output – publication
The Materiality research group is presenting the publication: How Material Comes to Matter - Workshops as sites of collective resistance and reimagination. This publication evolved from a shared urgency among students, educators, and researchers to foreground the pivotal role of workshops and labs in art and design education, and to recognize them as critical and versatile spaces for collaborative learning and material-driven inquiry. An online version of the publication is available here: etherport.org/publications/rsr/MaterialMatters/print.html
The book is edited by Anja Groten and Márk Redele and contains contributions from: Marjolijn Bol, Lila Bullen-Smith, Mathild Clerc-Verhoeven, Giulia Damiani, Sam Edens, Clem Edwards, The Garden Department, Anja Groten, Miquel Hervás Gómez, IPOP(Szymon Adamczak, Elioa Steffen), Julia Ihls, Ott Metusala, Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science+, Márk Redele, Gersande Schellinx.
Although there is a common agreement among students and educators that “thinking” and “making” are intertwined processes, there is a deep-rooted division that persists within academic frameworks. This publication aims to discuss the hierarchies and exclusionary practices that frequently arise within academia, such as the disconnect between classroom learning and material experimentation in workshops. Drawing from diverse perspectives, the contributors aspire to cultivate alternative, collective, and reciprocal approaches to learning with and through materiality.
How Material Comes to Matter begins with the acknowledgement that the planet we inhabit has been damaged through processes that implicate us all. In the face of the unfolding climate catastrophe and increasing social inequalities, it has become impossible to ignore the entanglement of humans with the material world, the ecosystems we inhabit and disrupt. What we call “material-based research” emerges from this recognition; it’s a way of attending to matter not as inert resources, but as active participants in shaping how we live, design, and imagine futures. Material-based research asks how materials themselves—entangled with histories of extraction, survival, and resistance—can become agents in shaping new knowledges and futures.
As artists, designers, and researchers, the conviction to take seriously knowledge produced and shared through the senses leads us to revisit the format of the workshop. Two meanings surface when we trace its genealogy: the workshop as a physical site of artisanal and artistic production, and the more ephemeral meaning of the workshop as a format for assembling groups of people to produce and achieve something together in a short amount of time. Far from neutral spaces, workshops are sites of contestation where hierarchies of knowledge, expectations of productivity, and neoliberal ideals of innovation are negotiated.
This publication brings together both meanings of “workshop,” and is interested in the different methods of learning and productivity they have inherited. Workshops—or, in some contexts Labs—bring about particular ways of coexisting in a space, along with social codes, and forms of interaction, such as the skill of negotiating the expectations of those who enter the workshop without much experience. Expectations of how much time certain processes take are recalibrated when they do not align with the wider ethos, pace, and culture of the space. Students at art and design schools learn to attune to these conditions, to the rhythm and prevailing social-material conduct of a workshop.
An online version of the publication is available here: etherport.org
How Material Comes to Matter was made possible through an Impulse Grant stimulating cross-institutional collaboration. The grant enabled various material encounters and allowed us to explore the future of a dedicated Material Research group in the context of Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
Although there is a common agreement among students and educators that “thinking” and “making” are intertwined processes, there is a deep-rooted division that persists within academic frameworks. This publication aims to discuss the hierarchies and exclusionary practices that frequently arise within academia, such as the disconnect between classroom learning and material experimentation in workshops. Drawing from diverse perspectives, the contributors aspire to cultivate alternative, collective, and reciprocal approaches to learning with and through materiality.
How Material Comes to Matter begins with the acknowledgement that the planet we inhabit has been damaged through processes that implicate us all. In the face of the unfolding climate catastrophe and increasing social inequalities, it has become impossible to ignore the entanglement of humans with the material world, the ecosystems we inhabit and disrupt. What we call “material-based research” emerges from this recognition; it’s a way of attending to matter not as inert resources, but as active participants in shaping how we live, design, and imagine futures. Material-based research asks how materials themselves—entangled with histories of extraction, survival, and resistance—can become agents in shaping new knowledges and futures.
As artists, designers, and researchers, the conviction to take seriously knowledge produced and shared through the senses leads us to revisit the format of the workshop. Two meanings surface when we trace its genealogy: the workshop as a physical site of artisanal and artistic production, and the more ephemeral meaning of the workshop as a format for assembling groups of people to produce and achieve something together in a short amount of time. Far from neutral spaces, workshops are sites of contestation where hierarchies of knowledge, expectations of productivity, and neoliberal ideals of innovation are negotiated.
This publication brings together both meanings of “workshop,” and is interested in the different methods of learning and productivity they have inherited. Workshops—or, in some contexts Labs—bring about particular ways of coexisting in a space, along with social codes, and forms of interaction, such as the skill of negotiating the expectations of those who enter the workshop without much experience. Expectations of how much time certain processes take are recalibrated when they do not align with the wider ethos, pace, and culture of the space. Students at art and design schools learn to attune to these conditions, to the rhythm and prevailing social-material conduct of a workshop.
An online version of the publication is available here: etherport.org
How Material Comes to Matter was made possible through an Impulse Grant stimulating cross-institutional collaboration. The grant enabled various material encounters and allowed us to explore the future of a dedicated Material Research group in the context of Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
