Matter shapes our existence, although we tend to forget about its activity in everyday life.
In 2025, the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« hosted a large-scale science festival in Berlin. From April to November 2025, the _matter Festival 2025 shed a new light on material agencies. It presented exhibitions, workshops and debates at eleven venues across Berlin, radically changing our understanding of materials as passive, ahistorical substances. The festival's contributions demonstrated that materials are a vibrant part of our living world. They connect human and non-human agents, times and places. Materials are dynamic and have a memory of their own.
Over 1.500 guests attended the opening events of the exhibition series, and various media outlets covered aspects of the festival program. Discover the documentation of the entire festival program and well as the press review below.
We thank our funders as well as all collaborators for their contributions to this festive year.
Keep in touch and be well!
Festival Program: April–November 2025
Film Still taken from a film by Oula A. Valkeapää. Still: Oula A. Valkeapää, 2021
»Syntopolis« reef prototype in STARESO, Rasa Weber & Atelier Marie Drouet. Photo: Till Timmermann, 2024
Latent Accumulations: Walking Along Paraffin Pollution at Nida Coastline. Film still: Anna Luise Schubert 2025
Ailanthus altissima, Musée national d’histoire naturelle Luxembourg, title: Specimen № 15467, MNHNL 2000, license: CC BY 4.0, color and framing of this image were modified
Samples of woven cotton cloth dyed with mud (vouwo), Adama Séré - Marka-Dafing master dyer, 2020. Photo: Salif Sawadogo 2020
Corrosion Cast of Liver Vessels, Dietrich Polenz, 2023. Image: Igor Sauer, 2025
Entangled – Architectural Yarns and Structural Textiles. Photo: Michelle Mantel, adapted with drawing: Natalija Miodragović, 2025
Beetle Galleries in Spruce Wood. Photo: Pelin Asa, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Matters of Activity, 2024; Graphic Design: NODE Berlin Oslo
Swamp Things, Charlett Wenig, 2024. Photo: Janne Ebel, 2024
Long-term monitoring plot of a heath population rendered as point cloud. Remote sensing data and processing: Carsten Neumann and Nicole Köllner, Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam; Visualization: Jona Möller, 2025
Team
Curators: Sophia Gräfe, Claudia Mareis and Peter Fratzl
Project Management: Sophia Gräfe
Assistant Event Management: Senta Bannick, Antonia Katharina Giebner, Lina Lau and Tim-Oliver Langner
Production: Julia Blumenthal
Assistant Production: Mareen Baumeister, Nick Geipel and Nicholas Plunkett
Communication and Press Antje Nestler and Carolin Ott
Assistant Communication and Press: Maxim Landau and Richard Ley
Proofreading: Elisabeth Obermeier
Design: NODE Berlin Oslo
Freelance Designer: Dominic Eger Domingos
Photography: Michael Pfisterer, Roland Halbe, Michelle Mantel & Benjamin Renter
Finances, Inventory & Object Handling: Sandra Bauer
Assistant Finances, Inventory & Object Handling: Liliia Lanevska
IT & AV Management: Alexander Struck, Martin Wagner and Sebastian Hermann