Love stories move and inspire us. They make us dream, and boost our desire for happiness. We love to imagine ourselves as the stars of our unique and special love story immortalized by an author’s pen.
Great literature appeals to and reflects the taste of a sophisticated audience that looks for meaning and inspiration in quality, in avant-garde ideas, and in emotionally strong, well structured images. In hard times, great literature clears our vision, reassesses our values, and gives birth to new creations.
One of applied art's major role is to bind us with our loved ones. A precious object – jewelry, ceramics, textiles, dress or accessory, furniture – reflects memories, values and life milestones. In many cultures and historical eras, a special object, for example a jewelry piece, seals the lovers’ commitment and oath.
SMCK Magazine's video project A Short Movie About Love & Objects combines literature, applied art and crafts with real life experiences. Artists, designers, and crafters interpret some of the world’s greatest love stories, embody the main characters, adorn them with the artist’s jewelry, dress them with the artist’s creations or furnish them with hand-crafted objects.
• Saturnalia – video by Christoph Ziegler and Loukia Richards inspired by Titus Petronius’ Satyricon. (2020, 4.53 min) •
Send us YOUR love story, a real one or imaginary with a happy or a sad end ❤ a story of passion or a story of disappointment ❤ a story about love destroyed by social conventions or a story about love against all odds ❤ a story of secret or forbidden love ❤ or a love story that ended abruptly through separation or war or death or a love story that led to a happy family ❤ a love story that started promising and became a nightmare or a story between people who did not match initially, however fell in love and grew together ❤ or a love story that never happened, but remained a phantasy and became the tormenting question: "What would have happened, if...?"
SMCK Magazine matches the artist’s love story with a masterpiece of world literature. It gives the artist’s love story a new context, frame and perspective; it adds depth to the artist’s story and work, and presents it through different lenses, approaches and media.
SMCK Magazine finds the literary equivalent of your love story from a vast collection of world literature that includes writers such as Stendhal (enemies fall in love), Gustave Flaubert (unfaithfulness), Yukio Mishima (older woman – younger man), Henry James (love beyond death), Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (fetichism-masochism), Italo Calvino (lovers finding each other in a surreal world), Leo Tolstoy (social conventions poisoning love), Alberto Moravia (treason and contempt), Emily Brontë (love surviving death), William Thackeray (a fooled lover), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (desire for eternal youth and love), Bram Stoker (love beyond evil), Nikos Kazantzakis (love turned into hate),Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (faith and lies), Nathaniel Hawthorne (forbidden love), Patricia Highsmith (love between human and ...cat), Virginia Woolf ('gender-fluid'), Margaret Atwood (love and totalitarianism), etc.
❥ e-Residency & workshop: 2-day e-Residency/online weekend group workshop on literature, history and meaning of objects + performance gives you insight into the plot and literary character that corresponds to your love story.
The eight-hour workshop addresses small groups (maximum 8 participants). You may choose from various weekend dates between May – July 2025. The workshop also provides you with valuable tips and advice on how to film and how to play their part.
❥ Directions & shooting: SMCK Magazine gives you directions on how to shoot your story, and how to film your message and stage your video on smartphone or camera. No previous experience in video shooting, acting or stage design is needed.
❥ Editing & production: SMCK Magazine cuts and edits the video material sent by the artists, and create a video composed of individual episodes presenting the participants’ love stories in a ca. 20-minute film.
❥ Video Screenings: A Short Movie About Love & Objects will be screened at Grassimesse Leipzig, 24 to 26 October 2025. Grassimesse is the oldest and one of the most prestigious Applied Art fairs in Europe. The movie will also be screened at SCHMUCK Munich Jewelry Week in March 2026.
❥ Publication in SMCK Magazine: Participants’ work and stories – including images and text – will be published in a special catalogue in SMCK Magazine, issue no. 12, titled Fashionable.
Disciplines: Artists who work in the field of jewelry, object, design, sculpture, installation, performance, video, photography, textile art, ceramics, as well as filmmakers, crafters, art theorists, researchers, curators are encouraged to apply.
Application requirements: Send us your love story (maximum 150 words), as well as a weblink and your work statement. Email your application to magazine@smck.org.
Participation fee: 220,00 EUR payable in one or two installments.
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