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CHRISTOPHE BURGER CORPUS - France CORPUS IN KRAKOW  Christophe BURGER, vice president and only representative present in Krakow for the French group CORPUS, had the task to start the conference last day’s series of presentations., after a great night at the " Cherubino ", in the old part of the town.He first reminded a few points about Corpus’ own history, mentionning the specific difficulties french jewellery designers can meet in trying to get the best possible education. Strasbourg definitely is a particular place, providing the only state school (l’Ecole des Arts D*coratifs) where people can learn jewellery as an art form. He then told about events Corpus had organized. The seminal exhibition definitely was "le Bijou et le Sacré" (" Jewellery and the Sacred "), a show which travelled from Paris to Nimes through Strasbourg, Erfurt and Barcelona. This was an event which actually set the basis of Corpus’ way of working. As a small group of about 15 people, which makes of course relationships much easier, Corpus initiated a method which includes a decisive part of theoretical research. Realizing what benefit they get from putting words on their work, without demanding anything from any member that they would not accept to do, Corpus gradually developed a whole questionning about what it means to be a group and create jewellery. The next step was " experimenting jewellery : us and the others ", a presentation that took part in in 1996, together with photographers and some invited jewellery designers from Germany and Spain. The 1997 Ars Ornata Europeana conference in Strasbourg was subtitled " Appropriating jewellery : Learning and Understanding ", and participants to the common exhibition (" What kind of jewellery do I feel like making in 1997? Why?") were asked to deliver written comments together with their pieces. In Barcelona in 1999, Corpus showed pieces from some of their members around the idea of "Inner Worlds". The designers had been asked to make a twofold presentation of their work. On opposite sides of tall columns in the Museo Maritim, they proposed a piece of jewellery that could be tried on by those who wanted. A polaro?d photo was taken from the wearer and pinned together with the piece. On the other hand, as a sort of symetry to it, the designer showed "something" from his private inner world, and this could be whatever object, photos, texts, poems, etc, in short something that could help visitors to understand more about the artist’s creative process by relating both sides of the columns. In Krakow, Christophe brought a video (CD-Rom) that had been made by two Corpus members, Cathy Abrial and Maud Rottier. This video was the result of one of the workshops that Corpus sometimes organize for their members. It was in no way an attempt to produce a marketing tool. The aim was to inititate a kind of chain reaction process by having the jewellery pieces shown alternatively simply displayed on a table and then worn in human, social contexts, suggested by texts the artists had provided together with their jewellery. Some kind of a report about how such pieces can share our very normal lives: urban life, nature, children playing, preparing for seduction, conversation in a kitchen, waiting for the bus, salsa in a club, a shoe-store, etc. This video - which could unfortunately not be watched in the "Manggha Conference Centre" with its original soundtrack – will be later used as a working document to push the group’s research further. The goal was not to produce a perfect and seductive visual work, but something to help the group asking questions like: can we define what we see on the screen ? How can such an approach help us (designers and non-designers) understand our jewellery better ? [Corpus will certainly organize other workshops. Those who would be interested are welcome to contact the group.] Thanks to our Polish friends, new people could join the network in Krakow. Fax lines are already very busy and fingers sore from long and passionate e-mails.
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