How does matter think, and what does it mean to think with matter?

The second seminar in the Matter of Intelligence series invites inquiry into the nature of matter, exploring matter—and by extension, intelligence—not simply as substance but as process, dynamic, relational, and always in formation.

Long understood as the inert backdrop against which life unfolds, matter is increasingly recognized as agential and intelligent. What if intelligence itself is a material process, an emergent property of matter? 

Of Matter considers how consciousness, sentience, and intelligence might arise from and within matter as the materialization of phenomena, while also troubling the line between the material and immaterial, the physical and the metaphysical. Drawing on physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, feminist theory, and artistic practice, the seminar explores matter not as a passive entity, but as an active and relational one—a dense entanglement of forces, histories, affects, and possibilities. It is a seminar on matter as meaning, and meaning as mattering. To speak of matter is to ask what it does, how it moves, and how it matters—not only conceptually, but materially, ethically, and politically.

With Laura Tripaldi, a transdisciplinary researcher at the interface of science, technology, and speculative thinking, and Harpreet Sareen, designer, researcher, artist, and Associate Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Hosted by Eriola Pira, Curator and Director of Programs, Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Matter of Intelligence Seminar Series
Through modes of shared study, rehearsal, and iterative dialogue with invited artists, thinkers, and the public, the VLC Seminar Series develops and presents artistic and scholarly research centered on the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Focus Theme, Matter of Intelligence. Comprising twelve sessions convened from September 2025 through May 2027—the Seminar Series is conceived as an open curriculum and a site for collective inquiry. Each seminar is paired with a curated reader on the Matter of Intelligence Are.na channel, grounding the dialogue and opening new paths for exploration.