Noa Heyne
Elastic Creativity, Reversible Materiality
Workshop, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Mondays, 10-13 h, 7 sessions: 28.4, 12.5., 19.5., 26.5., 2.6., 16.6., 23.6.2025
Hybrid-Lab, Marchstr. 8 (last session 23.6. in Hardenbergstr. 33, room 110)

Registration on Moodle starts on 14.4.2025: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2663
Enrollment Key: material

In architecture and construction, a material reaches a tipping point when it loses its elasticity, fractures and permanently deforms: excessive physical stress, changes in climate conditions or unexpected chemical reactions may cause a bedroom to be flooded, a road to cave in or a building to collapse. These moments of no return may seem extreme, almost apocalyptic; but isn't irreversibility inherent to construction itself? Whether in the making of a sculpture, a theatre set, a music instrument or an entire building, isn't this precisely what happens when wood is cut, plaster poured or Plasticides mixed? In its fluid form, concrete, the most common building material, offers infinite possibilities of design. But once it hardens, it can be broken down but not re-modelled.

Such “one-way street” behaviour calls for socio-environmental responsibility, in our choice of materials as well as selected designs. It also raises questions regarding the creative process: when do the architectural sketch, the sculptural idea, or even the choreographic draft lose their elasticity and become a planned execution or an irreversible physical fact?

In this seminar, we will ask how we as artists and spatial thinkers can maintain this flexibility, focusing on the material aspect of the creative process. We will look at the history of materiality through practical, cultural, and environmental lenses, with examples of material failures alongside recent innovations such as self-healing concrete or metals that remember their shape. We will play with traditional materials in ways that challenge their points of no return, and ask questions about the possibilities of translation of materials and sensory experience into digital spaces.

Examples of reading resources: Antoine Picon, The Materiality of Architecture (2018); Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010); Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013); Reiser and Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tactonics (2006).

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Attend meetings, participate in discussions, read short texts outside of class, and create a number of small projects in groups or alone.

No prior knowledge is needed. Though not mandatory, students may want to buy their own materials, spending between 10 and 40 €.

Noa Heyne (*1982) is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist. Heyne's work is located at the intersection between traditional aspects of sculpture and architecture and the imaginative world of object and marionette theatre. She studied painting and comparative literature in Jerusalem, and sculpture in New York and Baltimore. She received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2017. She is the recipient of several fellowships, including Acre Residency, WI, USA (2018); ZK/U Residency, Berlin (2019); Culture Zone Residency, Wroclaw, Poland (2020); LABA Berlin Program (2021). She is currently a mentee in the UDK Prof*me program. In 2018 she was a part time sculpture professor at MICA, Baltimore, and since 2022 she teaches drawing and installation at SBKG Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Ghosts, duo-show with Jens Brand, galerie weisser elefant, Berlin 2022; Replace the Space, duo-show with John Von Bergen, Kommunale Galerie, Berlin 2021; Undercurrent, installation at the Mikvah of the White Stork Synagogue, Wroclaw, Poland 2020.