Matter of Dark

This workshop, led on January 14th, 2026 by Clemens Winkler at Zurich University of the Arts, invites participants to explore dark, invisible materialities as active agents in artistic research and design-led inquiry. It draws 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 addresses 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 build 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 is 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 is required. Curiosity for material experimentation and speculative thinking is encouraged.

Please register via email to Clemens Winkler by January 12.