The mobility of memory: space/knowledge dynamics in rural potting workshops in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft knowledge on the move in the Mopani District of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Workshop collectives bring together and potentially fuse the various knowledges and skills of Tsonga-, Venda- and Sotho-speaking women. However, changes of workspace also imply moving from potters’ respective homestead spaces to open and shared spaces, occasionally furnished and equipped for industrial-like large-scale production. Significantly, various projects supporting local ceramic craftspeople have encouraged and initially funded the production of new forms of clay objects, entailing outside supplies of special clays and new equipment requiring electricity (e.g. potters’ wheels and kilns). Our study explores the range of problem-solving strategies employed after outside support and clay supply has ceased. Some collectives manage well while others struggle. Commonly, while returning to local clay sources for material is straightforward, it is more difficult to resume craftwork in homestead spaces where knowledge/skills once were acquired. A key aspect is ancestors’ continued roles in human/nonhuman interaction. Centring on space/knowledge tension in relation to craft mobility and always-unfolding processes of entangling/disentangling, our discussion has implications for how we understand the term material memory and relate it to material/immaterial heritage.