Street art, social trends, politics, and the city’s punk heritage are reflected in the notorious Berliner Look. The style includes Berliners’ preference for preloved clothes and accessories, individuality, club culture and unpretentiousness. This sounds encouraging for contemporary jewelry artists with similar aspirations.
However, although Berlin is home to pioneering jewelry artists and exquisite contemporary jewelry galleries, the art of adorning remains pretty undiscovered among its creative communities an art loving public. Introducing Berlin art lovers into jewelry is a challenge.
SMCK ON REEL runs in parallel with Berlin Fashion Week 2024. The project has mobilized jewelry artists, fashion experts, gallerists to initiate a discourse about jewelry’s impact on contemporary culture and politics. The special screenings take place in legendary cinema and film institute Arsenal at Potsdamer Platz, and in two jewelers’ collective galleries: Noonberlin Kreuzberg and Polykiosk in Berlin Mitte.
SMCK ON REEL has designed a special screening program for Berlin's film loving, and highly politicized audience, and features a series of documentaries, jewelers’ portraits, experts talks and contemporary narratives. The SMCK ON REEL program covers topics such as the war in Ukraine, social and intellectual crisis, climate change. The videos bear witness to the artists’ potential to reinvent themselves and reach new audiences through the medium video.
More than 35 video contributions portray contemporary jewelers' pioneering role in shaping current values. The videos present artists who search for interdisciplinary junctions, support national resistance in war-ravaged Ukraine, use jewelry to promote ideas of democracy, peace, and social justice, commemorate genocides and recent tragedies, revive traditions, alert the public to the dangers of global warming, and experiment with new techniques in their quest for meaning, expression, and active political participation.
* Top banner: "Memories II" by Chr. Ziegler (video still) / "Lunar Blossom", necklace, by Heejoo Kim.
• SMCK On Reel • Berlin Screenings – trailer. •
Screening:
Monday 1 July
3:00–5:00pm
Kino Arsenal
Potsdamer Strasse 2
10785 Berlin-Mitte
arsenal-berlin.de
Loop:
Wed 3 + Thu 4 July
11:00am - 7:00pm
Noonberlin
Dresdener Strasse 26
10999 Berlin-Kreuzberg
noonberlin.de
Screening:
Friday 5 July
9:00–11:00pm
Polykiosk
Gipsstrasse 8
10999 Berlin-Mitte
@poly.kiosk
