International Projects
international projects
ECART network
Since 2009, Villa Arson has been part of the ECART network (European Ceramic Art & Research Team), which brings together four higher education institutions in art and design in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Monaco, and is dedicated to exploring contemporary ceramic practices. ECART promotes the exchange of skills between schools, as well as the mobility of students, artists, and teachers, by engaging them with the evolving practices of ceramics.
From 2021 to 2023, the network received funding from the European Commission through an Erasmus+ strategic partnership involving four art schools (Villa Arson in Nice, the Geneva University of Art and Design, the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts visuels La Cambre in Brussels, and the Pavillon Bosio in Monaco) and the European Ceramics Workcenter (EKWC), an international center for experimentation, production, and residencies in ceramics located in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands.
Designed as a pedagogical research-creation laboratory in the field of ceramic art and sound practices, Resonating Ceramics explores the relationship between ceramic material and sound experimentation, while linking this inquiry to a concern based on the notion of ritual (in its social and anthropological sense). The project brought together 20 artists from the four art schools and nine professors to experiment with new approaches to contemporary ceramics. The program was structured around alternating periods of research within the partner schools, meetings and conferences, a study trip to Paris, and production phases at EKWC.
Two exhibitions were organized, in September–October 2022 at HEAD in Geneva, and then in the gardens and on the terraces of Villa Arson during the summer of 2023. A publication, enriched with interviews, retraces the different stages of the project and presents the works of the 20 young artists, introduced by scholarly texts from several authors: Natacha Massar, Bénédicte Bertholon and Jean-Christophe Valière, Marc Higgin and Raymond Delepierre, as well as a joint interview with the professors.
