Murmuring Matter

April 14, 2023: Prelude during Museum Night Maastricht 

See the programme and list of contributors here.

The event Murmuring Matter rehearses ways to be attentive, responsive and empathic to the material murmurings and presences within and around us that shape bodies and subjectivities, as well as local and planetary ecosystems. The ongoing environmental breakdown has made evident the agency of viral, vegetal, animal, atmospheric, and other material manifestations, which have evaded human control and reclaimed an active role in the unfolding of earthly narratives. These conditions urge for a reassessment of human’s relation to the environment, not only from a techno-scientific perspective but also from an ontological and epistemological one. Acknowledging this shift in perspectives requires a disentanglement from structures inherited from millennia of epistemological violence inflicted against cosmologies rooted in interconnections with forms of earthly agency. We wish to engage with cosmopolitical proposals such as that of philosopher Isabelle Stengers who invites us to slow down and listen to the multiple and divergent murmurings of those who do not have, cannot have, or do not want to have a voice in political arenas.

Murmuring Matter: On the Cosmopolitics of Materials gathers diverse knowledges and practices in walks, talks, performances, workshops, screenings, dinners, and other somatic explorations that nurture processes of (un)learning, exchanging, and relating to and through the matters and environments in and around us. Bridging the analytical and sensorial, the verbal and non-verbal, the cognitive and affective, this collective inquiry traverses multiple scales of materials, bodies, river-, forest-, and cityscapes of Maastricht and beyond, as gateways to access wider planetary stories and cosmopolitics.

The event is curated by Bruno Alves de Almeida (JvE curator and resident liaison) and Giulia Bellinetti (JvE head of Nature Research and Future Materials coordinator) and counts with contributions by guest speakers as well as current and previous JvE participants—Amy Auld Pennington, Anastasia Eggers, Arpita Akhanda, Charles-André Coderre, Charlie Clemoes, Clementine Edwards, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Daniel Lie, Dorien de Wit, Eglė Budvytytė, Fabrice Mazliah, Jonas Palekas, Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano, Kate Pickering, Kim David Bots, Kris Dittel, Maud van den Beuken, Reetu Sattar, Rehema Chachage, Riar Rizaldi, sata taas, Sumugan Sivanesan, Toby Kiers, Wim Peumans, and Zahra Malkani. The event’s visual identity is designed by JvE alumni Offshore Studio, the collaborative practice of Isabel Seiffert and Christoph Miler.

This is the fourth edition of the Jan van Eyck’s annual Urgency Intensive series and has been conceived in collaboration with the academy’s Future Materials, a programme set up by the Jan van Eyck Nature Research department and aimed at promoting environmentally conscious art and design practices through research, conversations, and other forms of exchange centered around sustainable materials. 

Murmuring Matter has been made possible by the support of Innovatielabs, a programme by the Creative Industries Fund NL and CLICKNL, as assigned by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The Innovatielabs grant was awarded to the Future Materials programme.