On behalf of Lab AIR, I was invited to host a summer school session at the Design Campus (Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden). This design school explores complex problems, imagines bold ideas, and collaboratively built new ways forward. Each year, the curriculum is curated by a different Head of School and investigates a specific theme. The 2024 edition, WATERSCHOOL: A Speculation in Four Seasons, was curated by Studio Makkink & Bey (grateful for their invitation).
In the summer school Un-mining, we set out to understand material traces and to speculate on the mining of raw materials, their ownership and authorship. This hands-on, research-based workshop focused on the materials used in porcelain production—Kaolin, Quartz, and Feldspar. Kaolin in particular is still being mined in quarries near Schloss Hubertusburg by Amberger Kaolinwerke. We explored how this mining takes place and invited participants to trace the origins of these materials across time, location, and scale.
Held at Hubertusburg Castle—the former summer residence of Augustus the Strong—the summer school also engaged with the local history of porcelain. First developed in Europe in the early eighteenth century by Böttger under Augustus’s patronage, porcelain production was driven by his obsession with this “white gold.” The castle’s opulence sharply contrasted with the idea of un-mining—of stepping away from placing ourselves at the center.
Mining leaves visible scars on the landscape, creating vast empty pits both locally and globally. Since kaolin is a scarce resource, the workshop raised questions about planetary resource depletion: Are there viable alternatives for ceramics —even though the paper industry consumes more kaolin than the ceramics industry? To whom—or to what—does this material belong? Can these landscapes be healed? And could we, perhaps, begin to literally “un-mine” them —reconsidering, in the process, our own position and authorship as creators, and what it means to return our creations within a larger ecosystem? We approached this not only conceptually but as a concrete gesture, bringing all the work back to the mine itself.
Thanks to all participants for the work, and images below
Credit film: Johanna Fuld. Thank you.
