Since its emergence in the 1990s, new materialism radically challenged mind-matter, culture-nature, subject-object, human-nonhuman dualisms of transcendental humanist thought (van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010) by foregrounding a theoretical and practical turn to matter. According to Fox and Alldread (2019), materialities considered in new materialist approaches include human bodies; other animate organisms; material things; spaces, places and the natural and built environment that these contain. This ‘material-discursive’ (Barad,2003) approach consequently provided a novel ground for possibilities to access art beyond its representational capacities (Bolt, 2004). In line with Karen Barad’s (2007) usage of the term ‘intra-action’, the process of art making can be seen as a place where entities are produced through their relation while subject and object of knowledge emerge through intricate relations; and where we can acknowledge the ‘force of things’ by ‘being with things’ (Bennett, 2010).

At this space of multi-ended becomings, formations and transformations, engagements with knowledge are co-constitutive of knowledge itself (Hickey-Moody & Page, 2015). For Barrett and Bolt, studio-based art practices are always materially situated and the knowledge production and its integration shape all the contributors involved in it (2007). This aspect of studio-based art practices locates the artist not as a distinct force but an entangled one. This entanglement with the matter is the ways in which the act of making shapes learning and eventually becoming of the artist. According to Ingold (2013), in the processes of learning the conduct of thought goes along with, and continually answers to, the fluxes and flows of the materials with which we work, as these ‘materials think in us, as we think through them’. He sees the processes of making as a process of growth with the intent to locate ‘the maker’ as a participant in amongst a world of ‘active materials’. In line with Ingold, Abram (1996) defines receptive things (or entities) as ‘sensing bodies’ are active and open forms, continually improvising its relation to other things and the world. These materials are what she/he has to work with, and in the process of making by uniting with the entities surrounding her/him, he/she learns how to produce and move and become. Bolt also recognizes that the artist is produced through practice and her/his knowledge does not exist prior to effectively dealing with materials and acknowledging them as cooperators (2008). She defines artwork as something different than the work of art, as latter capable of becomings and is no longer an object for a subject; materials, objects and the artist are co-responsible in the making of work (2004).

Therefore studio-based art practice as an examplary knowledge production process of togetherness of human and material, the inherent process of intra-activity moves and shapes materials as well as the artist. For the artist, these engagements produce new learning modalities that will locate further engagements. Artist here is one of the entangled entities take part in the processes of knowledge production in studio art practice as another agent who is subjected to an intra-active framework of learning that is not entirely human. What is it that can be learned by closely looking into these intra-actions between the artist and the materials which shape the inner workings of the process of knowledge production in studio art practice? What is the affect and agency of material entities within the process of studio art practice? Moreover, can investigating processes of studio-based art practice help expand the understanding on materiality of learning and further expand pedagogical practices? Can the position of the artist and her/his subjectivity be relocated at a non-binary state be which oscillates from maker to learner?

There will be an extensive component of recordings and interviews of practicing artists and their studio-based art practices and the research questions will inform the devising of research methodologies. Participatory observation, insights from artists and also the interviews will be devised to understand the prosthetic nature of their practices.

I hope the research project I propose will broaden the understanding of post-anthropocentric approaches in pedagogy of arts, in the field art-making, and in broader critical educational fields. This research project will make the inner workings of the studio processes visible at first hand which takes the studio as a prime site of observing and understanding human-matter relations as co-creator and co-operators through a new materialist approach. This accumulation of data will be presented as theory in practice and the bridging of theory and practice. This will hopefully explore studio-based processes as a pedagogical structure. The practice-based component addresses the whole of inner processes of the studio as a spread-out practice. Moreover, the understanding of affects and agency of matter in the broader context will hopefully contribute to tackling the values and ethics of human exceptionalism in approaching the fields mentioned above and further. As Sullivan (2004) states that theories developed by artists themselves as artist-theorists bring unique visions into cultural politics and policies of our times. The content of the research hopefully will lead touch such areas and inform its trajectory in return.

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