Editorial Dear Friends of »Matters of Activity«,

With this month's issue of the CZ#, we would like to invite you once again to visit our showroom »Activarium« during the new opening hours every Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon. We are also delighted to point out really comprehensive reviews of some of our activities and are looking forward to upcoming events at the Cluster and beyond. We invite you to an open lecture with Maya Hey about fermentation and human-microbe relations and to the start of a workshop series at Futurium Lab, which »Matters of Activity« and »CollActive Materials« are organizing, exploring future material alternatives.

Happy reading!
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

Science Communication | Air | Sand | Bacteria | Cellulose | Cloud | Fungi/Mycelium | Hemp | Prototype / Model | Stretching Materialities | Material Legacies | Daoula Sheen | Textiles | Tree Bark | Yarns/Fibers | XR | Willow | Wool | Water | Wood With the »Activarium«, we want to actively engage with potential partners from the industry, start-ups, NGOs, politics and society as a whole to initiate an exploratory exchange on active materials, bio- & culture-inspired innovation as well as sustainability approaches. We want visitors to experience our prototypes to make MoA’s intentions and research tangible and accessible. The »Activarium« serves as a work-in-progress showcase of different research strands and processes. Our visitors can dive into the research as it's happening, before its published results. Walk in and experience the »Activarium« Tuesdays, 10.00 am–12.15 pm or Thursdays, 2.00–4.00 pm! If you are a group of more than 5 people or if the opening hours do not fit your schedule, please contact us via moa.activarium@hu-berlin.de to schedule a visit! → more

Cutting | Object Space Agency In January 2024, Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé was invited to give two talks at the Sorbonne in Paris around the notion of atmospheres in relation to his graphic anthropology practice. Maxime has contributed to importing this notion from German aesthetics to French social sciences, among others with a translation of a reference text by Gernot Böhme in 2018 and the co-edited volume »Exercises d’ambiance.« His new pieces argue for atmospheres' agency on the ethnographer's knowledge production process. → more

Filtering | Toxics | Waste | Temporality In March 2023, an interdisciplinary team from design, computer science, art, and cultural studies examined various concepts of dealing with radioactive waste and the historical environmental impact of the industrial site of Oranienburg. While exploring the history of radioactive legacies in Oranienburg, we were confronted with different types of information: traces of the former industrial sites and bombings, symbols, maps, or signs of cleaning and securing as well as memorials as part of today's culture of remembrance. Oranienburg, with its multi-layered historical legacies, but also the land activations that have taken place, thus offered a concrete environment for the workshop questions as a field of research and experimentation. The group now published detailed documentation of the workshop. → more

News | Filtering | Object Space Agency | XR Two exciting workshops have taken place over the past few months and the reports are now available.
On December 13th-15th, MoA members Maxime Le Calvé and Claudia Banz hosted a three-day workshop → Site-Writing with Technologies of Capture at the Kunstgewerbemuseum. With the contribution of Charité's SpecLab, MELT (Ren Loren Britton + Iz Paehr), and Shauna Janssen from Concordia University, the workshop aimed at an intensive exploration of how visitors can experience the material processes and the work of craftspeople through immersive installations. The event marked the start of the »Quasi-Makers« event series at KGM.
The → Micro-Phenomenology Crash Course from February 7th-9th, 2024 focused on exploring lived experiences. Organized by Zeynep Akbal and Maxime Le Calvé, and instructed by Katrin Heimann, Associate Professor at the School of Culture and Society - Interacting Minds Centre of Aarhus University, the event also addressed MP as a possible method to co-design, collect, and evaluate the impressions of Virtual Reality experiences. Participants were introduced to micro-phenomenology as a method for dissecting first-person experiences, emphasizing the technique's utility in detailed interviews about subjective experiences.

Weaving | Material Form Function | MoA Design Research Studio | Teaching | Textiles The Final Presentations of the MoA Design Research Studio »BEYOND THE CURTAIN. Creating Transient Environments« took place on February 13, 2024, at the Foyer of the Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin. The MoA Design Research Studio »BEYOND THE CURTAIN. Creating Transient Environments« explored curtains as active spatial elements. Within the framework of the semester project, numerous inspiring and convincing works were developed. → more

Weaving | Bacteria | More-Than-Human | Doctoral Program In the open lecture on March 5th and the workshop on March 6th Maya Hey, an expert on human–microbe relations in food settings with degrees in dietetics and food studies, focused on fermentation as a hands-on practice for knowing microbes and working with them. The workshop was fully booked! → more

Climate | Cellulose | Biofilm | Collactive Materials | Science Communication | Prototype / Model | Speculative Design | Yarns/Fibers Gestaltet das Futurium Lab selbst mit! In der öffentlichen Workshopreihe »OPEN LAB ABEND: Materialzukünfte besuchen« spekulierten Teilnehmende darüber, aus welchen Materialien die Welt von morgen gemacht sein könnte. Die Workshopreihe umfasste 4 Termine und fand von März bis Juni im Futurium statt. Forschende von »Matters of Activity« (MoA) gaben Einblick in ihre Arbeit. Davon ausgehend entwickelten Teinehmende Zukunftsszenarien und gestalteten Prototypen, die im Anschluss zusammen mit Objekten aus der MoA-Forschung im Lab ausgestellt wurden. Begleitet wurden Teilnehmende dabei vom spekulationserfahrenen Team von »CollActive Materials«. It’s getting hot in here... In diesem ersten Workshop ging es darum, wie wir mit smarten Materialien die Städte der Zukunft gestalten können. Im Sommer machen steigende Temperaturen, Metall und Beton das Leben in der Innenstadt für alle Bewohnenden immer mehr zur Herausforderung. Welche Materialien schaffen Abhilfe in überhitzten Städten? → more

Material Form Function | Temporality The workshop »Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« brought together Post-Doc’s, PhD’s and advanced MA students from the humanities, social science, as well as arts and design to engage in a discussion about critical times and materialities, postcolonial and posthuman critique, non-European perspectives, and notions of »deep time« of materialities. »Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« unfolded a critical conversation, contesting linear conceptions of time, reductionist notions of materiality, and teleological solutionism, by focusing on ecologies and relations. Either term, ecology and relation, has received much attention over the last decade, especially in the arts, design, and humanities. Both emphasize the intersection of different domains of knowledge, media and practice to understand and navigate the challenges of an increasingly complex present. With the workshop, we aimed to critically address and resituate the multi-faceted dimensions of both through in-depth and creative formats. → more