MATERIALITY & EMBODIMENT
This line approaches materiality as an expanded field, encompassing substances and their physical properties, bodies and sensory perception, living organisms and ecological systems, as well as the technological and infrastructural processes through which matter is organised, transformed and circulated. Drawing on trans-feminist, posthumanist and ecological thought, it considers matter both as an active participant in the production of knowledge and as a medium through which relations, dependencies and different forms of agency become perceptible...
By moving beyond anthropocentric and ocularcentric models, the line explores forms of artistic and curatorial practice grounded in embodied and multisensory experience. Touch, smell, sound, friction, vulnerability and physical encounter become ways of understanding how bodies, objects and environments affect one another. This perspective opens onto multispecies and Indigenous ecologies, perceptual science, material experimentation and non-visual modes of engagement, connecting different forms of knowledge without reducing materiality to a single theoretical framework. The practitioners involved in this line do not simply “specialise” in the body or in matter; they open different thresholds into embodied experience, from multispecies and indigenous ecologies to perceptual science, from sensory and olfactory registers to critical reflection on non-ocularcentrism.
Professors
Paula Nerlich
Dr Paula Nerlich is an experimental designer, researcher, educator, and facilitator whose practice explores how we can work with living systems as collaborators rather than simply as materials. As a biodesigner, she engages with sensory materials and living systems to investigate how biological processes can shape the ways we design, make, and experience the world. Working across biomaterials, sensory experience, and more-than-human design, she brings together creative practice, scientific research, and hands-on experimentation. Originally trained in textile design, Paula's practice has evolved to focus on living, responsive, and time-based materials, including bacterial cellulose, mycelium, and food-surplus biomaterials. She is interested in biological processes as dynamic systems that shape materials and artefacts over time, inviting new ways of thinking about care, ecology, and our relationships with the living world. Paula completed her PhD at the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, where she explored living textiles and human–microbial relationships. She is an Academic and Artistic Associate at the Circular School, HfG Karlsruhe, and an Associate Lecturer at the MA Biodesign, Central Saint Martins. Across her teaching and facilitation, she creates environments where making, experimentation, observation, and critical reflection become methods for exploring materials, processes, and emerging ideas. Her practice spans research, exhibitions, public engagement, and collaborations with scientists, designers, artists, and cultural organisations. Whether working in the studio, laboratory, or exhibition context, Paula develops participatory experiences that encourage close engagement with sensory, living, and responsive materials, fostering curiosity, material inquiry, and new perspectives on designing with living systems. https://www.paulanerlich.com/
Onome Ekeh
Onome Ekeh, born and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, OE started out as a painter, transitioned to design, fell in love with cinema, and somewhere in the collusion, went digital. Along the way she picked up an AI habit. She presides over a diverse body of work that encompasses film, video, theater, literature, and radio. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation Fellowship, a Turbulence Media Award, and the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Fellowship.Exhibitions include shows at Museo Moderno, Buenos Aires ( Especulaciones ); the House of Electronic Arts Basel (HEK); Basel Social Club (Art Basel), Kunsthaus Baselland; Kunsthaus Aarau (upcoming). She is featured in the Serpentine Gallery publication, The Shape of the Circle in the Mind of a Fish. During Berlin Art Week 2024, she curated The Glittering Field, a showcase featuring 16 international artists for AOA;87 Contemporary. OE is a frequent speaker and panelist on the cultural dynamics of technology and nature and currently lectures on Speculative Culture in the Masters and Bachelors program of the Basel Academy of Art & Design in Switzerland.
Kulagu Tu Buvongan
Kulagu Tu Buvongan is a collective of majority Manobo and Tinananun lumad people from the Central Cordillera region of Mindanao. Their projects focus on environmental justice and the indigenous struggles in the Pantaron Mountain Range. Their projects have been exhibited at SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Estación Terrena (Bogota), Para Site (Hong Kong), FONTE (São Paulo), 421 (Abu Dhabi), and Colomboscope 2024.
Eva Fotiadi
Eva Fotiadi (PhD) is a historian of contemporary art based in the Netherlands. She is a researcher at the Avans Centre for Applied Research in Art, Design and Technology and a lecturer at St. Joost School of Art & Design. Her current research focuses on multisensory experiences in art exhibitions, with an emphasis on disability art and activism. This work builds on her previous research into interdisciplinary, participatory, and public art, as well as exhibition histories.
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