The Process
Interactive workshops are at the core of the project. Stories of migration and belonging are shared through the creation of personal artefacts.
Connecting through craft
Our process has developed through years of collaborative research and experimentation.
Through a series of activities, participants map the ways that SIM cards connect them to friends, family and places. They select an image, a ‘screenshot with a story’, to turn into a wearable artefact.
We have run workshops in 8 countries to date.
‘I carried the flower in my notebook from Mazar-i-Sharif airport as a memory, when I left my country, my family and my career the day after the Taliban takeover. I sought sanctuary in Athens and made this picture of it at the acropolis’
Afghan judge, London, 2022
Mobile darkrooms
Digital screenshots are transferred to SIM-scale models, made of the same 0.7 mm glass as smartphones screens, using nineteenth-century photographic methods.
The mini dark room process disrupts the automatised nature of the smartphone and renders each artwork unique.
Networked jewellery
The final stage is to finish and polish the delicate metal frame, which holds the glass image and is etched with the project QR code. This is manually stamped with a number of personal significance individualising each artefact.
Each participant makes one piece to add to the project archive and another to keep and wear, in this way the project becomes a living, moving exhibition.
‘This image reminds me every time I look at my phone that dreams and reality are just a home screen away’
Boyka, mother of 2, Athens 2022
