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.Benjamin Lignel, editor di Art Jewelry Forum (California)
Nel 1997 negli Stati Uniti, alcuni collezionisti di gioielleria con una visione estetica affine hanno formato Art Jewelry Forum (AJF – il forum della gioielleria artistica). Concepirono AJF come un ente capace di informare i partecipanti tramite delle attività partecipative sia americani che internazionali. AJF ha funzionato inoltre come un punto di riferimento e d’incontro per le persone direttamente coinvolte: curatori, storici, gli artisti stessi, (ed ancora altri) e molti altri. A volte piccoli gruppi di collezionisti hanno viaggiato insieme per saperne di più e per comprare pezzi, ed AJF informava i membri dei viaggi collettivi quattro volte l’anno. Presto però, ci si è resi conto che AJF avrebbe potuto fare di più ed informare una comunità ben più grande. Nel 2000 AJF ha stabilito il suo primo sito web e nel 2010 ha nominato Damian Skinner (neozelandese e storico delle maestrie artistiche) il suo primo redattore. Con queste due mosse AJF si è definito come un forum globale per diffondere la conoscenza, la comprensione e l’apprezzamento del gioiello artistico contemporaneo. Adesso, AJF (di cui io sono l’editor al momento) pubblica online circa quattordici articoli, interviste o recensioni al mese.
“Cerchiamo di dare ai lettori gli strumenti e le informazioni che servono loro per comprendere un campo artistico in piena evoluzione e per fare questo utilizziamo vari formati: recensioni, interviste, saggi, video, notizie su siti web, ecc. E il mio compito, come editor, è dare forma alla nostra visione, assegnare articoli, redigerli, e metterli sul sito web. Inoltre, organizzo tavole rotonde, redigo un libro per AJF ogni anno, tengo seminari sulla scrittura e la curatela di mostre, preparo esposizioni e in generale partecipo al discorso senza fine sul gioiello contemporaneo, dove i commentatori sono sempre più numerosi.”
Pubblicare il gioiello contemporaneo
Abbiamo chiesto a Ben di aprire la conversazione su gioiello contemporaneo ed editoria nell’incontro organizzato a settembre 2016 a Milano – Pubblicare il gioiello contemporaneo:
La gioielleria contemporanea occupa luoghi e si espande grazie a risorse non proprie: fotografia, graphic design, presentazioni in power-point, la parola scritta e detta. E questi luoghi non “naturali” introducono una discrepanza notevole fra lo scopo dagli artisti orafi (cioè: realizzare degli oggetti che si definiscono proprio nell’interagire fra loro e le persone che li portano) e la realtà degli oggetti stessi. Hanno una loro esistenza proprio in virtù del fatto che sono pubblicati.
“Il gioiello contemporaneo vive e prolifera in ambiti che non gli sono propri: lo fotografiamo, proiettiamo, renderizziamo, ne parliamo e ne scriviamo…
Gioielli pensati e fatti dagli artisti per stimolare una reazione con il corpo, vivono soprattutto sulla carta: come il briefing pre-gara di una partita che non si gioca mai!”
Con il web 2.0 si è affermata una diluzione dell’autorità accordata un tempo agli esperti: il giornalista, lo storico, il direttore del museo. Oggi non funziona più così in quello che è diventato un mare di espressioni autonome e di iniziative personali. Il modello di un esperto-insegnante non viene cancellato, ma per forza deve trovare un modo di coesistere con discussioni informate, commenti istantanei e condivisione del sapere. Ben Lignel
“Il Blogging è un modo per complicare il mondo, ancora una volta.” David Weinberger
> continua – Abstract dell’incontro
Benjamin Lignel, editor, Art Jewelry Forum (California)
Art Jewelry Forum (AJF), launched in 1997 by a group of like-minded jewelry collectors in the United States, was primarily conceived as an organization to educate its constituents through direct immersion in local and foreign jewelry centers. It also functioned as a self-aware incubator for the field’s cultural stakeholders: curators, historians, and the institutions for which they work. Collectors traveled in small groups to learn about and buy work, and quarterly reports on foreign expeditions were sent to members. The organization soon saw the importance of expanding its mandate, however, and wanted to make the information it gathered available to a wider audience. In 2000 AJF launched its first website, and in 2010 it appointed New Zealand craft historian Damian Skinner as its first editor, thereby recasting itself as a global platform with a mission to “help [its] readership . . . build knowledge, understanding, and a critical appreciation of contemporary art jewelry.” AJF (for which I now serve as editor) currently publishes online an average of fourteen articles, interviews, or reviews per month.
The different formats we use – review, interview, long essays, and shorter analyses, best-offs, media sightings, videos – aim to provide readers with the instruments and information to understand and make sense of a fast moving field. My work, as editor, consist in shaping the editorial vision of the platform, commissioning pieces from contributors, putting those texts through the editorial process, and uploading them on the website. Alongside this editorial activity, I organize round tables, publish one book a year for AJF, write essays for other publications, conduct writing workshops, curate exhibitions: all of this partake in the “ceaseless production of discourse on contemporary jewelry”, to which I am just one of a growing pool of commentators.
About Jewelry and publishing
We asked Ben to start the conversation on jewelry and publishing (Pubblicare il gioiello contemporaneo, Milano, settembre 2016) :
“Contemporary jewellery lives in those places and proliferates through media that are not its own: photography, graphic design, powerpoint presentations, the written and the spoken word. There is a wide discrepancy between the implied goal of the profession (to create work that finds its justification in its interaction with users) and the actual ‘life’ of jewelry objects. They live in print first and foremost – as if the white page acted like a timeless briefing room, where pre-match ambitions, strategies, and strengths can be rehearsed while the match never gets played.” (in Now and never: the currency of contemporary jewellery)
“Since the advent of web 2.0, the art-historical notion of cultural objects as genealogical—a perception premised on authorship and artistic influence—has losing ground to a constant recombination of information according to evolving affinities, a perception premised on kinship and viewer endorsement.[…] This redistribution implies a shift in power, or, perhaps more precisely, a dilution of the authority traditionally held by figures such as the gallerist, journalist, historian, or curator in a sea of unregulated self-expression and personal initiative. The top-down education model, or the figure of the expert, is not annulled, but it must coexist with deliberative forms of discussion, instantaneous commenting, and transversal knowledge sharing.” (in Digital Happy)
Blogging is the way in which we get to complicate the world again.
—David Weinberger
> to be continued – Meeting Abstract
Testi pubblicati – articles (selection)
“On defining contemporary jewelry”, in Metalsmith, Fall 2006
“Repeat after me”, in Metalsmith, Summer 2008
“Plan B”, a Klimt02 blog, summer 2009
“If I am fast, will you still love me?”, in ThinkTank, edition 06, 2009
“What does it mean to us?”, in Grey Area Gris, Biblioteca de Mexico, 2010
“CCTV”, a Klimt02 blog, spring 2010
“now and never: the currency of contemporary jewellery”, in ThinkTank, edition 07, 2010
“Species of rings : the last show at Hnoss”, essay written for Hnoss gallery’s last publication, 2011
“Keeping it pure, keeping it dead”, in It Was Like a Fever (RMIT gold and silversmithing graduation catalogue), 2012
“Original Copies”, in Metalsmith, Spring 2012
“Going Greek: a report on the Handshake educational model”, in Handshake, 2013
“Le bijou contemporain en France: inventaire des sous-effectifs”, in Dans la ligne de Mire, Musée des Arts décoratifs, 2013
“Bread ‘N Butter – In conversation with Benjamin Lignel on value, profit, and engaging with the market place.” in Bucks n’ Barter, 2013
“The Multiple Choice”, in Bijou en jeu, MUDAC, Lausanne, 2014
“Hello Tiki” – Overview nº18
“Digital Happy”, in Beyong Bling, LACMA, 2016
“We are all in this together. We are not in this together”, Art Jewelry Forum, March 2016
“Made together: the Thrills and pangs of participation”, Art Jewelry Forum, June 2016
Saggi critici – Essays on designers and jewelers (selection)
Ulrike Kämpfert, “The Art of w(e)ar”, in Also Known as Jewellery, 2009
Christian Gonzenbach, “Safari”, in ThinkTank, edition 06, 2009
Atai Chen, “The Redundance of Matter”, in ThinkTank, edition 06, 2009
Lin Cheung, “Name: Lin Cheung”, in ThinkTank, edition 07, 2010
Lin Cheung, “Wear Again, Again”, in ThinkTank, edition 07, 2010
Victoire de Castellane at Gagosian Paris, “Just what is it that makes today’s art galleries so different, so appealing?”, in Art Jewelry Forum, 2011
A5, “Direct Debit”, in Think Tank, edition 08, 2011
Kiko Gianocca, “(not) Your Picture Here”, in Think Tank, edition 08, 2011
Manon van Kouswijk, “The Generic and the Singular: Portrait of the artist as a Maker”, in Objectspace, 2012
Otto Künzli, “Das Buch,” in Art Jewelry Forum, 2013
Manon van Kouswijk, 11 fragments in Findings, Fall 2015
Libri – Books
Are you Bleeding Yet, monography on Ida Applebroog (New York: D.A.P, 2001-02)
with Christian Alandete, Also Known as Jewelry (Paimpont: la garantie, association pour le bijou, 2009)
with Jorunn Veiteberg, Speed –ThinkTank, edition 06 (Gmunden: ThinkTank, a European Initiative for the Applied Arts, 2009)
Art Jewelry Forum Best of Interview (Mill Valley: Art Jewelry Forum, 2014)
différence et répétition (la garantie, association pour le bijou, Paris, 2014)
Shows and Tales, on jewelry exhibition-making (Mill Valley: Art Jewelry Forum, 2015)
On and Off – Jewelry in the wider cultural field (Mill Valley: Art Jewelry Forum, 2016)
Ben Lignel. An art historian (B.A., New York University) and furniture designer (M.A., Royal College of Art) by training, Benjamin began designing jewelry as soon as her earned his master in 1995. In 2007, he co-founded La Garantie, Association Pour Le Bijou, an association with a mission to study and promote jewelry, which has spearheaded numerous interdisciplinary projects in France and abroad: In this capacity, he co-curated Also known as jewellery, a exhibition of French contemporary jewelry that traveled six countries; he helped program and organize the 44th Zimmerhof symposium (2012) in Germany (focusing on the public and the private), as well as Bijou(x). Les Pratiques contemporaine à l’épreuve de leur discours (2014) a two-day symposium hosted by the Paris College of Art.
Lignel started contributing essays and op-eds to magazines and publications in 2006, and became a member of Think Tank, A European Initiative for the Applied Arts in 2009. From then on, his professional endeavors shifted towards more curatorial, editorial and educational projects: in 2013, he became a guest teacher at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Nuremberg, Germany); he also organized Différence et Répétition, a research-by-exhibition project that was shown in Norway and France. Lignel was appointed editor of Art Jewelry Forum in january of the same year. His position requires him to commission reviews, interviews and essay on contemporary from an international roster of academics and emerging writers, whilst overseeing other AJF projects (this included organising round-table discussions between most of the world’s contemporary jewelry content providers in Munich, in 2014 and 2015). Lignel lectures extensively on various aspects of the jewelry field, and has contributed writing to several museum publications. He is currently working, with co-editor Namita Wiggers, on his fourth book, which will be dedicate to jewelry and gender.
GIOIELLI IN FERMENTO 