TO BE CONTINUED (2001)

"To Be Continued" is a sort of medallion made of my own hair, cut off in tufts and fashioned into a net. It is an unfinished jewellery object that may expand once the hair grows back and can be cut again. "To Be Continued" is life jewellery – in a concrete as well as an abstract sense.

Life is lived chronologically, second by second, but not every second is equally important, and in our mind, life consists of selected moments. Every strand of hair can be considered a lifeline of chronological life, and changes in hairstyle can be seen as disruptions of continuity. Changes in hairstyle often mark life changes, and even in our Western culture, where hair is mainly an aesthetic issue; changes in hairstyle can take on ritual meaning. "To Be Continued" is made from hair that represents an unusual change in hairstyle – a sort of hair sacrifice. This jewellery object is an image of life in a symbolic sense, but since "To Be Continued" is my graduation project from the Danish College of Jewellery and Silversmithing, it also marks a specific event in my life.

"To Be Continued" is constructed in stages, each containing six tufts of hair; for every six tufts, the object was photographed, and the photo placed in a medallion at the end of the latest tuft. The medallions make up some of the junctures in the net. In the other junctures, the tufts of hair are held together by tiny silver joints designed to visualise the order in which the tufts were put together. By careful examination one can trace the creative process, tuft by tuft, as the object narrates its own life story.

"To Be Continued" is an internally contradictory structure: order and chaos, chronology and simultaneity, direction and lack of direction. It reflects a view of life as chaotic, random and in the hands of each of us, yet simultaneously controlled and structured. The photos in the medallions resemble the photos we typically take of significant events throughout life, and the systematic approach illustrates that our lives are largely defined by the same types of selected moments.