The accumulating video – stage 6

The exhibition closes at the Chinese Museum today – so this is the last version of the video – for now.
On Saturday we had a group discussion about the project at the Museum. Several participants commented that they’d like to try using a different approach to photography do document their experience… so Material Migrations Version II might be in order… keep you posted.
Read more about the project.
See latest comments from participants.

Mapping Material Migrations

Mapping Material Migrations

MATERIALS GATHERED IN THE URBAN MILIEU OF CHINATOWN ARE BROKEN DOWN & REASSEMBLED IN NEW WEARABLE FORMATIONS.

30+ BROOCHES ARE GIVEN AWAY TO PEOPLE TO WEAR. IN RETURN, THEY ARE ASKED TO NOTICE WHAT THE BROOCH DRAWS ATTENTION TO, AND TAKE PHOTOS.

THE VISUAL DOCUMENTATION ACCUMULATES THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE PROJECT.
Read more about the project here

See the video accumulating.

This A4 pamphlet describes the conceptual framework and maps the ‘saprophytic’ process behind the project. You can download it here: SMALL (4MB) / PRINT QUALITY (14MB)

Opening at the Chinese Museum

This project will be featured in the group show ‘Gateway’ at the Chinese Museum. Any wearers who are coming – please wear your brooches!
As the project exists largely beyond the Museum, and the artefacts are not on display, having them circulate in the audience offers an alternative way of engaging with the work in an exhibition context.
See you there.
[Read more about the project here]

About Material Migrations

Material Migrations is an urban jewellery project that explores how objects can mediate our relationship with the urban milieu .  The project focuses on the site of Chinatown, approaching it as an ongoing coalescence of materials and bodies over time.  It tests ways jewellery practice (making+wearing) can intercept and transform such materials, and release them back into the city in new ways.

Materials are diverted from their usual trajectories (retail to consumption, waste to landfill), then broken down and reassembled in new wearable configurations.  These are then fed back into the city by giving them to people to wear. This reciprocal relation between jewellery and the urban environment is informed by the analogy of a saprophyte: an organism that decomposes and processes materials, and feeds them back into its ecosystem.

Participants are invited to wear a brooch in daily life and to notice which aspects of urban environment the work draws attention to.  They are asked to take a series of photos of themselves wearing the work in such situations. The photos will be added to a growing video work that documents the dispersal of these works into the city and the emerging relations between wearers, jewellery and the urban milieu.

You can see this accumulating video as part of the Gateway exhibition at the Chinese Museum (April 18 – May 23 2011), and on this blog.
Material Migrations has been developed by Jacqui Chan as part of a practice-based PhD in the School of Art at RMIT University entitled ‘Jewellery in the Urban Milieu: explorations in emergence’.

download invitation