Material Practice
Moving Image
Moving Image


A body holds a body
Geo–Design MA
Thesis Publication
Design Academy Eindhoven Netherlands
2026

A Body Holds A Body Holds A Body brings together sixteen Geo–Design theses exploring living systems under pressure. Across ecological, political, and institutional contexts, the publication traces what is lost when complex relations are abstracted into resources, units, or baselines.

Across our sixteen graduation projects, which will be presented at this year’s Graduation Show, we explore a wide range of subjects, from bacteria, birds, plants, minerals, and radioactive isotopes to seeds, oysters, ash, tidal landscapes, ruins, intergenerational memory, darkness, simulations, and gravitational waves. While our approaches, research contexts, and visual outcomes are quite different, we share an interest in the ecological, political, and institutional systems that shape how we understand and relate to the world around us.

Find more infos: here









Lamelle

Three-dimensional tile
Golem Baukeramik, Germany
Ceramic
2023

Lamelle was developed during an internship at Golem Kunst- & Baukeramik, a manufactory 
specialising in traditional and historical tile production. The project emerged from an interest 
in approaching craft through making: working directly with the material and production  process 
in order to better understand the knowledge, precision, and techniques embedded within 
ceramic manufacturing.

Developed with the support and expertise of craftspeople from Golem’s mould-making department, Lamelle takes the form of a three
dimensional ceramic tile that can be stacked in different configurations. Each tile contains a curved inner geometry, so that when several 
elements are placed on top of one another, they create a continuous cylindrical cavity.  Through this transformation, the architectural 
tile becomes a functional vessel.

The project therefore moves between tile, modular object, and vase, exploring how a component associated with architectural 
surfaces can gain a different function through repetition and assembly.

Rather than reproducing historical forms, Lamelle uses traditional ceramic knowledge as a starting point for a contemporary object. 
The project reflects an interest in craft not only as a means of production, but as a form of situated knowledge that can be learned 
through close engagement with materials, tools, and the people who work with them.










Digitile in Detail

Laser-engraved ceramic tile
CNC laser engraving 
Ceramic
2022 - 2023

The project explores how the boundaries between 
traditional craft, industrial production, and digital 
fabrication are shifting as new tools enter established processes of making. Rather than treating analogue and digital methods as opposites, it asks how they 
can operate together and what new forms of knowledge, control, and expression can emerge through their combination.

Ceramic tiles became a testing ground for this approach. Pixel-based floral motifs, referencing 
traditional decorative patterns, were translated into digital files and engraved into the ceramic surface 
using a CNC laser. Through a series of material tests, different parameters such as laser power, 
speed, and repeated passes were adjusted to examine how they affected depth, detail, texture, 
and the behaviour of the glazed surface.

The process brought together techniques associated with handmade tile production, industrial manufacturing, and digital fabrication. The final 
ceramic pieces therefore become less a demonstration of one specific technology than a record of several modes of production interacting 
within the same object.

Although the project is realised through ceramics, its focus extends beyond a single material. It considers digital technologies as tools that can enter into dialogue with existing craft knowledge 
rather than simply automate or replace it. In this sense, the project asks how contemporary technologies might expand craft practices while maintaining an attention to material behaviour, experimentation, and the situated 
knowledge of making.









Hier (hin) ? (here?)

Performative dining installation
Discarded materials
Collective workshop
2022


Walking is most enjoyable when it becomes a shared experience, with conversations, shared food and spontaneous encounters.

During a performative walk, 22 people carried together an infrastructure normally associated 
with settledness, order and fixed places: an eight-metre-long table, four four-metre-long benches, a four-metre-long basket full of food 
and three two-metre-long loaves of bread.

These objects were not simple luggage, but became a catalyst for a social choreography. Their size and weight required close coordination 
and collective responsibility. Walking was only possible if everyone carried along.

The place to stop, the moment to rest, was not determined in advance, but decided together. At some point, the group decided to set up the 
table and benches and eat together. This improvised situation created a temporary social space, a place that was created through joint action and decisions and not through architecture or planning. After the communal meal, everything was dismantled and taken back to the starting point.

‘Hier(hin)’ poses fundamental questions about the understanding of the public sphere and participation. Those who carry, co-decide. Those who co-decide design the space. The performative character of the work makes processes visible that often go unnoticed in everyday life, such as the extent to which collective
action is dependent on agreements, consideration and timing. At the same time, the project refers to 
topics such as care, common property and mobility. What possibilities arise when places are not predetermined but collectively negotiated?











Cultchless
Get in touch for a private screener
Essay-film / Experimental documentary
Netherlands
2025 - 2026
12min

Collaboration

+    
sound design

           Arkın Kodalak
+    
animation design
         Heekyung Kim
          Janek Beau      
         Patrick (Ming -Chun) Chiang
+    
voice actress
        Juliane Schmitt



In its natural environment, an oyster larva drifts until it finds a hard surface, where it cements itself 
for life. Movement gives way to permanence, and the animal becomes part of a reef.

Cultchless is a moving-image installation named after a cultivation method that prevents oysters from attaching to a surface. The narrative centres on this pivotal moment in the oyster’s life cycle, 
when commercial farming interrupts attachment and keeps the animal mobile and harvestable.

From this disruption emerges a broader question of value. The oyster appears, in turn, as a luxury 
food, an invasive species, and an ecological engineer, revealing that its worth is never fixed but shaped by the systems through which it is 
encountered.

The project asks what becomes obscured when
living beings are understood primarily through 
what they can provide, and what it might mean 
instead to attend to the relationships that shape 
what they are.
















Hier was het kleine meertje
Get in touch for a private screener


Worldbuilding Exploration    
Netherlands  
2025 – ongoing
9 min
.

Collaboration
+    Josephine Conen
+    Julio Rébora
+    Siri Heidweiller


Hier was het kleine meertje is a worldbuilding exploration through moving image. By connecting real-world observations with speculative narratives, the project explores the shifting role water plays in our lives.

Currently in progress, it unfolds across four scenes that offer perspectives on what is, and what could be, when water becomes the lens through which we imagine the world. How will its use be governed? What might our lives look like in such contexts? And what role will water play in shaping our imagination?















Everbearing
Get in touch for a private screener

Essay-film / Experimental documentary
Netherlands
2025
14 min.

Collaboration
+     Josephine Conen

Everbearing examines the tension between control and instability through a living installation 
that reconstructs a fragment of a modern greenhouse, accompanied by a two-channel film work. In these artificial ecosystems, soil has become obsolete, and survival depends entirely on human intervention and precisely calibrated nutrient flows.

Strawberry plants, suspended in water-filled bags, exist in a state of hypermobility, exposing the vulnerability of manufactured environments. The dual projection juxtaposes commercial greenhouse cultivation with a tightrope walker 
in perpetual search of balance, while pink, growth-stimulating light bathes the installation.

This fragile equilibrium between falling and recovery reflects a broader condition of precarious instability. By inviting visitors to cut 
and take home a strawberry plant, the work turns them into participants in an ongoing cycle of care. Through this gesture, Everbearing suggests that resilience may emerge not through optimization, but through repeated encounters with imbalance and uncertainty.






Info
Meret Behnke