                             │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ WEEK 1: Harvesting the Anarchive Pool (The Outlier Stage)             │
│ WEEK 2: Diagrams of Hospitality (The Mixed-Media Collage Stage)        │
│ WEEK 3: Studio Phronesis & Material Troubling (The Clay/Process Stage) │
│ WEEK 4: Firing the Chamber: Dwellings & Silence (The Curatorial Stage) │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Weekly Breakdown:

• Week 1: Harvesting the Anarchive Pool.
  • Seminar: Erin Manning’s feed-forward traces vs. the static repository.
  • Studio Brief: Students must systematically catalog their last 6 months of "failed" experiments, unresolvable sketches, and structural fragments.
• Week 2: Diagrams of Hospitality.
  • Seminar: Flat speculative architectures, notations, and non-hierarchical spaces.
  • Studio Brief: Constructing massive, mixed-media collages incorporating the Week 1 remnants, treating the composition as a loose spatial map.
• Week 3: Studio Phronesis & Material Troubling.
  • Seminar: New Materialism, weight, gravity, and the negotiation of flesh and clay.
  • Studio Brief: Pushing flat collage ideas into heavy clay slabs. Tears, fissures, and structural failures must be left raw to build an Ecology of Asperities.
• Week 4: Firing the Chamber: Dwellings & Silence.
  • Seminar: Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, the kiln fire threshold, and the dialectic of inside and outside.
  • Studio Brief: Firing, finishing with high-contrast matte white media, and curating the final perforated chambers alongside the archival fragments that generated them.

Seminar & Workshop Discussion Prompts

These prompts are designed to spark critical debate in postgraduate seminars, studio crits, or research workshops focused on fine art, craft theory, and contemporary methodology.

Theme 1: Archival Theory vs. Studio Residues

1. Manning defines the anarchive as a 'feed-forward mechanism for lines of creative process,' rather than a graveyard of documentation. How can fine art practices outside of ceramics implement this to ensure their past 'failures' actively dictate future works?
2. If we accept the 'anarchive loop' as a valid research methodology, at what point does a studio residue transition from being mere clutter/waste to a functional 'speculative spatial body'? Who or what determines this threshold?

Theme 2: Material Agency and Phronesis

3. Moreton’s concept of 'material troubling' involves a direct bodily negotiation (phronesis) with a highly resistant medium (clay). In an increasingly digital and AI-driven creative landscape, how does this physical, friction-heavy dialogue change our understanding of 'generative' art?
4. How does the New Materialist approach to the 'Ecology of Asperities' (valuing cracks, tears, and structural collapses) subvert or challenge the traditional Western craft standards of technical perfection and utility?

Theme 3: The Phenomenology of the Vessel

5. Bachelard argues that the geometric division of inside and outside creates a rigid binary that blinds us. How do Moreton's 'Permeable Chambers' physically achieve what Bachelard calls 'intimate immensity,' and how does allowing light and air to cross these boundaries alter the viewer's psychological relationship to the vessel?
6. Consider the role of elemental fire as a radical editing tool in this methodology. Does the permanence brought on by the kiln fire contradict the anarchival premise of endless change, or does it serve as the necessary event that locks in variation?

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