Conversations with Matter explores paper as a living material, created through processes of transformation, care, and experimentation. Through workshops and an artist talk, participants engage with textile and paper waste, learning traditional and contemporary papermaking techniques while reflecting on material cycles, sustainability, and creative collaboration.

Conversations with Matter offers insight into my artistic practice and research methodologies. Through documentation of projects, material experiments, and finished works, Surzhana Radnaeva discusses how working closely with materials has shaped my creative process.The talk presents a selection of research projects involving diverse living and bio-based materials, including kombucha leather, seaweed-based materials, mycelium, bacterial dyes, handmade paper, and other experimental biomaterials. By sharing both successful outcomes and ongoing explorations, she reflects on the ways materials can become collaborators in artistic inquiry, revealing unexpected possibilities, challenges, and forms of knowledge. The presentation highlights how material experimentation can serve as a bridge between art, science, ecology, and traditional making practices.

Conversations with Matter is an artistic and educational project that explores relationships between humans, materials, and processes of transformation through the medium of handmade paper. Situated at the intersection of material research, art, ecological thinking, traditional craft knowledge, and contemporary experimentation, the project invites participants to engage directly with material cycles and to reconsider paper not merely as a support for information, but as a material that carries memory, reflects process, and embodies transformation.

The project is rooted in my ongoing artistic practice, which investigates materiality, transformation, and the hidden narratives embedded in our daily surroundings. Through close observation, reflection and hands-on practice, I explore how materials hold traces and tell stories. Paper serves as a particularly rich medium for this exploration because of its ability to continuously transform from plant fibres, textiles, and waste into new forms of expression. Through its making, paper reveals the interconnected themes of memory, process, and transformation that form the conceptual framework of this project.

At the centre of the project lies the complete cycle of handmade paper production. Participants are introduced to the process from the selection and identification of suitable raw materials to their preparation, pulping, sheet formation, drying, and creative application. Textile waste, recycled paper, and locally available fibre materials become resources for experimentation and learning, demonstrating how discarded materials can acquire new value and meaning through transformation.

The workshops combine traditional and contemporary methods of papermaking. Participants will be working with manual tools such as mortar and pestle alongside the Hollander Beater, a fibre-processing machine developed through the Telluric project with Mekanika. Through these different approaches, participants gain an understanding of how fibre properties, processing methods, and material choices influence the qualities and characteristics of the final paper.