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In the Eye of the Tornado: Encounters with Clay—A Relational
Materialist Orientation Toward Cultivating Curriculum
Erin Malki, Roselyn Gutierrez, and Colleen Skuggedal
Erin Malki, BA ECCE, MA RCC, has worked as an early childhood educator since 2004. Currently, she teaches as a sessional instructor,
supporting and guiding new early childhood educators. Erin is also a registered clinical counsellor. Her emphasis and motivation
in both elds stem from the signicance of relationships and relational healing and how deeply those link to our existence. Email:
erinmalki@gmail.com
Roselyn Gutierrez is an early childhood educator at a nonprot neighbourhood house organization in Vancouver, British Columbia. She
received her BA in ECCE in 2019 from Capilano University. Roselyn is passionate about giving voice to young children and educators.
Colleen Skuggedal is an early childhood educator in the process of completing her bachelor’s degree in early childhood care and
education at Capilano University. She resides in Vancouver on the traditional lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh
peoples in so-called Canada.
is inquiry took place in an advanced curriculum
course led by Dr. Sylvia Kind at Capilano University.
Roselyn, Colleen, and Erin, third- and fourth-year
students in the early childhood care and education
degree program at Capilano, were put together
into a group. As a group, we were all very curious
about clay despite having minimal exposure and
experience with the material. e assignment was
to investigate being-with clay. To help ground our
thinking, we carried with us a desire to imagine
what it means to cultivate curriculum through a
relational materialist lens (Lenz Taguchi, 2011)—
that is, to imbue an ethics of immanence and
potentiality toward our relations with clay.
What unfolded was a series of entanglements
illustrating the material in learning (Lenz Taguchi,
2011), which demonstrate the emergence of
assemblages and multiplicities that bloom in the
in-between intra-actions of maker, material, and
more-than-human. We became-with clay (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). Our orientation upon our meeting with clay
was grounded in a resistance to humancentric or anthropocentric relations; we “consider[ed] entanglement as
a fundamental state … understand[ing] that separateness is not the original state of being” (Brown et al., 2020,
p. 1). We asked, What becomes lost or taken for granted in an acute and chronic obsession with humancentricity?
Furthermore, we questioned the extreme perpetuation of the autonomous individual child, which Taylor, Pacini-
Ketchabaw, and Blaise (2012) explain as being just an illusion. rough our inquiry with clay, we attempted to
bridge the gap between the human and more-than-human, inculcating a natural troubling of humancentrism into
an evocation of the truth regarding our cosmologies and the interdependent, intrinsic nature of humans and all
other forms of life on earth and beyond. We, settler-colonialist student-educators on Musqueam, Squamish, and
Tsleil-Waututh territories, humbly acknowledge longstanding Indigenous worldviews that have always spoken of
is paper follows three student-educators’ journey with
clay. Embedded in the contextual space of the studio, the
paper considers the complexities and processes involved
in cultivating curriculum and thinking with the idea of
art as a language. Inspired by the relational materialist
approach, Erin, Roselyn, and Colleen enter into a
dialogue with clay—embodying one another, entangling
with each other, intra-actively doing unto one another,
and rearming that knowing things is embedded deeply
in relational connectivity with the world around us—
onto-epistemology. e authors journey together with
clay through spinning, twirling, tornadoes, storms,
music, chaos, and destruction.
Key words: artistic processes; relational materialist
approach; onto-epistemology; curriculum; assemblages
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a relationship framework: one of interconnectedness (Poitras Pratt & Gladue, 2022).
For the three of us, the importance of thinking alongside Indigenous worldviews stems from our ethical belief that
our responsibilities and accountabilities as settler-colonialist student-educators on unceded territories calls for an
ethics of immanence and potentiality. Lenz Taguchi (2011, citing Deleuze, 1994) writes, “An ethics of immanence
and potentiality is concerned with the interconnections and intra-actions in between human and non-human
organisms, matter and things, in processes of constant movement and transformation, where all of us continuously
become dierent in ourselves” (p. 47, emphasis in original). Indigenous thinkers have told us and still tell us about
the unending presence of relationships—of being in relation and of being interconnectedly fused with everything
and all things always—and the impact those entanglements holistically have on one another (Todd, 2016). Our
orientation with clay was toward a recovering of Indigenous worldviews that Indigenous thinkers have embodied
and shared for millennia (Todd, 2016). Taylor et al. (2012) write that they “hold out additional hope that by paying
these relations more attention, we can do our bit to defuse the human-centric conceits of rampant individualism”
(p. 1). As individuals born and raised in this settler-colonial society, we noticed even more palpably how our
individualistic conditioning wired us dierently from the fundamental worldviews of Indigenous peoples and
their sacred culture. It was not natural for us to think with clay in an interconnected way. is inquiry was an
opportunity for us to put into practice this newly shied perspective; however, it took time. Paying closer attention
to things considered as “the other” was a place of new beginnings for all three of us.
Relational materialism
A relational materialist theoretical approach to curriculum emancipates learning from the dominant hierarchies of
binary thinking, in particular the privileging of humancentric ways of knowing over other matter. is approach
invited us to “read the world around us from our embodiment and being a part of the world, and being in an
equal state among other organisms and matter” in our encounter (Lenz Taguchi, 2011, p. 40, citing Barad, 2007).
In our multiple encounters with clay in the assemblages curated in the studio space, not only did we become-with
clay as we considered its and our own multiplicity, but we also began to understand how matter—clay, music,
pottery wheel, images, ideas, bodies—becomes performative agents with their own agency as they interconnect—
aecting and becoming aected by the ows and intensities present in the studio space. Becoming aected by
the intersections of other materialities and agencies in the in-betweens of events in the studio space opens up an
“ethical and participatory space” for learning and becoming (Lenz Taguchi, 2011, p. 47). Our encounters allowed
not only clay but also music, video, and pottery wheel to become active agents in our becoming-with clay; with
each new encounter we became “anew” (Lenz Taguchi, 2011, p. 47). Becoming anew with each singular encounter
became an evident conrmation of the relational materialist approach to learning and becoming—our knowing-
being changed with each encounter.
Together the three of us carried ideas around materiality, about the liveliness of materials, and of honouring the
complexities and the processual, continuous unfoldings experienced as being meaning ful, transformative, inventive,
expressive, interpretive, and communicative, not only with the artist, but also with the artist’s surroundings. We
approached the shaping of ideas as not just coming from the maker or the environment, but also from the materials
(Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017). e materials do something to the maker just as the maker does something to the
materials, and it is through this relationship that intra-activity occurs (Barad, 2007). inking about art processes
and artistic inquiries as multifarious, rich languages that do not always have a desired place from which to begin,
or a desired place for ending, honours the gap of the in-between; where new knowledge and new ways of being
emerge. is orientation toward materials as a language of art captivated our inquiry with clay and our reimaginings
of what it meant to “do art.” Taking from Barad’s work, Brown et al. (2020) arm the suggestion that “knowledge
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is not outside of us waiting to be found, discovered or created by one person in isolation, but is something that is
generated in relationship with each other and the environment (p. 2). For us, our intentions were aimed toward
disrupting any relational hierarchies in order to truly practice being with the clay, being with the studio, and being
with each other and others.
Contemplating how we, as educators, engage in artistic processes with young children and materials, we draw
on / think with Sylvia Kind's (2010) conceptualization around art, leading us to comprehend that “creating” art
is complex. It is neither an individual, inner process nor a form of self-expression rendered from an artist’s idea,
formulated in the artist’s mind and then simply brought to life by way of representation. Art is more complicated
than that. Art is not straightforward. Art represents an alchemy of layered evolutions and nonlinear processes that
ebb and ow, always living, with imperceptible beginnings and endings (Kind et al., 2019). Materials themselves
are not linear or static—each has their own agency, rhythm, movement, and ways of being—a taken-for-granted
notion when conceptualized in this way (Kind, 2010). erefore, we approached this inquiry in spaces of dierence
with hopes of experiencing multiple encounters which we thought (or conceptualized) as wholly relational,
unpredictable, not yet known, undiscovered, and disruptive, coming together moment within moment, with all
entities, forces, and spaces, human and more than human (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017). We began our encounter
with only clay, but as you will see, each encounter provided spaces for diraction and produced an abundance of
multiplicities, such as pottery wheel spinning and twirling with tornado and ballerina.
is careful attention toward being-with is a concept we embraced from Karen Barad’s work. Barad (2007) discusses
the concept of ontology—the state of being—and the concept of epistemology—the state of knowing—and she
argues “that it is impossible to isolate knowing from being, since they are mutually implicated” (p. 185). at is
to say that knowing or coming to know clay in detail is deeply rooted within and between the multiple levels of
relational intra-action and interconnection. Relationality is the cornerstone. ese constant entanglements with
others, the world, and more-than-human entities is what allows us to ourish—in connection. Barad explains that
through an onto-epistemology, “we as beings are becoming with the world and … the becoming of the world is a
deeply ethical matter (p. 185).
In the photographic narratives below, moments of poetry and generative questions emerged and were interspersed
in our moments of inspiration as we entangled and became-with clay. Constructing curriculum through a relational
materialist approach is not easy. roughout the inquiry, our encounters with clay oen generated multiple
questions, and we were oen le unsure as to how and what to respond to. Oentimes we felt overwhelmed by the
questions and we noticed a sense of urgency to respond to something, anything. Moreover, we became cognizant
of our conditioning toward traditional forms of curriculum.
Our past exposures to subject-centered or learner-centered formats inculcated an expectation of linearity, of
expecting what comes next. Dominant understandings of curriculum development oen occur in a linear fashion
driven by concepts predetermined by experts as subjects/topics that children at dierent stages should engage
with. For example, one-week children might learn about cocoons and then the following week they will learn
about butteries. is linear approach takes for granted and makes invisible the relational multiplicities produced
within spaces of dierence that naturally collide with each other when minds and materials come together. e
collisions that occur from these spaces of dierence are invariably aected and eected by specic conditions,
such as the social location and cultural identities—gender, gender identity, ethnicity, Indigeneity, ability, social
class, age, race, and spirituality—of the educators, the children, the space, the land, and the materials. We, along
with more-than-human entities, each carry our own stories, beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes. e three of us tried
to listen to the music of these multiplicities, the relational reciprocities, rather than see through the stripped bare
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nature of fragmentation.
Our encounters with clay challenged us ethically and morally toward a better understanding that everything and
all things are interconnected in every moment. It was challenging for us to orient ourselves toward seeing the
relationality in all the more-than-human and human entities present, yet we were called to ethically and response-
ably pay attention to and respond to these calls. We attempted to push ourselves away from thinking in fragmented
ways or from only seeing the value in the concepts or the learner. Reecting on our encounters became crucial
in our practice as it prompted us to slow down, pause, and dwell with the interconnected essences of the inquiry.
Lingering with the discomfort and coming to realize that one is changed as one encounters something new, we
now encourage you, as you read through the following narratives, to immerse yourselves in the questions as if you
yourselves were the ones entangling and intra-acting with clay.
Encounters with clay inquiry
Mold, improvise, reshape, encounter, comfort, relax, embody, stuck, tension, dry, covered, squish,
pinch, elemental, seeping, creeping, assemblage, exible, malleable, spin, dance, affect, effect, static,
movement, perform, wrap, enwrap, listen, feel, hear, touch, move, immerse, emerge, dance.
Being-with clay
Clay is oen characterized as a static material demanding a certain situatedness that does not require much
movement. Yet, in our exploration and experimentation with clay as it entangled and intra-acted with the many
assemblages that emerged, a new and dierent way of knowing and being-with clay transpired. Artistic languages
are nuanced in their expression, in their provocations, in their colours, in their textures, in their exibility, in their
relationship to their surroundings, in their couplings and even in their triplings with other elements. Inspired
by a relational materialist approach, we conceptualized clay in relation with all the other entities present in the
studio—human and/or more-than-human—continually colliding and entangling. As we worked closely with clay
in the carefully curated studio, being cognizant of the ideas and concepts embedded in relational materialism, we
attuned to and entered into spaces of “multiple lines of intersecting and intra-acting movements, not just a singular
or individual process from idea to form, but an entanglement of things ‘in the making’” (Kind & Argent, 2019,
p. 3). We, along with the materials, entered into a dialogue, embodying one another, entangling with each other,
intra-actively doing unto one another, rearming that
we do not just come to know things but that knowing
things is embedded deeply in relational connectivity
with the world around us: onto-epistemology (Geerts
et al., 2019; Lenz Taguchi, 2011). rough our
entanglements, we came to understand the inuence
of the assemblage and how at-risk our encounters
with clay were of being uprooted and disrupted. at
is to say, it was precisely in the collision and the risk
of disruption with clay that something new would
emerge (Barad, 2007; Kind, 2010, 2017; Lenz Taguchi,
2011).
Figure 1. Clay entanglements.
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e liveliness of clay
Figure 2. Being-with clay.
Many of our curiosities centered around the rhythms, intensities, and characteristics of clay as our hands joined
with clay in the studio assemblages. We assumed clay did not require much movement, that it was sedentary
and demanded a certain situatedness. Our presumptions of clay as a passive recipient of our ideas and notions
regarding what clay could be or could do placed us in a hierarchy of “higher knowing” and positioned us as
observers rather than in equanimity of being-with clay. Upon noticing this imbalance, attuned, we shied out of
an observer placement and into embodying a relational materialist approach. rough our embodied relationship
with clay, we began to attune our bodies and minds toward clay’s being, and we learned more about clay’s needs. If
kept hydrated, clay would feel so and would generously repay us with ease of movement and a sense of relaxation.
If its need for water were ignored, however, clay would start to harden, crumble, and separate with every movement
of our hands. We learned how clay seeks to entangle with us, and as studious interlocutors we became more
attuned to clay. Our encounter with clay elucidated the intra-activeness in-between our agency and clay’s agency.
We noticed that the lines blurred from the place where our entities began and the place where clay’s entity ended.
We were not separate but rather infused into a reliant and relational, reciprocal entanglement with one another.
An encounter with something new
Figure 3. The poery wheel.
We found ourselves standing in front of a pottery wheel that was hidden in the back of the studio. We stood there
in collision with the pottery wheel and began to embrace the interconnectedness of how our feelings and senses
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contiguously induced our cognitions—bodyminds (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). What is this thing the pottery wheel? How
does clay connect and live with the pottery wheel? How do we become relational with the pottery wheel and the clay?
How will the pottery wheel and clay become relational with us? e pottery wheel’s call to us was powerful; we could
not resist it. As we came together with the pottery wheel and engaged with its force, we listened with relational
materialist perspectives to guide us. We became open to nding the voice and the visibility of the material; we
embraced the possibilities and moments of a diracted onto-epistemology emerging (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). We
knew this collision of elements would produce something new.
Figure 4. Poetry in moon.
e studio aorded us the privilege of being able to explore the pottery wheel. Echo upon echo, circles, spinning,
roundness of the clay, rounding formations made with hands, simple closed curve, layer upon layer of this over and
over, circle speaking to circle, mushed wet hands, the agency of the slightest touch or movement. In relation with
the pottery wheel, more questions seeped through our bodyminds: How did these movements aect us? How did
movements aect the clay? How does clay respond to spinning movements mixed with hands and speed? How are we in
relation with the clay? How do relations help us to understand, make meanings, and create new understandings? We
think with Lenz Taguchi (2011) when she writes, “this approach reads reality in ways that, so to speak, atten out
the hierarchies between humans and matter: We read the world around us from our embodiness (sic) and being
part of the world, and being in an equal state among other organisms and matter” (p. 40). Here, we—Roselyn,
Colleen, and Erin—found ourselves enmeshed with the clay, the pottery wheel, the water, the movement and with
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each other, equally positioned, and part of the world.
inking-being
Figure 5. Entangling with clay.
We sat down to articulate formulations of the way the experiential encounters with clay, thus far, had aected
us. Contagions enable the communication of ideas from one being to another, thereby calling to attention the
signicance of being in relation and of sempiternal interconnectedness. is, a resistance toward the notion of
separateness. We asked: How do we relate to make sense of our surroundings? How do our surroundings relate to the
forces and rhythms around us, in a movement that then infects other intersections and intra-actions? e three of us,
the studio, the pottery wheel, and the clay penetrated and inuenced our bodies, our thoughts, our beings, and our
curiosities, producing multiplicities (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). Despite the individuality of our bodyminds, the three
of us generated a common theme around the feeling of being in movement with clay (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). Each
of us described a feeling of being taken over through motion with clay. Twirling, spinning, circulating, pirouetting.
In a free association manner, each of us began to share whatever came to mind about our past encounters with
clay. is coming together to create was generative in multifarious ways (Geerts et al., 2019, p. 2). We used images
to help us visually see all the ways in which the clay exploration had pollinated our bodies and cognitions until
the empty page then became lled with new becomings (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). Our encounter with clay invited
many multiplicities—images of spinning ballerinas, tornadoes, spin tops, wind, clouds, storms, blowing leaves,
and music—these inspired our desire to be in relation with clay again.
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“Rather than merely holding representations of
ideas and theories as if ideas are articulated and
then applied to a material, materials provoke
dierent ways of thinking as the child, artist or
maker engages and works with them.”
(Kind et al., 2019 para. 8)
Figure 6. Provoking dierent ways of thinking.
Assemblages & entanglements in motion
“e forms of things—of all sorts—are generated in
elds of force and circulation of materials that cut
across any boundaries we might draw between practi-
tioners, materials and the wider environment.”
(Ingold, 2013, p. 29)
Figure 7. Assemblages.
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We returned to the studio, and with a video focusing on the slow, delicate twirling
of a ballerina’s feet projected across the blacked-out shades of the studio space
(WilliamJosephTV, 2016) and a screen near the front of the room playing a video
of a swily rotating tornado (dahsyatnya angin tornado, 2014), we found ourselves
immersed in an assemblage. e juxtaposition of an elegant ballerina against a
destructive tornado resonated and echoed the potter’s wheel—gentle yet chaotic to
the touch. e music of Ólafur Arnald’s (2013) “Only the Winds” played over the
speaker to create a haunting yet mesmerizing ambience to accompany the contagious
videos. With the lights o and fabric suspended from the ceiling and strewn across
the oor, the studio space transformed.
Figure 9. New possibilies waing to emerge.
A fragile yet violent interweaving encircled the space-bodies-minds and led to
a mindful sensitivity to the assemblages that presented themselves in the studio
space.
We then were curious how our bodies would factor in and play along with the
materials present in the studio space. How would music, video, clay, and hands
move together, dance together, create together? What new possibilities were waiting
to emerge? What new ways of knowing and being with clay were waiting to be
discovered in this assemblage?
In this interplay of moving forces, Erin’s movements with the clay and the wheel
resonate and echo the rhythms of the music and images, each in dialogue with
one another. e morphing of the clay from one thing to another is in response
to what is at play in the assemblage. Each part of the assemblage contaminates
other parts. From the rapid movement of the tornado corresponding with the
speed of the wheel, to Erin’s interaction with clay, something new is emerging and
becoming. In tune with the music, Erin’s hands curve along the contours of the
Figure 8. The juxtaposion of
an elegant ballerina against the
destrucve tornado.
Figure 10. Erin’s hands curve along
the counters of the clay.
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clay in a slow, rhythmic motion. Her hands meld with clay, enfolding the grooves and remnants of past encounters.
e rapid repeating whirls of the tornado projected on the screen attract Erin’s attention. Her eyes xate on the
screen while her hands begin to follow the movements of the tornado. She squeezes the clay between her ngertips
and the inner index of her hands as she ascends and descends the length of the clay. Ripples form on the outward
rim of the clay. Slowly a funnel shape emerges from intersecting movements. e alternating vibrato of the music
amplies the movement of the tornado, changing the ow and force between Erin and the clay. Movement upon
movement the ripples become multiple, and the hole becomes wider. e room appears to sway in motion with
the ows of this rapid becoming.
What do tornados inspire? What did the ballet dancer inspire? ese parts of the assemblage became contagions
mixed in with the movements of the pottery wheel and the clay—hands shaping, music playing. Echoing the
movements and shapes of the tornado and the spinning dancer, motion emerged. ough le still, one could
almost feel as if the clay was still spinning, in motion, as if the movement never stopped. Gazing at them elicited a
still, yet alive, feeling. As if one could still hear the music, the blazing force of the tornado, or the graceful precision
spinning movements of the ballerina.
Erin was not copying the tornado. ere was no preplanned idea. is was not the representation of something. is
was something dierent—the pottery wheel in this case was not used with the intent to make something. Rather it
was a reinvention, a reknowing. What if we were to rethink the way we work with clay at a pottery wheel? How would
creativity take shape? How do music and images aect and eect our interaction with others and materials? What role
can music and images play, if they are not seen only as a way for us to reproduce something?
Studio
Figure 11. Interconnectedness.
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"We are nothing unless we connect to something else.”
(Lenz Taguchi, 2011, p. 40)
e studio became an integral part of our being with clay. We thought of the studio as an emergent workshop, a
place of possible ideas, a laboratory, a milieu of experimentation, a place of creating, a place in action (Kind, 2010).
e studio does things to us as we similarly do unto it, eortlessly and without predetermined aims. We thought
of the studio as a gurative and literal transient time machine that moves back and forth.
e studio is never nished, never stopped, and never rmly in one place. e concept of things—animate and
inanimate—sees them always in motion and always changing. What resembled a tornado took over our senses as
we walked into the studio that day to continue with our clay inquiry. ough likely not purposefully positioned,
a round circle shape stood out to us. Blocks were everywhere, some perfectly placed and standing and others
randomly dispersed and scattered as if they had once been standing perfectly. ough it was still, again we felt
movement while observing the room and walking around within the chaos. Liveliness was present. is observed
assemblage brought back to our minds thoughts of tornados and spinning. e added element of destruction also
came to our thoughts. We felt strongly encompassed by tornado in a bodily way.
“e experience of the studio became a moving,
sonorous, gestural, textural, material, improvisational
‘dance of attention’; a dance of attention that is con-
cerned with the immediacy of mutual action.”
(Kind, 2019, p. 9)
Figure 12. Studio.
We purposefully placed the pottery wheel in the centre of the powerful tornado’s eye, surrounding it with the
tornado’s movement, chaos, and destruction. ough still, being in the middle, one felt motion, a liveliness—
motion coupled with the pottery wheel’s spinning dance.
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“We can never reect upon some-
thing on our own: to reect means
to interconnect with something.
us, thinking and learning is
always an encounter; something
that ‘hits us’ as we engage with the
w o r l d .”
(Lenz Taguchi, 2011,
p. 46)
Figure 13. In the eye of the tornado.
e projection of a destructive tornado and the accompanying sounds, immersed in the middle of the destruction
of blocks, we found ourselves wrapped up once again in an assemblage, creating an unsettling palpable feeling.
Colleen became part of an assemblage that was continually unfolding. Each component in this composition played
a part, from a slight change in musical tempo to the tap-tap of the potter’s pedal. e intermingling and intersecting
of these elements were part of a constant ow of complementing and opposing forces—wave-like, an in-and-
out dance among the dierent bodies, materials, and more-than-human entities. Colleen was just one of many
movements caught up in the storm. What unfolded was also a swi dismantling of the delusional anthropocentric
narrative. e metaphor of the tornado did not pass over any of us, for in the centre of this tornado, no humans
were to be found. Rather, it was a compilation of multiple forces complementing
and opposing, coming together, creating the funnel in a storm. We were not here
alone. We were not the only bearers of agency.
e palms of Colleen’s hands clasp tightly around the base of the clay as her eyes
are pinned to the tornado. Colleen presses down on the pedal. e wheel picks
up speed, matching that of the tornado. e rapid movement causes the clay to
slip from her hands. e force of the movement leads her to tighten her grip. Her
ngers loosen as the clay repels the pressure of her hold. She propels forward to
regain her control, but the clay pushes back. e slow, soothing rhythm of the piano
in William Joseph’s (2016) version of “Nothing Else Matters” emerges overhead. Its
notes wrap themselves around Colleen’s hands, causing her to release the pedal.
Slowly the wheel unwinds and together clay and Colleen enter a gestural dance. e
tempo of the music shis, interrupting the dance mid-tune, causing a ri between
Colleen and the wheel. e increase in speed intensies the friction and again the
clay pushes back against her hands.
Figure 14. Colleen became part of
an assemblage.
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Consumed by the spiralling assemblages that emerged from our exploration
and experimentation with clay, we were le with many more curiosities,
wonderings, doubts, and speculations.
What was our intention? Was it movement? Should this project have been
focused around clay because this class was about materials? Or should it
have focused around the movements emerging from the assemblage? How
can we get to know the clay through our bodies? What would it do to play
a video of a potter’s wheel and engage with fabric? What would it feel like
to be wrapped up in fabric? How would movements change, evolve? What
would happen if we put fabric and clay together? How would fabric factor
in with the assemblage? Spinning—this proponent seems to be singularly
vital for both clay and tornado. What makes the eye of a tornado so special?
How does clay respond to more movement and more water on the pottery
wheel? What about this idea of the middle? A force? More power? How fast
does a tornado spin? How fast does the pottery wheel spin? What are other
ways we could enact this spinning motion? Are there other ways we could
use the pottery wheel to create something else with the spinning motion?
Interlude
In this space, time takes on labyrinths of spirals. Spirals entwined with bodies and stories of the past and present.
Moments in this space were products of time, bodies, ideas, tensions, and rhythms moving along intersecting and
intra-acting lines. e spiralling videos of tornadoes and ballerinas in synchrony with the reverberating sounds of
the music became embodied in relation with clay on the potter’s wheel.
Just as the funnel of a tornado subsumes anything and everything around it, the assemblages present in the studio
in that particular time subsumed our bodies, materials, ideas, and forces, leaving in their path dierent ways of
knowing and being-with clay. e materials do something to the maker as they relate to the other assemblages in
the room, just as the maker does something to the materials as she relates to the other forces and entities present
at the time—creating an interaction, an intra-activity. It is an event which is uidly in dialogue and in a relational
exchange. e space in-between body and material becomes blurred and intermingles, producing a new way
of knowing and being with one another. rough this dance of exploration on the current of time, this union
of maker and materials induces a natural seeping out of the in-between space of something new, of something
becoming (Kind et al., 2019).
e series of entanglements that unfolded in the choreographies of assemblages in the studio opened an ethical
and participatory space as we encountered clay–bodies–pottery-wheel–music–ballerina–tornado. e diractions
that occurred with each encounter created new multiplicities, new meanings, new becomings; with each collision
we became anew. Orienting ourselves with a relational materialist approach invited us to atten the hierarchies
of the dominant humancentric and anthropocentric logics of being with materials. Rather than outside observers
and/or bystanders of materials, we became one with materials—joining in the push and pull of a slow-moving
dance. Resisting the need for control and allowing for the intra-action of multiple agencies fostered not only new
wonderings and new possibilities, but also new becomings. For curriculum to ourish, to blossom, to become
anew, we need to embrace a renewed conceptualization of materials as artistic languages that are interconnected
and interwoven with everything and everyone—nothing exists without the other.
Figure 15. In the centre of the tornado's eye.
SEPTEMBER 2022 81 Vol. 47 No. 2
JOURNAL OF CHILDHOOD STUDIES IDEAS FROM PRACTICE
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