Deep Material Futures
Exploring the Different Temporalities of Active Matter at MoA's Annual Conference, 16 November 2022
Livestream »Deep Material Futures«, 16 November 2022
The old light of stars still shines on us even if they had disappeared long before the beginning of the earth. In the same way as mineralized geological processes in the shape of stones do, this shows that simultaneity and present moments are in fact, a multiplicity of time. On a planetary scale, our deep earthly future can be seen as a deep past of other planets such as Mars. Looking back to earth, as first emblematically staged by the »Whole Earth Catalog« in 1968, directs us to material futures with a particular focus on matter and its inner activities and dynamics. Driven by the flood of sunlight, the solid, liquid and gaseous active matter implies different temporalities inherent to the diverse mineral, biological, or artificial status.
It is this very multiplicity of space, time, and scale we wanted to face in »Deep Material Futures«. The Annual Conference of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« raised the question of what goes wrong on earth, and how the different deep, slow, fast and future times intervene in the worlds to come. By looking at very different scales, from the internal structures of matter and the interaction of objects and living beings to geological formations and atmospheric dynamics, the conference asked about the different temporalities of active matter, which not only shape pasts and presents, but futures.
Active materialities such as water, oxygen or carbon obtain an event character with different speeds and times, thus dissolving the classical notion of a spatial, static and solid matter. These various manifestations intersect and overlap in a present that appears as an entanglement of multiple clock frequencies (generations, living beings, ocean tides, day and night, quartz oscillations) of different materialized times and temporalized matters. Matter’s temporalities encode and activate modes of material becoming and decay, yet they do so on registers that are oftentimes too slow, too small, or too vast to grasp. Developments and dangers that have been latent over a long period of time might unfold their effects in the very distant future. Speed and slowness can equally create invisibility in a more-thanhuman world perceived by only humans. Nevertheless, they always already do affect our actions and activities today.
With »Deep Material Futures«, we also wanted to discuss and rethink the potentialities, strategies, expectances, predictions and imaginaries of desirable futures in terms of interspecies and transgenerational justice. For the temporalities of active matter we speak of are always about incommensurable spaces of memory and oblivion, of extinction and survival. What new and other ways of politics, design, and »healing« through materialized action might there then be at all levels of space, time, and scale?
The event brought together international keynote speakers with positions from the Cluster to discuss the different temporalities of active matter in four panels – Wastelands, Earthly Matter, Matter Across Scales, and Future Materials. The presentations and discussions from the Annual Conference can be viewed at any time by clicking on the image above.
Program
Claudia Mareis, Design & Design Research, Co-Director of Matters of Activity
Botanical Alterlife
Sandra Jasper, Geography of Gender in Human-Environment-Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Wastelands are spaces of botanical discovery and collective memory. Ruins, former railway yards, and other wasteland spaces have produced a profusion of plants and animals, and have afforded a place for more-than-human life in the conception of urban spaces’ inhabitation. In this talk contemporary forms, and prospective futures of wasteland spaces across various sites in Berlin and Luxembourg are traced. We discuss responses to wasteland spaces from early botanical studies to more recent artistic engagements with these experimental ecologies. It draws on recent feminist work on body-environment relations, including the feminist historian Michelle Murphy’s idea of ›alterlife‹, to highlight the underlying structural dimensions that constitute toxic exposure, which are neglected in the botanical enthusiasm for novel ecologies flourishing in wasteland spaces.
Dr Sandra Jasper is Junior Professor for the Geography of Gender in Human-Environment-Systems at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests are in urban nature, soundscapes, and feminist theory. She is co-editor (with Matthew Gandy) of »The Botanical City« (jovis, 2020) and co-author and co-producer of the documentary film »Natura Urbana«. »The Brachen of Berlin« (UK/Germany, 2017, 72’). She is currently completing a monograph on the experimental spaces of West Berlin for which she received a Graham Foundation grant. Her new collaborative research project »Re-Scaling Global Health. Human Health and Multispecies Cohabitation on an Urban Planet« (2022-2024), which is funded by the Berlin University Alliance Grand Challenge Initiative on Global Health, explores human-animal-environment relationships and the multiple links between planetary health, biodiversity, and environmental pollution in cities across the globe.
Alwin Cubasch, History of Science and Technology, Matters of Activity
Robert Stock, Cultural History and Theory, Matters of Activity
Anke Gruendel, Political Science, Institute for Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Igneous Interventions: Working with Fire, Rock and the Inner Earth
Nigel Clark, Human Geography, Lancaster University, UK
The extended human family emerged in one of the most tectonically and volcanically active regions of the Earth. Not only have ›we‹ learned to negotiate the Earth in 3D, humans have also found ways of reproducing the heat and force of igneous processes in order to transform rocky matter. In this way, we effectively function as a hinge or articulation between the life-sustaining envelope of the outer Earth and the unliveable intensities of the inner Earth. How have these interactions shaped who we have become, I ask, and what might we yet do with the materials and forces of the inner Earth?
Nigel Clark is a professor of human geography at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of »Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet« (2011), co-author with Bronislaw Szerszynski of »Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences« (2021), and co-editor with Kathryn Yusoff of a special issue of »Theory, Culture & Society« on »Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene« (2017).
High-Resolution Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing: 3D Fabrication of Biologically Inspired Structures
James Weaver, Zoology & Materials Science, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Havard
Nature produces a remarkable diversity of intricately architectured mineralized composites that in many instances far exceed the performance of their modern engineering analogues. Despite significant investigations into structure-function relationships in these complex biological materials, in many instances, there is a lack of critical information regarding the specific functional roles of many components of these structural hierarchies. Here we introduce the technique of multi-material additive manufacturing, which we employ as a research tool to unravel the functional complexities of a wide range of biological materials including laminated composites, photonic architectures, and low drag surface coatings.
Dr. James Weaver received his bachelor's degree in Aquatic Biology and Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and went on to pursue postdoctoral studies in Molecular Biology, Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Earth History. Working at the interface between zoology, materials science, biomedical engineering, and multi-material additive manufacturing, his main research interests focus on investigating structure-function relationships in hierarchically ordered biological composites and the advanced fabrication of their synthetic analogs. He has played critical roles in the development of new model systems for the study of a wide range of biomineralization processes and is an internationally recognized and award-winning scanning electron microscopist.
Karola Dierichs, Architecture, Matters of Activity
Léa Perraudin, Media Theory, Matters of Activity
Bloom Ecologies: Critical Currents for the Hypoxic Age
Jeff Diamanti, Environmental Humanities (Cultural Analysis & Philosophy), University of Amsterdam
This talk tracks the flows of phosphorous from mine and moraine through to the bodies and blooms that materialize late capitalism in ›media res‹. It will consider what historicities of the present come into focus through an elemental ethnography of this unremarkable element, as well as the futures promised by its dynamics. In doing so it proposes an intimacy between »bloom ecologies« and »critical currents« for an interdisciplinary environmental criticism.
Jeff Diamanti is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of »Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum« (Bloomsbury 2021) as well as a number of articles and book collections on environmental theory and materialist critique. He is also co-director of the FieldARTS residency in Amsterdam, NL.
Elemental Matters, Ethnographic Exposures
Cymene Howe, Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Texas
A discussion centering the material forms of ice and water to explore the potential of ethnography to craft the co-temporaneousness of human and nonhuman encounters with the elements. Through affective encounters with nonliving matter (yet with vital implications) and through physical connectivities (revealed in elemental systems), we consider latencies, viscosities and memory in the context of both watery overflow and cryospheric diminishment. In an experiment with how the elements might ethnographically represent themselves, we are invited toward conceptual spaces that might grow our collective, imaginative and possible futures.
Cymene Howe is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. She is the author of »Intimate Activism« (Duke 2013) and »Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene« (Duke 2019) and co-editor of »The Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory and Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon« (Punctum 2020). Her research focuses on climatological precarity and her work has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has also been awarded The Berlin Prize for transatlantic dialogue in the arts, humanities, and public policy from the American Academy in Berlin.
Michaela Büsse, Design Anthropology, Institute of Cultural History and Theory, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Clemens Winkler, Design Research, Matters of Activity
On the Multifunctional Future of Concrete
Admir Masic, Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT
Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world, and because of its carbon- and energy-intensive production methods, is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. For this reason, we need to entirely rethink concrete’s future and develop new methods to reduce its carbon footprint. In this talk, I will discuss recent innovations in the production of “multifunctional concrete”, ranging from new formulations that act as carbon sinks, to Roman-inspired self-healing concretes, and electrically-conductive cements. These science-enabled developments all aim to make this multifunctional material part of the solution for the sustainable development of our built environment in an ever-changing world.
Admir Masic is an Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at MIT. His lab investigates nano-chemo-mechanical and mineralization processes in a wide range of anthropogenic and biological materials. With examples spanning from Roman concretes to modern Portland cement, from nacre to kidney stones, and from ancient pigments to the Dead Sea scrolls, the ultimate goal of Masic’s lab is to translate the fundamental knowledge gained from investigating these complex material systems to solve fundamental engineering challenges related to construction, energy, and the environment.
Fungal Concepts of Time, Space and Vastness
Vera Meyer, Applied and Molecular Microbiology, TU Berlin
Fungi span multiple scales of space and time and transform organic matter through continuous deconstruction and reconstruction. As micro- and macroorganims, they have been cooperating across species boundaries for millions of years and enabled the first primordial plants to colonise land millions of years ago. Fungi shape most ecosystems and without them, life on Earth seems inconceivable. In my talk, I will highlight some of their organisational levels, their importance for ecosystem functioning and what fungi can teach us on how to survive under planetarily limited resources.
Prof. Vera Meyer (Technische Universität Berlin) researches and genetically engineers fungal cell factories for the production of medicines, platform chemicals, enzymes and biomaterials. Her inter- and transdisciplinary research projects combine natural and engineering sciences with art, design and architecture and create bio-based scenarios for possible living environments of the future. Vera Meyer is also active as a visual artist under the pseudonym V. meer and uses the means of art to make society more aware of the potential of fungi for a sustainable future.
Charlett Wenig, Material and Product Design, Matters of Activity
Martin Müller, Cultural History and Theory, Matters of Activity
Wolfgang Schäffner, Cultural History and Theory, Director of Matters of Activity
Peter Fratzl, Materials Science, Co-Director of Matters of Activity
Horst Bredekamp, Art and Visual History, Senior Co-Director of Matters of Activity
White Elephant (2022)
28 minutes, 4K
Michela Büsse
In 2013, Malaysian port city Malacca was declared a node in China’s Maritime Silk Road, a sea-based infrastructure project meant to connect China with Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. Since then, numerous land reclamation and urbanization projects set out to transform Malacca’s coastline in expectation of increasing marine traffic and tourism. However, these expectations would never materialize. Soon after development in Malacca had started, the Chinese government identified a more promising trade connection and developers abandoned their half-finished construction sites. The expression “white elephant” is a contemporary euphemism for costly building projects that fail to deliver on their promises. In Southeast Asia, owning a white elephant used to signify power and prosperity. The animal was and still is considered sacred, validating its owner’s high social status while burdening them with high maintenance costs. The two-channel video installation explores the relationship between architectural models, promotional digital renders, and the actual sites. Malacca’s deserted coastline stands in for the disjunction between future promises, their material premises, and repercussions. Amidst the ruins, the silty plots of land start to form a life of their own.
Iceland. 2018. Copyright: Michaela Büsse & Konstantin Mitrokhov, Design: NODE Berlin Oslo
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