Film still Overcast, Michaela Büsse, 2025
Michaela Büsse exhibits in Prague
At the core of this exhibition »Architectures of Desire and Abandonment« in Prague’s VI PER GALLERY are two films by MoA Associated Member Michaela Büsse: »Overcast« (2025), set in the largely deserted Forest City in Johor, Malaysia, and »White Elephant« (2022), filmed at the stalled Melaka Gateway reclamation project. Both trace the contradictions of speculative urbanism. In their suspension, these sites become landscapes of haunting as well as persistence, where animals, plants, and people repurpose spaces never meant for them. The exhibition can be visited until 15 November 2025.
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Figure 1 of Koleva, Denitsa; Özdemir, Eda; Tsiokou, Vaia; Dierichs, Karola (2022): Designing Matter: Autonomously Shape-Changing Granular Materials in Architecture. In ACADIA 2021, Realignments: Toward Critical Computation: Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). Copyright: Denitsa Koleva, Karola Dierichs, ICD, University of Stuttgart
Cluster Professor Karola Dierichs Gives a Keynote at International Conference on Robotics and Automation
On May 23rd, Cluster Professor Karola Dierichs will give an online keynote on »designing multi-agent matter« as part of the workshop »Block by Block: Collaborative Strategies for Multi-agent Robotic Construction« at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The talk will show how granular materials such as sand can become multi-agent matter. Moving from self-interlocking particles for architecture-scale construction to autonomously entangling ones—we will pose the question how matter itself can become a robotic system.
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Latent Accumulations: Walking Along Paraffin Pollution at Nida Coastline. Film still: Anna Luise Schubert 2025
Exhibition, Roundtable and Workshop
Paraffin pollution is a recurring concern in coastal environments, yet one that is inherently difficult to detect and classify. The exhibition »Latent Accumulations« at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin traces the elusive activity of this material. It gives insights into site-specific research processes that connect material investigations with local experiences and memories of shifting landscapes.
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Pieces of Paraffin collected at the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, 2025. Copyright: HU Berlin/Stefan Klenke
Article on Léa Perraudin's and Iva Rešetar's »Latent Accumulations« Project
The project »Latent Accumulations« examines paraffin, an elusive material, from its accumulations on the Baltic coast of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania to its pressing environmental and geopolitical concerns. This article presents the project by Léa Perraudin and Iva Rešetar in detail.
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Terminalia catappa in front of the compound of the lineage Delesolu. Drawings by Delphine and Elodie Chevalme, Ojé, October 2017, from Field/Works II, online exhibition 2024.
Online Exhibition Curated by Maxime Le Calvé and Jen Clarke
For anthropologists and artists »doing fieldwork« in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, and performing arts are integral to our practices and enrich writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. This online exhibition curated by MoA member Maxime Le Calvé and Jen Clarke was funded by EASA as part of the EASA2024 conference in Barcelona. The selected works explore various modes of living with: with nature, infrastructures, family – through connections to fish, plants, water, land, and sound. From the Salish sea, to plant life in Africa, considering sound and water pollution in Barcelona, and food and seeds in New Zealand.
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Bi-Leaf - Morphology of a Movement, Antonia Dönitz, Master Thesis Textile and Material Design, 2024. Image Copyright: Antonia Dönitz / weißensee school of art and design
Student Projects On View in Collaboration with »Matters of Activity«
On July 20th and 21st, 2024, 12.00–8.00 pm, weißensee school of art and design berlin will open its studios for the traditional Open House. Also this year, there will be the opportunity to learn more about the design research projects and students’ works developed during the previous year, some of them in cooperation with or in classes led by researchers of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«.
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Tracing paraffin accumulations. Fieldwork on the coastline of the Curonian Spit in the Neringa Nature Reserve, Léa Perraudin and Iva Rešetar. 2024. Copyright: Iva Rešetar
Fieldwork of Léa Perraudin and Iva Rešetar on the Coastline of the Curonian Spit in the Neringa Nature Reserve
In their ongoing fieldwork in Nida, Lithuania, Iva Rešetar and Léa Perraudin are concerned with the scales and phases of paraffin (re-)distribution in this seemingly pristine natural environment. Latent Accumulations focuses on the ecopolitics of paraffin pollution, engaging the material as unsettled in its movement and energy exchange. They argue that it is precisely the process of phase transition that gives rise to this uncertain ontological status – between solid and liquid, slow and sudden, and between events of pollution, their materialization and maintenance.
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Verbautes Wetter. Copyright: Literaturforum am Brechthaus
Cluster Member Michaela Büsse in Conversation with Joana Moll and Diego Rybski
The building masses produced by humans have a direct impact on the weather. Buildings and construction account for 30 percent of Germany's CO2 emissions. The concretization of the land not only creates new heat phenomena with urban heat islands, but also a largely uncontrolled and far-reaching exploitation of natural resources such as sand and gravel. Cluster member Michaela Büsse was part of the lecture performance and talk »100 Neue Wörter für Wetter: Verbautes Wetter«.
Film Still Building (with) Nature, 2023. Copyright: Michaela Büsse.
Michaela Büsse Contributes to Film Screening & Discussion at Berlin Science Week 2023
What kind of knowledge about environments do models create? And how can artistic media be deployed in making sense of these knowledge practices? In this panel at this year's Berlin Science Week Campus at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin on November 3rd, Associated Investigator in the »Material Form Function« research group Michaela Büsse will be in conversation with anthropologist Andrew Gilbert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and human geographer Rossella Alba (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) about the role of technologies for environmental governance and film as a means of research. Based on Michaela's short film »Building with Nature« the audience is invited to engage with the engineering principles behind Zandmotor, an artificial peninsular close to The Hague in the Netherlands. The panel will be moderated by Stefan Schäfer, research group leader at the Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam where Michaela currently is a fellow.
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Round Table »Poetics and Politics of Sand«. Design: studioeins, adapted by Matters of Activity
On 9 February at Kunstgewerbemuseum
The Round Table »Politics and Poetics of Sand« was part of the format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Round Tables represented each of the exhibiting projects and the involved researchers and artists in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brought a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies and entangled discourses and invited the public to engage. On February 9th design anthropologist and Cluster Member Michaela Büsse discussed her work with geographer Katherine Dawson (University College London), communication expert Hannah Tollefson (McGill University Montreal) and environmental anthropologist Jerry Zee (Princeton University). Moderation: Jeff Diamanti (University of Amsterdam).
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Poster Material Legacies. Image: Dietrich Polenz and the Experimental Surgery Lab, 2020
Exhibition at Kunstgewerbemuseum
The exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin explored contingencies and ruptures between traditional crafts and the most recent developments at the crossroads of material research, design, engineering, and architecture. It brought together artifacts from the museum’s collection with work-in-progress installations by designers and researchers from the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« in order to initiate a dialogue about the historical, contemporary, and future conditions under which materiality unfolds.
By engaging with a series of different materials and techniques the exhibition encompassed both the problematization of unsustainable pasts and presents as well as the imagination of speculative material futures. Taking materiality as a starting point, each of the exhibits investigated its sociocultural, economic, and political context in order to disentangle the multiple interrelations that arise from and with materials. more
By engaging with a series of different materials and techniques the exhibition encompassed both the problematization of unsustainable pasts and presents as well as the imagination of speculative material futures. Taking materiality as a starting point, each of the exhibits investigated its sociocultural, economic, and political context in order to disentangle the multiple interrelations that arise from and with materials. more
Dis/Entangling Material Futures. Copyright: Claudia Mareis
Lecture Series by Cluster Co-Director Claudia Mareis Continues
The lecture series takes up the ambiguous role of materials in future-making practices along with the possible geo and bio-political precarity they may generate. Different materials from sand, water, or air to living cells and whole ecosystems are the objects and interface of a range of technologies that generate images of the future. Their probabilistic methods prepare the ideational and physical ground for large and small-scale design interventions (e.g., climate-resilient infrastructures). Register now and take part in the lecture series that continues until July 18th, every Monday 4.15 pm.
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Sand ruler captured at the labs of Deltares in Delft, Michaela Büsse, 2021
»Materializing Futurity« investigates the ambiguous relationship between design and planning tools, environments and matter in reimagining and renaturating polluted landscapes.
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Land recalmation in Penang (Malaysia). Copyright: Michaela Büsse
Granular Configurations builds on and extends Michaela Büsse's dissertation project »Reclamations: On the Making and Remaking of Sand as a Medium for Design« (2023, University of the Art and Design Linz). The artistic-scientific research project investigates the ambiguous role of sand as material, medium and object of study. Sand is the second most used resource in the world after water.
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Open Space Event, 9 November 2023. Copyright: Matters of Activity
MoA's Showroom and Workspace
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, making 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.
If you are interested in a visit, please contact us via moa.activarium [at] hu-berlin.de to visit!
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Film still »Assembling the Coast«
Assembling the Coast is a sensorial-ethnographic investigation of a coastal replenishment project on the Baltic Sea, close to Ahrenshoop. Erosion and rising sea level lead to coastal retreat and frequent replenishments are used to counteract this process. The film work captures the interplay of man, machine, and matter as they perform the laborious process of transforming the environment
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Interdisciplinary Workshop
The interdisciplinary workshop »Poetics and Politics of Sand« took place in 2023. The huge consumption of sand and its fundamental role in society have only recently gained attention. Numerous journalistic and scientific accounts warn of the »looming tragedy of the sand commons«; environmental concerns related to dredging and mining
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Sand Corn. Copyright: Michaela Büsse
The edited volume »Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality and Planetary Urbanization« will bring together contributions from geography, geology, social sciences, art, and humanities that investigate sand as a medium, material, and object of study.
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Premiere »White Elephant« at MoA’s Annual Conference »Deep Material Futures« 2022
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.
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