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Unjewelry

Teresa Estapé

Spain

2016

18k gold

The gold of the mountains was washed out and came with the river Danube to Vienna. Fishermen and ferrymen were attracted by this special kind of floating debris. Legends can tell you stories about it!

The installation ‘Schwemm gut’ shows a street right after a “special floating debris”: within the cracks and gaps of the sidewalk there are fixed pieces of jewellery. The jewellery uses the structure of the street to show an image of 52 meters. The street is now the wearer and twinkles in a new shine.

In the video you can see the reactions of the passing people. At first glance – they think someone lost something and they are happy to raise a treasure. Looking further they see the plenty of jewellery on that dirty street. That’s really confusing. They don’t know if one should go round, if one is allowed to take something, if it is real or just trash. So they don’t know which rules apply as streets have nothing to do with jewellery.  Very unexpected!

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