Material Acts
A research collaborative
Material Acts is an on-going research collaboration organized with Kate Yeh Chiu and Jia Yi Gu, with Hilary Huckins-Weidner and Strat Coffman. Material Acts begins with a reframing of materials as processes. Materials are typically described as raw resources, fixed products, or inert objects to be sourced from a shelf in the store—a function of commodity more than of making. Yet, such understandings of materials belie the complex logistical, economic, ecological, and technological actions that transform matter into the material substrate for our lives. Instead, Material Acts considers materials as participants in and outputs of cultural practices and techniques. This perspective of materials as an ongoing process—rather than as raw resources or finished products—centers human actors and systems in the event of the material transformation, reminding us that materials are not inert objects, but active.
The project takes the form of an exhibition and publication. The exhibition is organized around five material acts, Animating, Disassembling, Feeding, Re-fusing, and Stitching. Each of these terms operate as thematic clusters illustrating key events in a material’s production, from the fusion of sedimentary grain such as sand with plastics, to the intentional dismantling of a stone column by the pulling of a single piece of string. If we frame “materials” as a verb rather than a fixed object, as “authored” objects rather than discovered conditions, we are better able to explore the fullness of matter undergoing transformation as it sheds one state of arrangement in order to adopt another. The accompanying publication expands on the research inquiries through critical writings, visual essays, interviews and project features.
Initiated as part of the Getty PST ART: Art and Science program, the project takes the form of both a publication and an exhibition of the same name.
THE EXHIBITION
While nature has often stood in as a model, metaphor, or resource for designers, the recent global upheavals in climate, ecology, and technology are driving intensive understandings of nature’s tangible and imagined substrate. The exhibition explores how contemporary design practices mobilize, confound, and generate natures, whether through simulating mechanics or growing biological matter.
THE PUBLICATION
Critical essays, photography, how-to guides, and conversations featuring exhibition participants and expert scholars provide readers with perspectives, insights, and provocations that broaden the exhibition’s scope
MATERIAL ACTS
PROJECT TYPE
Research Collaborative
LOCATION
Los Angeles, California
PROJECT STATUS
Ongoing
PEOPLE
Kate Yeh Chiu
Hilary Huckins-Weidner
strat coffman
INSTITUTIONS
Craft Contemporary
Getty PST ART: Art and Science Collide
EXHIBITION DESIGN
Spinagu
yyyy-mm-dd
SUPPORT
Getty Foundation
Graham Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts