INNOVART
Bilateral Program between France and Argentina 2018-2019
French-Argentinean program of mobility between students and teachers in the field of art and innovation, which was presented by the Ministry of Education of Argentina.
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In the field of design in particular, the starting point is a dialogue between tradition and innovation, linking academic production and the making of glass objects.
The educational institutions involved were the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris (EnsAD), the Fine Arts School of the National University of Rosario (EBA), and the Faculty of Fine Arts (now Faculty of Arts) of the National University of La Plata (FBA).
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In addition, the San Carlos Glass Industry (Argentina) and the Alliance Française of Rosario took an important part in the project.
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The exchange
Between students, teachers, and craftsmen.
The Camino project took place in April and May 2019 in Paris, where twelve French and two Argentinean students worked together.
Four groups were set up, and each one developed a project for the glass work in which the concept of exchange was made explicit.
These projects were finally taken to the San Carlos Glass Industry in Argentina, where they were produced during an intensive week of work.
The main searches of the projects were technological innovation, teamwork and interaction with the glass blowers, always from an experimental point of view.
The Team
Formed by Oscar, Chloé, Quentin and me.
The exchange was nourished by teamwork: it was accompanied by commitment, collaboration, and effort from everyone. Together we were able to carry out the project and solve the problems that arose along the way.
The Project
Development
Definition of the Idea and the Concept
How can we talk about the meeting,
the bond, the way of relating?
First ideas put down on paper during the work in Paris.
Based on the idea of the meeting between craftsmanship and design, the purpose of the project focused on the link between different entities: Argentina and France, know-how and experimentation, blowers and students.
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We take as a reference a historical fact: the Santa Fe Provincial Railway installed by a French company at the end of the 19th century to satisfy the migratory needs and the agricultural production of the French colonies settled in the area. The idea was to produce an object that would witness the meeting and exchange, making the historical heritage visible.
The object expresses the path travelled and the footprint left behind, showing the distance between different entities that come together; it symbolises the dialogue that is created between cultures and the histories of each one.
EXPERIMENTAtioN
None of the members of the group had previously worked with glass or crystal; although we all had theoretical knowledge (which was also deepened with conferences offered by professionals during the period in Ensad Paris), the doubts about the response of the material to the different techniques we proposed were enormous.
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We had the chance to consult with the blowers of the San Carlos Glass Industry, who were going to work with us on the production later on, but even they doubted how the material would respond because these were experimental proposals that they had never tried.
Finally, we decided not to narrow down on any of the proposals, but to work on all of them at the same time, thinking of having the possibility of changing course according to the results obtained once at the glassworks.
Proposals based on the idea of the meeting
We looked for different ways to bring to a product the idea of the meeting, of a footprint, a path travelled together. That's why we worked with different ways to notch the colate (the glass or crystal ball before blowing) and then gave it a shape that maintained those footprints.
We knew what tools we had at the Glassworks, but we needed to create our own so that we could explore the alternatives we had proposed.
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This is why we created our own tools with the right materials for working at high temperatures.
Preparation
Creation of tools
The Project
at the glassworks
Day 1 - Testing the alternatives
1 We started with the free blowing technique and made impressions with the help of wooden rods. It was necessary to reheat with a blowtorch to be able to work on the shape for a longer time.
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2 We made marks with the help of a steel cable, twisting it at the same time as the glass was blown.
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3 The process consisted on marking points in the manner of a wax seal. The technique was again free blowing: it was necessary to add material to make each stitch, which would be pressed with a wooden rod immediately afterwards.
4 The idea was to make a mark directly on the colate with the help of a toothed roller, then the blower would take more glass on it. Bubbles were generated where the marks were.
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Selection
Of the technique + the morphological result
We chose the variant of blowing inside the steel cable. First of all because the formal result corresponded to the search: to represent in an object the idea of a road travelled as a whole, a trace left behind when walking it and the meeting points at the crossroads.
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Secondly, but not less important, we chose it because the same process worked with this idea: the four members of the team along with the blower, all working together at the same time to carry out the product.
inconvenients
Setbacks, unexpected problems
There were two working days left in which we had the blowers for only one and a half hours each, during which time we had to generate four pieces with the same technique. In order to anticipate possible setbacks, we practiced a choreography to place the steel cable in the right position in the few seconds we had when the blower deformed and cooled the crystal ball.
In spite of the efforts, we did not manage to get interesting pieces as in the first test, the steel cable always regrouped in one place and strangled the material by splitting it in two.
We needed to find a way to be able to choose the way the cable came into contact with the glass; the almost zero action time and the very high working temperature prevented us from reacting in such a way as to position it correctly at the time.
We found a solution: tie the cable at the meeting points with cotton thread, which would burn on contact with the glass and allow us to remove the cable after blowing.
Deciding the route of the steel cable
solution
production
Indeed, the technique worked and allowed us to make more pieces than the four needed. We then selected the most attractive ones to perform the cold finishing.
Last day of work at the Glassworks
The Project
completion
Symbolic function
Although we had evaluated different uses or functions that the object could have, we decided to remove that second reading to emphasize the symbolic one. We were interested in the fact that the object spoke of the concept, of the idea of the road travelled, of the mark it had left on all of us, rather than of an accessory function.
The idea is materialized in the imprint and the route that the steel cable prints on the blown glass but, above all, it is in the production process where it is embodied: the joint work in all stages of the project is what gave life to these pieces.
exhibition
French Alliance of Rosario
The exchange culminated with a presentation of the works at the National University of Rosario and an exhibition at the Alliance Française that lasted a month, where it was possible to see not only the finished pieces but also images and stories of the process.
