In 2023, a new edition of the Skills Academy in Japan was marked by the publication of Savoir & Faire – Clay by Iwanami Shoten Editions. Eight articles translated from the French edition accompany seven texts and interviews with researchers and craftspeople from across Japan. The edition also features the work of two photographers who unfold their unique perspectives on clay through portfolios: one dedicated to landscapes and the other to a ceramics studio. In order to share this new publication with as wide an audience as possible, on 15 December 2023 the Geidai Tokyo University of the Arts hosted a series of talks that approached this elemental material from a range of perspectives.
Imagined as a transversal initiative and an integral part of the Foundation’s actions in Japan, the Skills Academy continued at Le Forum, the Foundation’s exhibition space in Tokyo, where it entered into resonance with the artistic programme devised by curator Reiko Setsuda. In 2023, the exhibition "Enamel and Body/Ceramics" brought together a diverse range of works to offer a contemporary artistic counterpoint to the Academy, featuring a host of different ceramics practices by French and Japanese artists.
Following an open call for applications, about seventy teenagers were selected to participate in a week-long series of workshops in March 2024 led by different professionals (an architect, a poet, a chef, an entomologist, a choreographer, an anthropologist and others) in order to offer a broad and diverse range of approaches to earth in its many forms, from the raw material to the planet itself. In summer 2024, the exhibition “Earth-Life Learning”, dedicated to the architectonic properties of this material, centred on a collaborative work – a temporary architecture that will return to the earth once more after the project draws to a close.
In November 2024, the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès will host a masterclass in France bringing together craftspeople, artists and educators from Tokyo's Geidai University of the Arts to discuss ceramics and firing. This masterclass will be followed by a second session of workshops on ceramics, again organised in partnership with Geidai University. Finally, a day of roundtable discussions bringing French and Japanese approaches into dialogue will be held at the Institut Français de Tokyo to bring this second edition of the Skills Academy in Japan to a close.
