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
Material Acts is an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring the intersections of architecture, craft, and science through material experimentation. 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.
1-2 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.
