By examining how material practice generates forms of knowledge that emerge prior to, alongside, and beyond discursive representation, this paper challenges cultural frameworks in which knowledge is primarily understood as symbolic, linguistic, and transferable. Drawing from artistic research and process-based inquiry, it proposes material practice as a cultural site where knowledge is not merely acquired or applied, but actively produced through situated engagement. In this context, matter is not approached as passive substrate but as a co-constitutive agent within epistemic formation. Knowing arises through irreversible interactions between bodily action, perception, and material response, rather than through symbolic instruction or explanation. Unlike practices structured by codified procedures, engagement with matter resists full formalization: contingency and situational judgment play a constitutive role in the emergence of understanding. Rather than deriving from mastery or control, knowing develops through constraint shaped by limits of resistance, gravity, scale, and temporal irreversibility. Knowledge here is enacted through reciprocal negotiation that cannot be anticipated or externalized in advance. In this process, the practitioner does not remain an external knower but is reconfigured through the very conditions that generate understanding. This positions material practice as a domain where epistemic outcomes emerge through action, challenging dominant models of knowledge validation. The presentation will develop this argument through selected examples from sculptural and pictorial processes, examining how processual decision-making and perceptual feedback operate as epistemic drivers. By foregrounding experience as a site of knowledge, the paper contributes a material-based perspective to cultural discussions on how it is produced and experienced.

Authors:
Olga Cuxart Oriol, Independent Scholar, Spain

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Olga Cuxart Oriol is an independent artist-researcher working between Asia and Europe. Her practice-based research engages with materiality and form within contemporary artistic practice.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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