Matter of Dark
Talk and Artistic Research Workshop with Clemens Winkler in Zurich
Workshop Matter of Dark, Zürich University of the Arts, 14 January 2026. Copyright: Clemens Winkler
This workshop, led on January 14th, 2026 by Clemens Winkler at Zurich University of the Arts, invited participants to explore dark, invisible materialities as active agents in artistic research and design-led inquiry. It drew on practices and conceptual frameworks developed within the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity and elaborated in the publication Stretching Materialities. Negotiating Boundaries in Exhibition Research (2025), presented through selected material samples, their natural–cultural histories, and key concepts.
Building on this introduction, the workshop addressed contemporary material-discursive and ecological questions that have gained relevance since the ontological turn of the early 2000s, shaped by thinkers such as Karen Barad, Manuel DeLanda, and scholars in Science and Technology Studies (STS). In a hands-on session, participants collaboratively built three cloud chambers to make cosmic radiation and everyday radioactive phenomena perceptible as matter–energy. Concepts such as intra-action, material efficacy, entanglement, cosmos, and dark matter are explored not only theoretically, but through experimental practice.
The workshop was conceived as a transdisciplinary space in which scientific models, material experiments, and poetic speculation are woven into a collective cosmic web—a form of knowledge that is not explained, but shared and situationally produced. No prior scientific knowledge was required. Curiosity for material experimentation and speculative thinking was encouraged.
