Contemporary Jewelry Laboratory: the body as raw material of invention

Abstract

This article aims to report and discuss inventive learning dynamics, with a focus on body experience, used in the optional course Laboratório de Joalheria Contemporânea, offered at the School of Design at the State University of Minas Gerais, from 2017 to 2019. approaching the relationship between body and jewelry, thinking about the unfolding of this intertwining in the individuals who design and use them, the discipline proposed to explore the connection between being in the world and the lived world. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (2011) sense of “own body” as a reference, students were invited to experiment and create from their own bodies, exploring and interacting with collective territories. Through practical-reflective activities, the body dynamics allowed to extract motivations, reflections, for the development of a contemporary jewelry. By exploring different pedagogical formats, we seek to stimulate invention, foster the production of subjectivities, and create environments conducive to experimentation from the analysis and delivery of the body to the process and questioning of the contemporary.