Re-public Jewellery

Artist list

Knut Astrup Bull, Sofia Björkman, Sigurd Bronger, Liesbet Bussche, Helen Carnac, Claire Doherty, Anders Ljungberg, Nanna Melland, Yuka Oyama

At a time when the idea of our bodies has become largely generalized and often with commercial overtones, jewellery appears as an art form that has the potential to be relevant for far more people than what seems to be the case today. Although a critique of the institutionalized display forms has been taking place more recently, very few alternatives have been examined. This is the case even though it is in the nature of jewellery to relate to the body and society, rather than to the white cube. Jewellery as an art form opens for the possibility to explore issues surrounding body identity in relation to public space. In the project Re-public jewellery we want to investigate strategies to convey and communicate jewellery art in public space. This project aims to explore a more socially
oriented approach to jewellery and return it to the public place where it belongs - REPUBLIC jewellery.

Re-public Jewellery is a project produced by Martina Kaufmann, Professor Ingjerd Hanevold and Professor Anders Ljungberg at Oslo national academy of the arts, art and craft department,metal and jewellery in collaboration with The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts and Galerie Handwerk.

Program
09.30-10.00 Registration
10.00-10.05 Welcome by Galerie Handwerk
10.05-10.15 Professor Anders Ljungberg: Introduction
10.15-10.40 Liesbet Bussche: A glossy and a party
10.45-11.10 Yuka Oyama: Working in Public Space on Schmuck
11.15-11.40 Nanna Melland: Good is always good
11.40-12.25 Lunch
12.30-12.55 Helen Carnac: Acts of Doing
13.00-14.00 Panel discussion: Anders Ljungberg, Sigurd Bronger, Knut Astrup Bull
Moderator: Sofia Björkman

14.00 From the Coolest Corner, guided tour in the exhibition by Knut Astrup Bull and Martina Kaufmann

About the Speakers & the Moderator
 


Presentation of seminar lectures

Liesbet Bussche: A glossy and a party
Since 2005, research on jewellery holds an important position in the Jewellery Design department of St Lucas University College of Art & Design Antwerp. In collaboration with students and alumni, the research team wishes to examine the role contemporary jewellery can hold in the life of designconscious people. We conduct this research via artistic projects and consequently use these projects as a means to debate fundamental topics such as meaning, presentation, social relevance and such like. This debate is not only relevant to our field; each project also tries to reach a broad audience in an unexpected manner.
In the past years we have conducted two research projects. UnScene (2010–2012) grew out of a question on the presentation of jewels. What new contexts, channels, media and target groups are
possible for contemporary jewellery? And how can a message be communicated most effectively?
The current project, entitled Afterschool, focuses on cultural entrepreneurship and as such questions in particular the communicative aspect of design and a design practice. In this lecture we wish to pay attention to the artistic outcome within these two research projects: Glue/Glossy and MAKE ME party.
Taking a playful approach, Glue/Glossy aims to promote contemporary jewellery as something
natural to wear. For this purpose, a medium known to all has been chosen: the glossy. As researchers and as jewellery designers, we believe that repeated exposure to new ‘examples’ in the
media will lead to greater awareness of contemporary jewellery and will strongly influence its
acceptance.
MAKE ME party is a performance in the form of a ‘sparkling’ party. Guests are surrounded all
evening by luxurious materials and seduced by shine and glint. As an artistic project, it challenges
jewellery designers to take up once more the game of longing and temptation, inherent to jewellery, and to come up with a contemporary response to it.

Yuka Oyama: Working in Public Space on Schmuck
Rituals of creating ornaments for the place you live in a community as practiced in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Japan – Asian countries where I grew up – have formed my foundational interests
and ideas toward jewellery (Schmuck). In these rituals, each decorative element is made from
inexpensive materials found in abundance in nature. They are then cut, folded or sewn in very
analogue and slow handmade processes collectively. Interventions or invasions of self-arranged or self-made ornaments in public space are extremely visible, and the boundaries between public and private spaces are not as distinct as they are in the Western world.
Imagine sitting for days on end creating these ornaments with your neighbours? A person – a wearable object – space. My artwork investigates an expanded concept of jewellery. I seek to convey the subjective dimension through the relationship between a person and a wearable object in the private/ public sphere.
Wearable objects are devices that help articulate and convey inner invisible messages. I am fascinated by how the wearer can bring life into static jewellery through his/her movements,
smells, colours, expressions, etc. Furthermore, wearable objects such as jewellery pieces can
activate a person to appear and behave differently and become someone else, or contrarily, they
can represent, define and conceal some truths about the subject. During my studies at the Art Academy, I developed “Schmuck Quickies”. This is a jewellery performance that refers to the traditional work process of a goldsmith. A piece of jewellery is custom-made according to the wishes of the wearer. The only difference is that my “work bench” is mobile. In “Schmuck Quickies”, I ask my subjects what kind of jewellery they would like to have and how they would like it to look like at first. Within a short period a piece of jewellery, almost like a body accessory or body extensions, is created on the subject’s body. I sought to meet and encounter the wearers. I was eager to find out what their wishes were, what jewellery meant to people coming from diverse social back- grounds, and what other potential forms for jewellery existed.

Nanna Melland: Good is always good
Being clever is quite helpful. Being good, is something different. It is deeper. A quality achieved on a mysterious path. A path where the work becomes alive, and makes its own decisions. The artist, needs the integrity and courage of a hero to be successful. With less strategy but more mystery, the journey will be successful!

Helen Carnac: Acts of Doing 1
We normally encounter a piece of work presented to us as a finished thing: to wear, eat from, sit
upon or gaze at behind glass. But that finished thing has only come to be as a result of innumerable processes, decisions, encounters, acts, and movements.
Over the course of a series of projects I have been exploring the idea of how the acts and processes
of making and thinking can be understood in unusual contexts: by public witnessing and sharing;
in non-gallery spaces; with diverse audiences, or by working with seemingly disparate collaborators.
In this talk I will show how I have tried to understand how ‘works’ come to fruition and how we
might understand making from a perspective other than that of the finished thing. Can we understand more of where things and ideas come from by opening up and exposing what we do in practice for reflexive scrutiny and consideration?

1 Edge and Shore: Acts of Doing a collaboration with the choreographer Laila Diallo.
https://edgeandshore.wordpress.com


As a practical investigation in the theme of the seminar, four Jewellery Stunts are initiated by the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Metal and Jewellery Department and will be implement by the artists in public space in Munich: ALLA (S), Emil Kristoffer Gustavsson (N), A 5 (S) and Anna-Maria Saar and Madis Luik (Est). Here we give a short presentation of the four stunts:

Group A 5
1Stunt
Title: Feed the creator
Place: In relation to "Zu Gast in der Hefnerstrasse 11", address: Hefnerstr. 11, 81541, Munich
Time: 2015-03-12, 15:30-17:00
Participating artists: Adam Grinovich, Annika Pettersson, Romina Fuentes

2Stunt
Title: Feed the creator
Place: In relation to "Schmuck 2015" Between the metro and the the messe halle.
Time: 2015-03-14, 14:30-16:30
Participating artists: Adam Grinovich, Annika Pettersson, Romina Fuentes

Description of both stunts: To really understand a game you have to play it. Learning about the rules and never daring to play it is no fun. A5 encounters experimental jewellery with a passion and in this project it involves bread, sausages and rings. Project X fulfils our elementary necessities such as food and the ever longing need to adore ourselves. Food to eat, to get stuffed. Jewellery for the soul and vanity. Necessities, desires and bodies. Sold in a kiosk. A kiosk of ours.“Feed the creator” is a project that investigates presentation, adornment and the marketing of a piece of jewellery. The platform for this A5 project will be in the context of a kiosk. The format of the kiosk gives us a playful space, where goods will be presented, cooked, served and sold. A5 is exploring the concept of a body through our presentation, the need for nutrition in our display and the human vanity in our costumers. We want to offer a different way to experience the work, when it’s not in a gallery, not on the wall it’s and not in a white space. “Feed the creator” is on the street; it is in a kiosk and it is in constant flux.

Anna-Maria Saars
Title: You can disappear without noticing
Place: Window of Galerie Handwerk, my custom-made web-site for that video
Time: Filmed on 11th of March, shown 12th and 13th of March
Participating artists: Anna-Maria Saar and Madis Luik

Description: Anna-Maria Saar will visit different shows and exhibitions in Schmuck and will be filmed all day. The video will reflect her reactions to the shows, her emotions and her fears about disappearing from that scenery. The artists will through this process investigate what are the most sincere reasons to make jewellery-art. Anna Maria herself states: “I have never really tried to get that area, that playground. I’m making somethingonly when I feel that I have something to say. In the jewellery world I’m mostly quiet. I’m only worrying… worrying that this will be my last exhibition, last time to come out.”
The video will be visible at http://www.annamariasaar.com

ALLA ft. Daniela Hedman
Title: Please sign here - ALLA ft. Daniela Hedman
Place: Galerie Handwerk, München and Mobile location in Neuperlach, instagram.com/alla_pleasesignhere/.
Time: Friday 13th March and Thursday 12th March
Participating artists: Daniela Hedman and ALLA

Description: Please sign here - ALLA ft. Daniela Hedman is a mobile exhibition that will take place during one day in the suburb Neuperlach and the next day in front of Galerie Handwerk.
With the use of the human handprint the visitors in Munich will be offered to actively participate in the project in a give and take act. The print of the hand is something we nowadays use as a way to identify ourselves. The title “Please sign her” is playing with the suggestion of a bureaucratic way of identification, but points on the exact opposite. The persons behind the handprints in “Please sign here” can’t be judged on their presence or background. Here the unidentified handprints give no more information of a person than the fact that it comes from a human being.
ALLA is a platform for promoting artistic activities questioning racisms and intolerance. The aim of ALLA is to pave way for dialogue about difficult and highly charged subjects with the help of jewellery. ALLA was initiated in Stockholm, Sweden and has been an ongoing antiracist project in different forms since 2010. The main aim of ALLA is to challenge ingrained perceptions about the other. We are focused on creating positive meetings that offers new ways of dealing with intolerance.

Emil Gustafsson
Title: Proxemic approaches
Place: Close to Emil Gustafsson
Time: Continuous, Thursday to Saturday
Participating artists: Emil Gustafsson

Description: The project by Emil Gustafsson consists of social research through the medium of electronic jewellery. It will pop up at random places during the Schmuck week and will be a one to one experience. Real time conversations will be analyzed and rewarded according to measurable parameters registered in live conversations. Gustafsson works with jewellery as communicative, wearable devices in conjunction with programmed electronics. Emil Gustafsson is a master student at and sponsored by the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.