A (sym)poetics of Biomineralisation

In November 2024, I delivered a course based on a project I have been working with with Dr Ruth Alison Clemens called A (Sym)Poetics of Biomineralisation during #CoCreates week at #HGK FHNW Academy of Art and Design (HGK), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW where students used practice-based research to explore meanings and matter through ceramics, clay, plaster and alginate as a relational, embodied and embedded enactment of creative-biomineral convergences.

Biogeochemical processes of biomineralisation were read alongside practice and in relation to literary and cultural processes of creativity. Students researched various case studies such as mother of pearl, Mother Shipton’s petrifying well and hydroxyapatite in bone, presented findings, shared knowledge and developed concepts into research artefacts. 🦷🌋🐚🦪🦀🦐🦞🌊🗻

This post has images of student work…
Students created clay, plaster and gelatinous organisms and organs by thinking of the deep past, our present and science-fictional futures. Very proud of the excellent work the students created.

A (Sym)Poetics of Biomineralisation was based on a lecture co-authored and delivered with Dr Ruth Alison Clemens for Professor Rosi Braidotti’s 2021 ‘The Posthuman & New Materialism’ online Summer School at the Utrecht University, Department of Media & Culture Studies, which was published as a chapter in an edited volume in 2025.

10 (Sym)Poetics of Biomineralisation: Molecular Biology/Literature/Posthuman Poetics
by Ruth Alison Clemens and Jennifer Aurelie Crouch
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399512688-014

This course was an attempt to realise and explore the pedagogical potential of ‘A (Sym)Poetics of Biomineralisation’ and see how matters and processes in practice can embody multiple stories across time and space.

Huge thanks (twice!) to Nicolaj van der Meulen for the invite to deliver this course!