Written and directed by David Pledger for, and with, visual artist and jeweller, Su-san Cohn, Meaninglessness is a performance talk about objects and people in which the personal and political intertwine with the artistic to navigate the global issue of displaced peoples. Using the four-leaf clover as a prism, the performance interweaves threads of courage, trust, hope and love with the audience’s connection to jewellery.

Meaninglessness asks the question: what does an artist do when their government operates on values that are hostile to their own? To which is offered up a quietly subversive antidote to society’s anxiety about the stranger, the newcomer, the other.

The work was triggered by the Danish Government’s 2016 Jewellery Legislation requiring any assets over DK10,000 – including ‘non-sentimental’ or ‘meaningless’ jewellery’ – to be confiscated by border authorities to subsidise the upkeep of people seeking asylum in Denmark.