Jewellery Matter Time: Hard Data, Soft Stories
How does the production of jewellery, tied to the ownership of land, materials and data, contribute to the Anthropocene, environmental exploitation and climate emergency?
Jewellery, Matter, Time: Hard Data, Soft Stories focuses on the impact of different genres of jewellery production on the environment. As a result of globalised capitalism of materials, it has become harder to trace how materials are sourced, processed, and how communities and the environment pay costs for commodified materials made available for global markets. In the context of the Anthropocene, overconsumption and overproduction asks us – artists and designers – to situate our jewellery practices within the undefined relationships between material flows and their data, land of production and ownership. In this research hard data is defined as facts, soft stories are defined as meaningful connections between these facts, crafted into object stories through the artistic practices of Saskia Van der Gucht and Irma Földényi.
Jewellery, as a critical medium, becomes a tool to think with. If jewellery can tell stories, which stories can they tell about their impact in the age of the Anthropocene?
Image: Fieldwork for sand probes at Kattendijkdok-Oostkaai, september 2022 - Saskia Van der Gucht
Jewellery, Matter, Time: Hard Data, Soft Stories focuses on the impact of different genres of jewellery production on the environment. As a result of globalised capitalism of materials, it has become harder to trace how materials are sourced, processed, and how communities and the environment pay costs for commodified materials made available for global markets. In the context of the Anthropocene, overconsumption and overproduction asks us – artists and designers – to situate our jewellery practices within the undefined relationships between material flows and their data, land of production and ownership. In this research hard data is defined as facts, soft stories are defined as meaningful connections between these facts, crafted into object stories through the artistic practices of Saskia Van der Gucht and Irma Földényi.
Jewellery, as a critical medium, becomes a tool to think with. If jewellery can tell stories, which stories can they tell about their impact in the age of the Anthropocene?
Image: Fieldwork for sand probes at Kattendijkdok-Oostkaai, september 2022 - Saskia Van der Gucht
