Dear Friends of »Matters of Activity«,

A very eventful and diverse May came to an end. We were particularly excited and pleased to welcome Sylvie Retailleau, the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, to »Matters of Activity« last Tuesday.
Moreover, the pop-up exhibition »Visiting Future Materials« in the Futurium has been opened, where the results of the successful series of workshops can now be visited until August. Don't miss it! We are also pleased to introduce several new members in this issue.
The coming weeks promise a rich program with the »Symbiotic Futures 1.0« workshop at the Berlinische Galerie on June 5th and the Long Night of the Sciences on June 22nd, to name just two highlights. Take part in our »Excellent Pub Quiz«, which we are organizing together with the other Berlin Clusters of Excellence! Finally, as always, with great pleasure, we are pointing out the various awards, mentions, and publications of our members.

Happy reading!
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

During her visit to Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on May 28th, the French Minister for Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau also visited the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«. After a presentation of the Cluster Directors about the current research of »Matters of Activity«, several MoA researchers gave insights into their work in the MoA Design Studio and the Activarium, the Cluster's showroom. The framework for Retailleau's visit was provided by the state visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Germany from May 26th to 28th. → more

Material Form Function | Weaving | Object Space Agency | Speculative Design | Collactive Materials | Science Communication What material futures can we envision if we engage in collaborative speculation? The pop-up exhibition »Visiting Material Futures« explores this question through contributions from Cluster researchers and Futurium workshop participants. The collaboration between »Matters of Activity«, »Futurium«, and the experimental laboratory for Science Communication »CollActive Materials« employs the concept of co-speculation. This method invites knowledge from research, experience, and everyday life into a co-creative exchange about what material futures seem possible to us today. Don't miss your chance to visit the exhibition until the end of August! → more

Cutting | Material Form Function | Achievements | Prototype / Model | XR On April 22nd, 2024 the Charité Foundation awarded the Max Rubner Award 2024 to four members of »Matters of Activity«, Zeynep Akbal, Moritz Queisner, Igor Sauer, and Claudia Müller-Birn, among others. Our warmest congratulations on this prestigious award!
The researchers and their colleagues from the Digital Surgery Lab at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin want to use the award money to advance the PERISKOP project, which focuses on reducing preoperative anxiety and uncertainties of patients in the operating theater environment. The »Communication Robot in the Emergency Department« project, in which Claudia Müller-Birn (FU Berlin) is involved, aims to improve communication and check-in processes for patients in the emergency department. → more

We are delighted that MoA Associated Member Heidi Jalkh has been awarded one of the 2024 Bauhaus Earth Fellowships together with Argentinian colleague Angie Dub. Congratulations! In their project »From Mono-Material to Multi-Performance« materials designer Heidi Jalkh and environmental architect Angie Dub will focus on advancing a bioceramic material made at ambient temperature from shellfish industry waste. Through this work, they will build on 10 years of experience in materials experimentation. The fellowship will enable critical milestones towards certification for application by prototyping and testing mono-material gradients in collaboration with RWTH Aachen. At the same time, Heidi and Angie will work with Bauhaus Earth to demonstrate potential applications of the material in 1:1 architectural fragments in Berlin and Buenos Aires. → more

Object Space Agency | Science Communication | XR In das Innere von Wolken und Steinen reisen oder eine Schulklasse in Kenia besuchen – das und noch viel mehr ist ganz einfach über ein VR-Headset möglich. gamelab.berlin Co-Head und MoA-Mitglied Christian Stein entwickelt die virtuellen Umgebungen für diese digitalen Ausflüge. Er erforscht, wie Nutzer:innen damit interagieren und wie Gamification dabei hilft, Wissen auf neue Weise zu vermitteln. Ein Interview im Rahmen der neuen Reihe »Die BUA und ich – Protokolle aus dem Exzellenzverbund« gibt interesannte Einblicke in Christians Forschung und macht diese auch für ein Publikum jenseits der Academia greifbar. → more

Cutting | Graphic Anthropology | XR The first event of the »More-than-human Sketching« series was a great success. Not only were the workshops fully booked, but the SpecLab team also spent two days developing a new immersive performance for the museum's visitors using augmented reality glasses and spatial drawing software. The performance, »Drawing as Digestion: Spatial Knowing Processes,« was be presented to the public soon after. Short lectures and activities by Elaine Bonavia, Paulina Greta Stefanovic, and Maxime Le Calvé provided an unusual framework for participants to engage with the embodied and transformative power of tracing lines and being traced by them. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications | Robotics | Biodesign Was ist Biorobotik? Unter welchen philosophischen, historischen und ethischen Voraussetzungen können bioinspirierte Roboter gebaut werden? Wie haben sich das Bild des Menschen und das Verhältnis von Natur und Technik durch die Herstellung von biohybriden Robotern verändert? → more

Material Form Function | Climate | More-Than-Human | Air | Water | Publications Elementare Ekstasen überschwemmen, erodieren und evaporieren die wohlsortierten Grenzziehungen zwischen Technik, Umwelt und Mensch. Als Neuverortung im Spannungsfeld medienökologischer, neomaterialistischer und technikfeministischer Theoriebildung sondiert Léa Perraudin all jene Widerständigkeiten und Un/Verfügbarkeiten, die von techno-kapitalistisch protegierten Operationen nicht zu tilgen sind. → more

Material Form Function | More-Than-Human | Fungi/Mycelium | Bacteria | Tree Bark | Climate Modern life is mainly built on concrete, glass and steel. Recently, however, these construction materials have been increasingly discussed due to their impact on emissions, waste production, and the climate crisis. In response to this, designers, architects, and other scholars investigate novel approaches to biomaterials, recycling options, and circular models of fabrication and construction. The aim is to form symbiotic alliances with fungi, beetle-infested trees, bacteria, or residual materials and to acknowledge the surprising potentials of these unconventional collaborators. Can elements of nature thus be understood as equal partners in construction, architecture, and the design of daily objects? We cordially invite you to this workshop on June 5th, 2024 at Berlinische Galerie, to discuss these symbiotic practices as they hint at other collaborative futures beyond resource extraction. → more

Material Form Function | Teaching | Biodesign | Textiles Rapidly increasing socio-ecological damage and the urgent need for care, repair, and recovery have led to renewed calls for regenerative design as a means of wayfinding towards new forms of just and sustainable life on earth, prompting critical questions concerning the reconfigured pasts they invoke to the possible futures they open up. Aiming to (re)design the way we live to support our interdependence on natural ecosystems, regenerative systems thinking is being applied to fundamental fields of human activity, from food production and agriculture to medicine, textiles, architecture, rural revival, and the urban built environment to other-worldly materialities. The lecture series organized by Lucy Norris, which started on May 2nd, will, among other things, explore how traces of former ways of being in the world and concepts such as ›indigenous knowledge‹ are referenced as ways to move forward and ask what futures are being imagined by whom and for whom, and how some forms of living are enabled while other possibilities are negated. → more

Object Space Agency | Performance | Teaching | XR What can bioplastics, kinetic sand, and virtual reality offer as actors on the theatre stage, confronting participants with impulses to act on current socio-ecological crises? The students of the Master's program »Spiel und Objekt« at Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts, taught by visiting professor for new media in theater practice and MoA member Clemens Winkler, invite you to answer this question on June 7th and 8th. Over these two days, students showcase the results of their process-oriented research spanning participative theater, sociology, speculative dramaturgy, technologies, and new media. → more

Weaving | Writing Die literaturwissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit den Theorien des ›New Materialism‹ rückt die materiellen Dinge und Praktiken in literarischen Texten und den literarischen Text als Ding und materielle Praxis ins Zentrum der analytischen Aufmerksamkeit. In der Folge des ›material turn‹ fragt diese Herangehensweise damit auch danach, ob und wie Literatur den anthropozentrischen Blick herausfordern oder eventuell überwinden kann. Integriert werden zudem weitere Infragestellungen, die mit dem neuen Fokus auf Materie und materielle Praktiken verbunden sind: So vor allem die Trennung in Natur und Kultur, die Unterscheidung der Geschlechter und zwischen Spezies. Storytelling – und damit auch Narrativität – ist ein grundlegender Aspekt in den Untersuchungen des New Materialism, und dies als Praxis für Erkenntnis und konkrete Interventionen. Der Workshop am 12. Juni 2024, organisiert von Christiane Arndt (Queen's University Canada) und Karin Krauthausen, geht von diesen philosophischen und anthropologischen Auffassungen von Erzählung und Erzählen als materialer Praxis aus, und alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen, sie aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht zu diskutieren und weiterzudenken. → more

Material Form Function | Collactive Materials | Fungi/Mycelium | Speculative Design | Science Communication In the last workshop of the series at Futurium, we dive into the interconnected world of fungi and their mycelium. Together with architects Dimitra Almpani-Lekka and Natalija Miodragović, we explore the properties and behaviors of mycelium in nature and architecture, to speculate about future relations and applications: Could the buildings of tomorrow be grown in collaboration with plants and fungi? Can fungi help us build life-supporting networks in the cities to maintain natural resources and the local biodiversity? How can co-designing and co-habiting with a living organism transform our experience of future architecture and our relationships with other species? The workshop is already fully booked. → more

Weaving | Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Science Communication In Berlin wird gebaut - ständig und viel. Doch vom einfachen »Stein auf Stein« sind wir mittlerweile weit entfernt. Wissenschaftler:innen aus Berlin erforschen neue Materialien wie Biobeton oder den Einsatz von Textilien und Pilzen. Aber auch »Altes« findet im zirkulären Bauen neuen Einsatz. Über altes und neues Baumaterial sprach Christiane Sauer, MoA-Mitglied und Professorin für Material und Entwurf im räumlichen Kontext an der weißensee kunsthochschule berlin, mit Wolfram Schmidt (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) und Annabelle von Reutern (Verband für Bauen im Bestand e.V.) am 18. Juni 2024, in der Technologiestiftung Berlin. Das Gespräch, moderiert von Jessica Wiener, kann nun in der Mediathek des rbb24 Inforadio nachgehört werden. → more

Science Communication Auch in diesem Jahr können interessierte Besucher:innen bei der Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften am 22. Juni wieder spannende Einblicke in die Forschung an Berliner Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen gewinnen - und auch in diesem Jahr sind einige Mitglieder von Matters of Activity mit dabei. Als MoA-PR-Team freuen wir uns außerdem, gemeinsam mit den Wissenschaftskommunikator:innen der anderen Berliner Exzellenzcluster wieder ein Pubquiz zu veranstalten. Dieses Jahr bieten wir sogar zwei Runden im Foyer des TU-Hauptgebäudes an, los geht's um 19 Uhr. → more

Material Form Function | Biodesign | More-Than-Human Under the new discursive platform »More Than Human: Design after the Anthropocene« at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, created by Claudia Banz, Heidi Jalkh has been invited to curate a project in collaboration with co-curators Gisela Pozzetti and Valentina Aliaga. The »Matter of South - Biomaterial Cultures from Latin America« project explores how biomaterial initiatives in this region harness local culture and biodiversity to create new material cultures. This endeavor also aims to reframe our relationship with the immediate environment while questioning and providing alternatives to the established extractivist model. The exhibition will open on July 12th, 7 pm, and runs through August 26th. A two-day international symposium on this topic is scheduled for the project, tentatively set for July 17th-18th. → more

Object Space Agency | Cutting | Science Communication The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) encouraged members to participate online and digitally to the conference this year. As part of the online activities, the convenors of EASA Barcelona 2024 were delighted to announce a call for artworks for the online exhibition project, »Field/Works II: Generating Ecologies of Trust«, curated by ANTART members Maxime Le Calvé and Jen Clarke. → more

With inspiring short talks by excellent speakers, innovative XR projects, workshops, a coffee truck directly on the Spree, and plenty of time for discussions, XR Art & Networking is the annual event of the AURORA XR School for Artists at HTW Berlin. With Artistic Research, Analog Haptics, and Autonomous Avatars, the focus is on three current topics that will be explored in various formats at the interface of research, technology, and culture and creative industries. Further information and registration are at ↗ this link. Funded by the ERDF as part of the »INP-III« program.