Current Obsession launches #8 Placeholder Issue – an ‘empty’ time-based magazine to be filled by our readers chapter by chapter throughout 2023.
With this issue, Current Obsession delves into the concept of a placeholder — a container that encapsulates a void, things unknown and yet to be defined — to tackle some of the most complex attributes of jewellery.
Place-holding significance, jewellery and adornment are examined as metaphoric containers for hidden or ‘encoded’ information, the specific meanings of which have been lost — due to colonialism, displacement of people, suppression of knowledge and spiritual practices. The magazine looks at different ways in which this knowledge could be unlocked, rediscovered and empowered.
The readers will experience an ‘object in flux’ — a magazine in development. To illustrate that, we have reversed the publishing process. Instead of receiving a finished ‘product’ at once, the readers will collect content chapter by chapter, completing the issue at the end of 2023. Readers will first start with an ‘empty’ magazine: a placeholder formalised as a limited edition spine. The spine, created in collaboration with Delphine Lejeune, is designed to hold the chapters as they arrive. This allows for content to be rearranged and additional materials to be included; readers will end up with a completely individual and unique issue.
The reversal also applies to the way magazine content is developed: as a result of site-specific, in-depth, sensorial activations — Q&A’s, workshops, performances, and readings, in which the contributors and the audience shape the outcome collectively.
Research subjects behind this issue represent large fields of study in both theoretical and artistic practices. The magazine, therefore, seeks to create connections between craftspeople – artists, image-makers, and word ‘craftitioners’ – scholars and philosophers.
A total of five chapters constitute the Placeholder Issue:
Chapter 1. Body as an Intermediary Object (released July 2023)
Chapter 2. Critical Multiplicity: Objects in Flux (release September 2023)
Chapter 3. 'Do you mind if I braid while we talk?' (release October 2023)
Chapter 4. The Multispecies Becoming-with (release December 2023, tbc)
In a multidisciplinary dialogue, our team and each contributing artist work on the smallest details, weaving imagery into typography, giving this issue a new feel that ‘place-holds’ for the future.
Due to the magazine's time-based format, we will offer it as a subscription.
By purchasing the Full Subscription, you will receive a total of five shipments: first, a limited edition spine along with the first chapter 'Intermediary Objects', and four additional shipments with subsequent chapters throughout 2023.