Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

We are pleased to announce two new publications in the first issue of CZ# this year. Stretching Materialities. Negotiating Boundaries in Exhibition Research is a comprehensive documentation and discussion of an exhibition project begun in 2021 at the Tieranatomisches Theater, which makes active matter tangible in innovative ways. The recently published visual essay on Syntopia 1 by the .able journal impressively demonstrates how the human body can explore and shape space with the help of handcraft and minimal technology. Congratulations to all the authors!
We are also looking forward to our members’ new encounters with the world of theatre in the coming weeks.

Enjoy reading!
Carolin Ott

Material Form Function | Weaving | Publications | Artificial Intelligence | Robotics | Computational Design | Prototype / Model Congratulations to Elaine Bonavia, Jessica Farmer, Roland Halbe, Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten, Nuri Kang, Mareike Stoll, and Karola Dierichs on their latest visual essay publication in the .able journal! syntopia 1—soma | body is an exploration of the formation of space by the human body. Using a hand-based augmented reality (AR) framework a filament-structure is spun by hand which gradually envelopes its maker. The project is a constructive critique of the current-day use of industrial robotics in architecture since this entails a high use of material and energetic resources. It proposes a return to human handcraft with only the minimal necessary application of electronic technical devices which are required for data streaming. This reduction of machines is also in favor of a bodily sensing of matter’s own inner activity, thus fostering the interlacing of Body—Matter—Machine. → more

Object Space Agency | Publications | Stretching Materialities | Air | Climate | Cloud | More-Than-Human | Sensing – Vibrations | Stone | Textiles | Willow | XR | Performance We are excited to announce that the latest Cluster publication Stretching Materialities. Negotiating Boundaries in Exhibition Research is now available in print and Open Access with adocs publishing. Stretching Materialities is an experimental approach to rethinking exhibitions in terms of »active matter«: not as a presentation of material knowledge and practices per se, but as an interactive and participatory research approach to new forms of activity emerging from the poiesis of the material. The interdisciplinary exhibition at Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) Berlin experimented with curatorial processes, the existing environment and its material-energetic resources, sound performances as well as the interweaving of physical and virtual matter. The group of researchers, made up of designers, architects, art historians, computer scientists and anthropologists, expanded materiality into temporal-spatial dimensions and new sensory experiences. → more

Air | Cloud | Speculative Design | Teaching This workshop, led on January 14th, 2026 by Clemens Winkler at Zurich University of the Arts, invited participants to explore dark, invisible materialities as active agents in artistic research and design-led inquiry. In a hands-on session, participants collaboratively built 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 were explored not only theoretically, but through experimental practice. The workshop was conceived as a transdisciplinary space in which scientific models, material experiments, and poetic speculation were woven into a collective cosmic web—a form of knowledge that was not explained, but shared and situationally produced. → more

Die diesjährigen Brecht-Tage widmeten sich Brechts Denken über Natur, Landwirtschaft und Technik im Spannungsfeld von Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Klimakrise. Ausgehend von Bertolt Brechts Texten wurde untersucht, wie Industrialisierung der Landwirtschaft, grüne Revolution und Klassenkampf unsere heutige Zeit beeinflussen. Im Mittelpunkt stand eine wichtige Frage: Wie können Brechts Werke bei den aktuellen Diskussionen über die Zerstörung der Umwelt, die weltweite Ernährung und eine gerechte und ökologische Veränderung der Gesellschaft helfen? Wir freuen uns sehr, dass Clustermitglied Karin Krauthausen am Montag, den 9. Februar, den Eröffnungsabend der Brecht-Tage 2026 moderiert hat. Die Veranstaltung im Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus wandte sich Brechts zuerst 1950 erschienenem Langgedicht »Die Erziehung der Hirse« zu und rückte es in einen zugleich werk- und wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang.  → more

Opportunities Outside of MoA Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe and Merle Ibach from Hochschule der Künste Bern kindly invite you as peers from various fields of design and as educators, practitioners, scholars, and researchers to contribute with one of your assignments to a handbook for contemporary design education: Design Assignments: Prompting, Probing, Prototyping (publisher: Valiz). The edited volume is intended as a toolkit for design educators, scholars, practitioners, and enthusiastic creative people: a toolkit where experiences can be shared, creative efforts become visible, and where everyone invested in design teaching, pedagogy, and methods will find an inspiring resource to draw from and engage with. More information, deadlines, and submission information can be found ↗ here.

Performance Ein Wissenschaftler erfüllt sich einen Menschheitstraum, baut eine Zeitmaschine – und landet im Paradies: Im Jahr 802.701 leben die Menschen in beinahe kindlicher Unbefangenheit, befreit von Hunger, Lohnarbeit und Gewalt. So scheint es jedenfalls. Doch je länger sein Aufenthalt dauert, desto mehr muss der Zeitreisende erkennen: Der schöne Schein trügt. Tief unter der Erde, in stockfinsteren Tunneln zwischen dröhnenden Maschinen, lebt eine zweite Gesellschaft. Und die Wesen an der Oberfläche? Sind nicht viel mehr als deren Fraß. Nichts wie weg. Aber wo ist die Zeitmaschine? Basierend auf dem Roman von H.G. Wells geht Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll) in ihrer Inszenierung von Die Zeitmaschine, die ab dem 21. März am Staatstheater Cottbus zu sehen sein wird, der Frage nach, wie sich die Menschen die Zukunft vorstellen - früher und heute. Clustermitglied Clemens Winkler wirkte wissenschaftlich und dramaturgisch beratend mit. → more

Water | Science Communication On World Water Day, the On Water PARCOURS invites to speak about hopes and dangers of smart water technologies and what it takes to move to resilient water futures. The event on Sunday, 22nd March, 2026 at Berlin Einstein Center Digital Future includes a video installation by Su Yu Hsin, an artistic walk by Cleo Wächter, a world café about Water Knowledge Market, and a get-gogether. Participation is free, but registration is required. On Water PARCOURS is a series of events organised by the Knowledge Exchange Office of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA). Along Berlin’s waterways and in cultural institutions, it combines art, science and urban society. Sina Ribak and Nina Samuel, MoA Associated Member and BUA Head of Knowledge Exchange Office, jointly developed the program. → more

With the Grand Challenges Conference, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) is continuing its targeted promotion of excellent and responsible research to tackle global, highly complex challenges – the Grand Challenges. The conference aims to create a space where stakeholders from science, politics, business, culture, and civil society can come together to initiate new collaborations and jointly develop paths toward a sustainable future. Among the first confirmed speakers are transformation researcher Prof. Dr. Maja Göpel and British science researcher Prof. Andy Stirling. Find out more and register by 28 February ↗ here.

How can heritage research help shape policies and decision-making? A roundtable discussion on 24 March (18:00-20:00) brings together perspectives from the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation and representatives of UNESCO and the German Federal Foreign Office. Moderated by inherit directors Eva Ehninger and Sharon Macdonald, the roundtable will explore how heritage research can engage with and inform contemporary policy and practice. The event will take place in English. Online participation is possible via the event website.
Please register your attendance in person by 20 March at info-inherit@hu-berlin.de. ↗ more

Cutting | Artificial Intelligence | Brain Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé will be presenting at the STSing conference Before Ruins in Bochum on Friday, 27 March 2026. His talk »Modelling the Critical Zone: Neurosurgery and the Limits of the Digital Twin,« draws on six years of fieldwork at the Charité to explore what happens when algorithmic certainty meets surgical contingency. Tractographic brain maps promise surgeons certain knowledge of where not to cut—yet many of the most experienced clinicians treat these vivid digital models with measured suspicion. When surgeons resist full delegation to the algorithm, they refuse to enter what Madeleine Clare Elish calls a »moral crumple zone«—absorbing the failures of systems whose reasoning remains opaque. → more

Das Restaurant ist ein zentraler Ort der modernen Metropole. Hier wird der Mensch zum Großstädter. Wer bin ich? Wer will ich sein? Wen will ich treffen? In Anna Gmeyners Theaterstück Das Automatenbüffet von 1932, das unter der Regie von Jan Bosse am 26. März am Deutschen Theater Premiere feiert, ist das Restaurant wichtiger Schauplatz. Im Rahmen der DT-Kontext-Reihe wird Clustermitglied Alwin Cubasch am Freitag, den 27. März, Einblicke in seine Forschung zur Geschichte des Automatenrestaurants geben. Der Eintritt zum Vortrag ist frei.  → more