Current Obsession #9 The Radical Surface Issue

Current Obsession (CO) is a digital and print magazine, and a curatorial platform exploring identity, belonging and heritage through the lens of jewellery and adornment.
CO reshapes the current meaning of adornment by holding fundamental personal and cultural expressions – jewellery, wearable artefacts, digital self-enhancements, makeup art, skin and body modifications – up to the light of urgent world issues.
Appreciated for its experimental approach and unconventional style, CO reimagines how adornment is showcased and experienced, forging meaningful connections across art, design, and culture through collaborations with visionary creatives and institutions.
To mark the launch of Current Obsession #9 The Radical Surface Issue, artists Jimena Casas and Constanza Castagnet will perform a live reading that activates Shimmering Worlds: A Sense of Brilliance, and the Lightness of Being — an essay written for the issue by renowned anthropologist Nicholas Saunders. The text explores how Indigenous American cultures experienced the world as suffused with light — linking sky, sea, earth and atmosphere into a spiritual and moral continuum, energised by cosmic force. In their activation, Casas and Castagnet — Argentinian artists based in Amsterdam — work with sound, light and improvisation to evoke this multidimensional brilliance. Using voice, field recordings and experimental sampling, they summon the shimmer of divine presence. Their layered dialogues ripple and refract, echoing light as resonance, and brilliance as unfolding reflection.