Double activation: the ephemeral interaction between body and jewelry

Contemporary jewelry is a niche within the applied arts, yet recent years there has been substantial theoretical development in this field. However, a particular category of jewelry has remained underexplored: pieces that actively assert their presence rather than merely adorning the body passively. These 'active' jewelry pieces have not been theorized, a gap I aim to address by coining the concept 'double activation'. According to Kevin Murray and Rock Hushka, every piece of jewelry becomes ‘activated’ when worn on the body. However, I argue that 'double activation' jewelry also ‘activates’ the body, resulting in a second - 'double' - activation. These pieces induce sensations in the wearer's body that would not be experienced without the jewelry. They achieve this through five mechanisms: (1) restricting movement, (2) interacting with body parts and potentially causing pain, (3) manipulating the body's forms, (4) extend ing the body to generate new sensations, and (5) taking control over the body. Drawing on examples such as Jennifer Crupi’s Ornamental Hands: Figure One and Akiko Shinzato’s Chin Up, this article explores how these works subvert conventional jewelry’s passive role. These pieces demand a temporary relationship between body and object, where control is relinquished to the jewelry. As such, ‘double activation’ can be seen as a performative event — a brief moment in which the wearer’s body and the jewelry coalesce into a singular entity before the interaction becomes unsustainable. This ephemeral relationship challenges the notion of jewelry as static and ornamental, proposing instead a conceptual framework where the focus is placed on transient bodily experiences. In this way, ‘double activation’ shifts the discourse on ephemerality in jewelry from the materiality of the object to the temporality of the interaction itself.