The Material Argument: Examining the Relationship between Materiality and Argumentation in Exhibition Making 

Aoife Donnellan [Linkedin]

This essay examines Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative’s practice in relation to the recent exhibition ‘How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative’ at the Barbican Centre, exhibiting Matrix’s unseen archive (How We Live Now 2021). The aim of the exhibition is to consider “who our buildings and shared spaces are designed for, who is excluded from our designed environment, and what effect this has on the communities who live there” (Barbican 2021). This essay investigates the influence of the medium of exhibition on the narrative and materiality of its content. Using “How We Live Now” as an ethnographic site, I examine how the organising principle employed by the designers of the exhibition captures the ethos and methods of Matrix through its materiality.

Introduction 

Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative’s practice sought to ask “who gets included and excluded through design” (How We Live Now 2021). Their legacy is manifested in their revolutionary approach to architectural practices, as well as through their realised projects. ‘How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative’ is an exhibition recently exhibited at the Barbican Centre containing Matrix’s unseen archive. The aim of the exhibition is to consider “who our buildings and shared spaces are designed for, who is excluded from our designed environment, and what effect this has on the communities who live there” (Barbican 2021). The timing of the exhibition was inspired by Dr. Jos Boys, a founding member of Matrix, receiving funding to establish the Matrix Open Feminist Architecture Archive (MOFAA): an online resource dedicated to providing “publically accessible and easily available access to resources, for personal and collaborative interaction and re-use” (MatrixOpen n.d.). This free-to-access online archive maintains Matrix’s non-hierarchical co-operative principles at its core.

In this essay I will investigate the influence of the medium of exhibition on the narrative and materiality of its content. Using ‘How We Live Now’ as an ethnographic site, I will examine how the organising principle employed by the designers of the exhibition captures the ethos and methods of Matrix through its materiality. I will do so with reference to Tony Bennett’s applications of Bruno Latour’s theories on centres of calculation. I will go on to examine how material elements of the exhibition affect the narrative of the exhibited work via Christine Helliwell’s discussions on visualism in her paper Space and Sociality in a Dayak Longhouse. Helliwell’s paper exposes the ways in which an overemphasis on visual representation can create a false sense of the reality of the social structures at play within ethnographic sites. Influenced by the exhibition’s organising principle, I will examine how the process of exhibition making, as well as the materials involved, democratise the presupposed hierarchy of senses presented by visualism through its content, location, and materiality. This upheaval of established visual presentation methods is central to the exhibition of an architectural practice dedicated to inclusion.

Exhibition as Ethnography

Material culture anthropologist Francisco Martínez argues for “exhibitions as both an anthropological field and an ethnographic device to reflect upon the process of knowledge production while simultaneously practising it” (Martínez 2021, 174). This redefinition allows exhibitions to expand beyond a representational technique into “analytical experimentation and multilinear forms of relating in the field” (Martínez 2021, 1). The materiality of ‘How We Live Now’ is more than a representation of objects; the structure of the exhibition itself is a material argument for the content of the exhibition. This idea will be explored further below in relation to the work of Bruno Latour and Christine Helliwell. Establishing the subject of my analysis as an ethnography is key, as it allows for the study of the space, content, visitors, and outcomes. The design and content of this exhibition reinforces Martínez’s arguments for “curatorial processes as anthropological fields”, which “transform[s] an exhibition into a device for collaborative experimental research” (Martínez 2021, 175). I will examine the exhibition space of ‘How We Live Now’ as a site of collaborative research in order to understand the built environment created by the exhibition designers in relation to the content of the archival exhibition.

The Feminist Design Collective and Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative

The Feminist Design Collective, which later became Matrix, was originally founded as a result of discussions held between women involved professionally in the design and production of buildings, concerning their experience working in a male-dominated industry (Francis 1981, 17). This information was documented by Susan Francis, one of the founding members of Matrix, in Heresies, a feminist publication that ran from 1977 until 1993. At the time of its founding, “women constitute[d] less than 5% of registered architects and less than 4% of those [were] employed” (Francis 1981, 17). A number of projects arose from these meetings, including the Feminist Design Collective. The initial project consisted of 20 women working together on architectural projects specifically aimed at improving the lives of women. This included renovating terraced houses in South London to convert them into a women’s shelter, proposing alternative approaches for health care centres, namely Stockwell Health Centre, and helping to found Lambeth Women’s Workshop, a skills centre for women to learn carpentry and joinery (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 42). In 1980, The Feminist Design Collective split into two separate groups: Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, and another group who wanted to reform established practice structures from within (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 43). Matrix was formalised as a group in 1980 with the intention of dissecting established architectural structures and pursuing altered practices. In 1984, Matrix published a book, Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment, containing the outcomes from their discussions surrounding feminism, architectural practices and the built environment. This was the first instance of a published book of this genre in Britain (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 43). Eventually the project grew into “twenty-five women collaborat[ing] over fourteen years in a cooperatively structured practice to explore the ways in which the theory and practice of architecture could respond to and affect social relations” (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 41). This pursuit of alternative theories and methods is fundamental to the formation of Matrix.

The structure of Matrix was important to the functioning of the co-operative. They adopted a “‘no-star system’ in recognition that architecture is a collective process” which led to a collective identity rather than individual recognition (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 46). They implemented an equal pay structure where architects and administrators alike were paid the same amount. The group did not take on private companies or individuals, their clients were typically “voluntary groups, local boroughs, housing associations and co-operatives” (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 46). They focused on clients that would not normally have access to architects, namely women from working-class backgrounds. Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative came to an end in the mid-1990s, after helping to re-order established architectural practices by centring previously marginalised voices in the discipline. Matrix’s revolutionary approach to architectural practices is embodied by the materiality and content of the archival exhibition ‘How We Live Now’.

‘How We Live Now’

Ephemera from the history and practice of Matrix was recently exhibited in a lobby space on the ground floor of the Barbican Centre in London, in a temporary exhibition entitled ‘How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative’. The free exhibition ran from May 17, 2021 until December 23, 2021. This exhibition was designed by a design collective named Edit, in conjunction with Dr. Jos Boys, and Jon Astbury, Assistant Curator at the Barbican. Edit describes their organisation as “a feminist design collective, focusing on the enduring biases and hierarchies embedded into the environments surrounding us” (Edit 2021). Their practice emphasises design as both a process and an outcome, and has similar priorities to that of Matrix when it was first founded. The Barbican website describes the exhibition as “a multi-layered project comprising an installation, publication and events programme” (Barbican 2021). The Edit collective website describes it as 

not a conventional architecture exhibition. The work displayed does not only show a few final, refined pieces, but rather reveals the full process of what it takes to realise an architectural project. (Edit 2021). 

They state that this is achieved through the inclusion of material such as construction details and emails alongside final models and drawings, calling the “structure [something] which strives to make its display accessible and enjoyable to all.” (Edit 2021) These three aspects: the Barbican as an institution, Edit as designers, and Matrix as content, come together to create an exhibition whose argumentation is primarily posited through its materiality.

Throughout my visits to the exhibition, I recorded some field notes in the form of jot notes in the Notes application of my iPhone. I collated the following observations over several visits during the month of November 2021. ‘How We Live Now’ was located in the lobby space of the Barbican Centre. When you enter the exhibition space, you are greeted by an explanatory text as well as a quote from Matrix. Each space is delineated by a soft curtain upheld by a metal curtain rail that snakes through the entire exhibition. The structure itself is made from timber studwork. There are five main spaces in the structure. Each space utilises a number of different media, including video, collage, furniture, text, models, photographs and architectural plans. The floor is the same red carpet that can be found throughout the lobby space. As the space is only delineated by a permeable wooden frame, sounds of the clinking of cups from the nearby cafe as well as conversations from patrons can be heard inside the space. There are also a number of video installations which can be heard repeating throughout the exhibition space. This porous space creates a liminal atmosphere: you feel simultaneously enclosed and vulnerable with only a curtain between yourself and the foyer.  During my second visit, which lasted an hour, a total of 5 other people visited the exhibition. I spoke with a visitor there to enquire about her experience of the exhibition. She described the space as being soft because of the wood and material curtains. Emotionally, she found the inclusion of a large amount of text stressful. She noted that this format wouldn’t be good for a neurodiverse audience as a result of the visually confusing media used to present the text. She enjoyed the use of physical models and thought the space would benefit from the inclusion of more tactile media. Her observations of a soft, or domestic atmosphere, and an overwhelming amount of text, are in line with the design principles employed by Edit, explored in further detail below.

I will examine the materials used in the exhibition in a fashion formulated by Tim Ingold in his paper Toward an Ecology of Materials, thinking of the properties of materials as “histories” rather than attributes (Ingold 2012, 434). Ingold posits that in order to understand materials one must “be able to tell their histories—of what they do and what happens to them when treated in particular ways—in the very practice of working with them” (Ingold 2012, 434). Edit’s use of domestic and exposed structural materials exhibits the history of Matrix through their material “histories”. The links between the methods used by Matrix and the materials chosen by Edit tell a unique story about the intentions of Matrix. The exposed timber structure is “in reference [to] the construction technique typically used to create internal partitions in homes” in order to highlight Matrix’s aim “to make architecture accessible to those without a formal architectural education” (Edit 2021). Edit states that the design was “inspired by political and community groups’ appropriation of informal spaces” and “is arranged to reflect interactions such as meeting in someone’s living room or gathering around a kitchen table” (Edit 2021). The largest space in the centre of the exhibition contains a large timber table with stools surrounding it. This inclusion of functional furniture creates a welcoming and usable space that reflects Matrix’ primary aim; centring people who wish to learn more about architectural practices. The location of the temporary exhibition reinforces this domestic scale. Made from a timber frame and placed inside a large brutalist building, Edit states that by placing the exhibition “within the vast Barbican foyer… [it] create[d] an intimate and comfortable space, made up of domestically-proportioned nooks and rooms” as illustrated in figure 3 (Edit 2021). The installation is designed to feel domestic in scale, in contrast to its institutional context. In these ways, by using materials whose histories illustrate Matrix’s commitment to community and inclusion, Edit have created a material curatorial statement as well as a textual one.

Centres of Calculation    

Historically, exhibitions have been intrinsically linked to the discipline of anthropology. Anthropologists collect information and objects from the field to examine and exhibit textually, if not physically. Through the work of sociologist Tony Bennett, I will investigate how the collection of information and the organising principle affects the content of exhibition making, and how this in turn affects the materiality. Bennett notes that: 

 If collections must be gathered before they can be ordered, what is to be collected is always already ordered before it is gathered; and if the processes of gathering and ordering contribute to the development of governing practices, they are, in turn, shaped by governmental logics in both their conception and their execution. (Bennett 2017, 24)

 Here Bennett contends that that which is collected, ordered, and examined, is defined by what the governing body wishes to examine, rather than being driven by that which can be collected. This prescribed method of collection and examination is concerned solely with the collectible artefact rather than the processes and social structures surrounding it. This idea is founded in Bruno Latour’s arguments about centres of calculation which Bennett applies to museum practices, noting that “for Latour the natural history museum preceded the laboratory as one among a number of centers of calculation for the natural sciences” (Bennett 2017, 25). This theory highlights the importance of organising principles when it comes to ordering and collecting material to exhibit. Latour’s theory emphasises “how sites of collection are organized by the instruments” and “how the work conducted at such sites of collection influences what is carried back to centers of calculation” (Bennett 2017, 25). A centre of calculation is an organisation or place that acts as “the loci of ordering practices for materials that are brought together from diverse locations” (Bennett 2017, 25). In the case of ‘How We Live Now’, the centre of calculation is in the collaboration between Edit, Dr. Boys, and Jon Astbury. While the gathering and collection processes are a collaboration between the trio, the subsequent ordering of material in the form of exhibition is defined by the built environment designed by Edit. 

 Bennett goes on to examine “how the practices of ordering and classification conducted at centers of calculation have implications for varied forms of action in and on both the originating sites of collection and other worlds” (Bennett 2017, 25). Although this example is intended to examine colonial influences on ethnographic research, it also illuminates the importance of accounting for the organising principle in the collection and exhibition of materials. Examining a collection of materials, or an archive, in order to select them for exhibition, is a narrative building exercise. ‘How We Live Now’ was created to exhibit the work of a non-hierarchical co-operative. The materiality of the exhibition design captures that ethos in its organising principle. The inclusion of materials like emails, newspaper clippings, and administrative documents, alongside final architectural designs and fully realised projects elucidates the importance of acknowledging process in the creation of the exhibition space. This exhibition, which exists as a fully realised, singular space, acknowledges the shortcomings of archival exhibitions by designing with more than finished projects in mind. 

 The most notable example of this is the inclusion of a printed Wikipedia entry for Matrix, which is pinned to one of the timber frames. This inclusion of a physical iteration of a free-to-access website that relies on volunteers for its content, monitoring, and editing, reinforces the intention of the organising principle: an immersive illustration of process rather than a definitive tribute to a historic organisation. Edit, as the exhibition designers, illustrate the importance of representing the non-hierarchical structure governing Matrix, as well as their realised projects. As a result of the intentions of Edit to produce an exhibition that captures structure as well as process, they chose to collect and exhibit materials such as emails and Wikipedia entries. Their organising principle of non-hierarchical representation governed their collection of material. Below I will discuss how the materiality of this content embodies this organising principle in relation to Christine Helliwell’s theories on visualism.

Visualism

This idea of failing to capture social structures and processes through visual representation alone is examined by professor of anthropology Christine Helliwell in her paper, Space and Sociality in a Dayak Longhouse from 1996. Helliwell uses Johannes Fabian’s definition of visualism: “‘a cultural, ideological bias towards vision as the ‘noblest sense’ and towards geometry qua graphic-spatial conceptualisation as the most ‘exact’ way of communicating knowledge’” (Helliwell 1996, 129). This important text revaluates overreliance on representing fully formed objects and structures, which tend to “overlook altogether more fluid and unstructured forms of sociality, and to reduce such forms to the order of well-defined groups'' (Helliwell 1996, 129). This theory is relevant to understanding Edit’s approach to the creation of the exhibition ‘How We Live Now’ because it highlights the material embodiment of their non-hierarchical approach. To locate this method historically in exhibition design practices, the origin can be traced to Herbert Bayer’s 1942 Museum of Modern Art exhibition ‘Road to Victory’. Exhibited during World War II, this exhibition attempted to capture an “all-encompassing experience that overwhelmed the senses of participants, and involved many creative disciplines to achieve a total effect” (Hughes 2010, 16). Although the intention of ‘How We Live Now’ is not to overwhelm observers, this structure prioritises immersion, informing viewers through sight, sound, texture, and space. This method furthers Helliwell’s distinctions between process and structure, where she argues that:

visualism ‘promotes the notions that structure and process are fundamentally different, and that the latter, which is only sequentiality, can always be reduced to the former, which is simultaneity’ (Helliwell 1996, 129).

The main tenet of this exhibition is simultaneity, as illustrated by the enormous amount of archival information, material texture, liminal location, and permeable borders of sound. The data presented through historical documents, newspaper articles, and personal interviews evidences the importance of understanding more than the community-orientated methods employed by Matrix in order to represent the social structure of the collective itself. 

The aim of the exhibition was to capture the history of a collective that sought to redefine architectural principles through community engagement and informed social practice. Edit’s representation of this material avoids a solely visual output through their use of materials, as explored above. As well as presenting the material utilising an egalitarian approach, the design of the exhibition dismantles the hierarchy of senses presented by visualism through its reimagining of the built environment of exhibitions. The relationship between the materiality of the exhibition and the argumentation of the curatorial vision elucidates Helliwell’s theory. Thus, Tyler points out that one of the effects of visualism is a hierarchy of ‘thingness’ such that ‘substances’ or ‘objects’ are experienced as more ‘real’ than ‘attributes,’ ‘qualities,’ ‘actions,’ ‘events,’ or ‘relations’ (Helliwell 1996, 129).

By using the structure of the exhibition space itself to further the curatorial argument, the exhibition captures the social structure of Matrix in a way that a visual representation would fail to. The objects, attributes, qualities, and relations, are captured through this collaboration between form and content. This can be found in “the exposed bolts, weights and curtain rail [that] help hold this structure together”, highlighting the transparency of process evident in the textual material of the exhibition (Edit 2021). The interior of the structure can be altered by visitors as they “can open up or enclose spaces to create different levels of privacy” by repositioning the curtains (Edit 2021). This highlights the collaborative aspects of Matrix’s practice, by allowing the users of the space to define their own needs. This tactile and spatial approach to the representation of ethnographic information draws a specific parallel with Helliwell’s paper. The Dayak Longhouse was misrepresented as discrete apartment spaces as a result of an overreliance on visual methods, just as Matrix would be misrepresented were the exhibition to focus on finished architectural projects. The emphasis on the social interiors in both instances embody the fabric and relevance of their existence. The overemphasis on visual representation in exhibition making can create a false narrative about the reality of the purpose and importance of the content. Helliwell argues that understanding must not solely be based on “the abstract arrangements of those spaces but also on the ways in which people live and use them” (Helliwell 1996, 131). 

Although Matrix was not a campaigning group, but a practice devoted to building, its influences were disseminated by publications, videos, lectures, teaching, courses and contacts with women students and practitioners. Was this in the end more important than the buildings themselves? (Dwyer and Thorne 2007, 55-56).

The reality of Matrix’s legacy is not to be found in their completed projects, but in their privileging of marginalised voices, which resulted in an altered architectural practice. This move away from representing outcomes towards illustrating social structures can be manifested through the materiality of exhibition making, and is captured by ‘How We Live Now’.

CONCLUSION

Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative was a non-hierarchical, feminist organisation that redefined architectural practices from 1980 until the mid-1990s. Its legacy is one that cannot be traced solely through their architectural endeavours but must be experienced through their methods and altered practice. By providing architectural input to communities traditionally marginalised from design practices, Matrix sought to reorder presupposed design principles through community-oriented practices. I have discussed the ways in which the exhibition of the archive of their work has embodied this ethos through its non-hierarchical representation of material as well as through the materiality of the exhibition’s built environment. By examining materials as having histories rather than attributes, as indicated by Ingold, I explored the exhibition as an ethnographic site whose materiality was constitutive of the social structures and processes that it sought to represent. I went on to consider Bennett’s exploration of the importance of acknowledging organising principles through his examination of Latour’s centres of calculation. Edit’s use of the non-hierarchical organisation of material elucidates the effect exhibition principles have on the building of narrative in exhibition spaces. Following on from this, the same principle is captured through the material manifestation of the organising principle in the exhibition. Just as Helliwell investigates how visual models of the Dayak Longhouse failed to account for the sensorial experience and by extension the social structures of the community, the use of a diverse range of media is employed to capture the social structure of Matrix. In this way the limitations of visualism can be extended to the exhibition of archival work, as demonstrated in ‘How We Live Now’. The pursuit of alternative ways to provide architecture for marginalised communities, specifically working class women, is the cornerstone of Matrix’s identity. In turn, this community orientated practice is made manifest through the organising principles and material considerations of ‘How We Live Now’.

References

Barbican, 2021, “How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative.” Barbican Centre, https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/how-we-live-now

Bennett, Tony. 2017. Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums, and Liberal Government. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Dwyer, Julia, and Anna Thorne. 2007. “Evaluating Matrix: Notes From Inside the Collective.” In Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, 39-56. London: Routledge.

Edit Collective. 2021,  “How We Live Now | EDIT.” EDIT Collective. https://www.editcollective.uk/how-we-live-now.

Francis, Susan. 1981. “Women's Design Collective.” Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Arts & Politics 3, no. 11 (January): 17. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28038310.

Helliwell, Christine. 1996. “Space and Sociality in a Dayak Longhouse.” In Things as They Are: new directions in phenomenological anthropology, edited by Michael Jackson, 128 - 148. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative. 2021. Matrix and Beyond. London: Barbican Centre. Exhibition Text.

Hughes, Philip. 2010. Exhibition Design. London: Laurence King Publishing.

Ingold, Tim. 2012. “Towards an Ecology of Materials.” The Annual Review of Anthropology 41, (July): 427-442. 10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145920.

Martínez, Francisco. 2021. Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects: Exhibitions as a research method. London: UCL Press.

Matrix. 1984. Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment. London: Pluto Press.

MatrixOpen. n.d. “Home.” MatrixOpen: Feminist Architecture Archive. http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk/