Keythings of Clay: Material Ecologies in Art and Pedagogy

ZM

This artistic research project investigates the ceramics workshop as a dynamic site at the convergence of art, pedagogy, and ecopolitics. Utilizing practice-based, iterative feedback loops, it explores how cycles of making, reflecting, and teaching with clay evolve concepts, methods, and material outcomes in an ongoing dialogue between agencies.^1 Clay is reimagined beyond a primitive arts and crafts medium as an infrastructural archive that embodies ecological, political, and urban narratives. Grounded in a material-ecological framework and informed by critical theory from Bruno Latour, Karen Barad, and Donna Haraway, the project situates ceramics pedagogy within an experimental ecology of keythings; clay, tools, kilns, residues, and bodies, that co-constitute knowledge.^2 This research embraces contradictions and complexities of wicked ecological problems, fostering a pedagogy of “comfortable discomfort” that resists mastery and embraces provisionality.^3 The research unfolds over a time of wicked problems: war, speculated ecological collapse, institutional fragility, and the difficulty of knowing which crisis demands priority or whether these crises are in fact complicit in one another. Within this uncertainty, it is also considered how to navigate complexity with mindful presence, cultivating forms of practice that allow us to remain responsive without paralysis and eventually if this approach could be conducive to locate stable solutions and re-inject questions stemming from the practice back into practice and beyond.^4 Outcomes include pedagogical models and artistic works that demonstrate how material practices mediate relations between sustainability, ethical responsibility, and creative agency. Ultimately, the project envisions the ceramics studio as a vibrant, relational ecology that invites ongoing inquiry into the entangled systems constituting artistic research, practice and pedagogy.^5 ^1 Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice, 3rd ed. (New York: Guilford, 2024). ^2 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). ^3 Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016; Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). ^4 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). ^5 Patricia Leavy, ed., Handbook of Arts-Based Research, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford, 2025). Participants: Alevtina Lyapunova, Ana de Sousa Cardoso, Asya Marakulina, Bahareh Rahimi, Buket Özalevli, Carmen Kalata, Ebba Sofie Olsson, Esther Vörösmarty, Gloria Bergner, Heidi Noémi Ramskogler, Julia Stakhorska, Lili Marie Theilen, Luisali Theisen, Maria Milagros Ainchil, Olga Shapovalova, Oliwia Wioletta Kalwa, Prima Mathawabhan, Siha Kim, Tabea Briggs, Tim Morris Schiffer, Yeonkyeong Park together with Kristin Weissenberger and Zahra Mirza

Methodology

This research embraces a qualitative, practice-based approach rooted in the iterative dynamics of artistic making, pedagogical engagement, and critical reflection emerging within the ceramics studio.^17 Data collection unfolded through attentive note-taking during studio discussions and participant observation, embedding student feedback and experiential insights as integral threads within a broader entanglement of research literature, personal artistic practice, and pedagogical encounters.

Collaboration transpired primarily horizontally among students, who responded to evolving course prompts by conceiving and realizing collective sculptural works reflecting their distinct yet interconnected inquiries. These collaborative processes served both as artistic outputs and epistemic sites, where making, dialogue, and critique continuously looped back to inform successive stages of exploration. This cyclical feedback and not a linear transmission, constitutes the core methodological framework, aligning with artistic research as a mode of knowledge production inseparable from embodied, material practice.

Central to this approach is the acknowledgment of the studio as a shared ecology, where what this project alludes to as ‘Keythings’ instead of Keywords; human and nonhuman actors including clay, tools, kilns, residues, and bodies, co-produce meaning through what Barad refers to as intra-action.^18 This methodological positioning supports an ongoing negotiation between control and openness, mastery and uncertainty, situated within material and ethical complexities of sustainability and ecological entanglement while destabilizing traditional hierarchies between subject and object.

The project employs a material-ecological framework that draws upon interdisciplinary collaboration and ecological thinking to reveal complex entanglements between urban infrastructure, waste, extraction, and sustainability. This approach is grounded in immersive studio practices, including working directly with surplus clay excavated from Vienna’s subway construction and engaging in material preparation processes such as sifting, wedging, and blending. These embodied activities bring to light the ecological and ethical dimensions inherent in material use.

The research extended across disciplinary boundaries through collaborations that brought in perspectives on ceramic waste as a form of value in guest talk/workshop with Christina Schou Christensen^19 and on clay as a medium for data storage with Martin Kunze^20. Such transversal exchanges emphasize inquiry as a shared, collective process rather than isolated disciplinary endeavors

Sustainability practices are present throughout the methodology, including intentional material rationing, reuse strategies, and thinking about energy management during firing processes.^21 The kiln itself is considered an active agent whose operational energy consumption shapes artistic outcomes and ethical decisions alike.^22 This reflects an ethic of scarcity and responsibility, resonant with themes from collapsology and material ecology.

A central aspect of this methodological approach involves navigating the moral and ethical complexities of sustainability, not as a rigid, prescriptive burden imposed on artists or students, but as a set of guiding anchor points designed to resist reductive greenwashing or tokenistic gestures.^23 The research remains attentive to the challenges inherent in discussions of ecological responsibility, acknowledging collective complicity within broader systems of collapse.^24 Recognizing that no perfectly ethical mode of living or making exists provides the ground for cultivating a space that honors nuance and rejects moralizing. This ethical stance reinforces that responsibility is distributed socially, rather than resting solely on the shoulders of individual artists.

In sum, the methodology enacts practice-based artistic research as a dynamic feedback loop where cycles of making, reflection, and teaching continuously inform and transform one another. This iterative process opens spaces for evolving conceptual frameworks, material experimentation, and a shared ecological consciousness within the ceramics workshop.

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ZM - Keythings of Clay: Material Ecologies in Art and Pedagogy - 2025