Opening Day Speech: Challenging Jewellery

The gymnasium hummed with voices of students. One hundred chairs had been pushed into an oval while the audience was out for a communal bread baking ceremony. The configuration looked a bit like a colossal therapy circle. ‘Welcome to year number two,’ a woman’s voice said robotically over the loudspeaker. ‘Please take out your cell phones, open Instagram, search for challengingjewellery, and follow.’ A handful of faculty smiled blankly, a few students shrugged and squinted, but most of the audience looked at the centre of the circle suspiciously. A blonde woman in her mid-thirties glided past the barrier of chairs into the middle of the room. She was wearing fleshy mauve, almost iridescent fabric. Students slowly dug into their pockets and bags for their phones and tablets. ‘When you see the first Instagram post,’ the blonde woman continued, ‘tap it to reach our feed and periodically refresh to see new content added throughout the talk.’ One CJ'er was sitting crouched over in a secluded corner of the room. Her elbows dug deep into her thighs as she uploaded images to Instagram. Her long black hair fell over her iPhone 11 Pro as she listened for keywords from the blonde woman’s mouth. The Challenging Jewellery initiative is operated by way of a fully-functioning company structure. The collective that forms will naturally extend beyond the temporary programme’s time frame of two years. Tutors, guests, and participants form an intergenerational mix characterised by its potential to challenge the subject of jewellery on a fundamental level: how it relates to our present time… Another CJ'er shifted in his chair. His jaw tightened as he listened. He had applied for this program after receiving an email from a historic figure in the field. It wasn’t a personal email, but one of those listserv advertisements soliciting people to apply...