Led by Sam Edens (HvA), a biodesigner and researcher with expertise in working with biobased and living materials such as fungi, algae, yeasts, and bacteria, the workshop will guide students in the cultivation of Grey Oyster fungal threads on substrates of decaying materials from the garden. The collaboration between the TXT department, the Garden Department, and Sam’s expertise aims to foreground how knowledge emerges from the interplay of materials and the environment in a collective, material-discursive setting. With additional guidance from theory tutor Giulia Damiani, and workshop expert Mathilde Clerc, we will explore how these material-based research practices reflect broader inquiries into situated and collective learning and the transfer of embodied forms of knowledge through co-creating, sharing and developing affective relationships.

This workshop is part of a series of workshops conocted by the Materiality Research Group (Anja Groten and Márk Redele), and kindly funded by CoECI. The Materiality Research Group revisits the role of workshops and their pedagogies, asking how material comes to matter in the face of contemporary social and ecological challenges.