(Re)Made in China

Public lecture by Dr. Anna Grasskamp: The creative reuse of materials “made in China” has a short history in the daily practices of middle-class households, but a long history in art, craftsmanship and design. When Ming dynasty potters in China’s “porcelain capital” Jingdezhen made plates, cups, and bowls, they could not have known that their work would be reused to decorate European sites, for examples as hats in two sculptures at Berlin’s Charlottenburg Castle; likewise, factory workers and ragpickers on contemporary garbage dump sites in China may be unaware of artworks made entirely of discarded objects exhibited in exclusive urban art spaces all over the world. This paper discusses and analyzes historic and contemporary practices of upcycling in art and design with a special focus on materials and objects “made in China” in relation to research on the social lives of things and ecologies of matter.