Prof. Jivan Astfalck lectures on the MA and BA courses of the School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University, where she is also the School of Jewellery’s China Officer. She combines teaching with studio practice, which she exhibits internationally.
A visual artist, jeweller and academic, Jivan was born in Berlin, where she trained and qualified as a goldsmith. She has lived in the UK for more than 30 years, obtaining an MA in the history and theory of modern art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, and a PhD in fine art at the University of the Arts, London.
Her main focus and research interest is in using hermeneutic philosophy, literary theory and other appropriate thought models as tools to investigate narrative structures embedded in body-related crafts objects. In her view, the convergence of crafts, design and fine art practices is conducive to extending the theoretical vocabulary and map out new territories, where crafts practices contribute to cultural production and dissemination.
Jivan’s artistic research activities focus on wearable and decorative objects, which exist outside of the margins of a recognised design culture. These objects resonate with intimacy and passionate investment, a ‘folk art’ of our own culture rather than follow a functional design agenda.
Jivan is also interested in jewellery pieces that map out the demarcation lines where body meets world, a place or idea of a place, where narratives are invested in objects with the aim to negotiate that gap.
Her research supervision includes contemporary studio crafts, hermeneutic philosophy, gender studies, psychoanalyses, cross-cultural creative practice, and teaching and learning methodologies in creative subjects.
White Lies
White Lies
2006
brooches: paper, cotton, steel
necklace: fine-gold
White Lies – Sibyl paper brooch 
White Lies – Sibyl gold necklace 
White Lies – Sibyl, in film box
A white lie would cause no discord if it were uncovered and offers some benefit to the liar or the hearer, or both. As a concept, it is largely defined by local custom and cannot be clearly separated from regular lies with any authority. As such the term may have differing meanings in different cultures. Lies, which are harmless but told for no reason are generally not called white lies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie)
I dreamed I was a butterfly (after Zhuangzi)
Chinese box: torched and burned
DNA carrier: hair by Jivan Astfalck
Butterfly wings: Morpho Menelaus Pucallpensis
Torched Chinese box displayed ajar, from which an extremely fragile necklace ‘spills’, which is made from single strands of hair and the wings of ‘Morho Menelaus Pucallpensis.
NO HANDS must touch the necklace, it can only be handled with pincers; no strong flow of air (including breathing) nearby is advisable.
Even with the utmost care in handling the necklace, it must be expected that there will be great damage to the wings by the time the work returns from the museum’s exhibition it was commissioned for. I meant to repair the wings. This procedure will be repeated every time the piece comes back from exhibiting and over time the materiality of the necklace will build up and a DIY, repair and recycle, appearance will take over
GOMI no.1 – no.15
fake gold chain
plastic
18 ct gold
“Portobello was choked Shinjuku-tight with tourists. Jivan, after insisting Kumiko drink orange squash, which had grown warm and flat, let her out into the packed street. With Kumiko firmly in tow, Jivan began to work her way along the pavement, past folding steel tables spread with torn velvet curtains and thousands of objects made of silver and crystal, brass and china. Kumiko stared as Jivan drew her past arrays of Coronation plate and jowled Churchill teapots. ‘This is gomi,’ Kumiko ventured, when they paused at an intersection. Rubbish. In Tokyo, worn and useless things were landfill. Jivan grinned wolfishly. ‘This is England. Gomi’s a major natural resource. Gomi and talent. What I’m looking for now. Talent“
Slightly twisted quote from Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
Ring: cow bone
Brooch: sterling silver & gold-leaf & Wedgwood porcelain & silicon
Assemblage:
Art Deco wooden box: containing wax to fit stones for bracelet
Brooch I. sterling silver, silk, glass
Brooch II. sterling silver, silk cotton
To Sooth the Sting of Passion
to sooth the sting of passion 
to sooth the sting of passion this time, in torched box 
Sappho
Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless
ahhh my heart, my heart
beating blood-red fleshiness
in the shrine of woolly passion
but before if ever you’ve heard my pleadings
when at night love comes creeping in
through those folded blinds and crumbled sheets
nagging at the edge of consciousness
then return, as once when you left your father’s
golden house
once there was a girl who had parents
but really not a home
wing-whirring sparrows
skimming down the paths of the sky’s bright ether
the earth she lived on was lacking full of loss
she took her roots into her hands
swiftly–then you stood with a sudden brilliance
and planted she into another space
and trading places she was looking for that home
deathless face alight with your smile
setting one word after another
toetrippeditraptrap
what would ease the pain of my frantic mind
word after word
a little way along
here, to soothe the sting of your passion this time
where I can follow
hopefully
thinking
something new
© Sappho & Jivan
B1 3PA 