Designing Textiles with the Beech Tree: Research Presentation + Book Talk 'Art-Based (Un)Learning'

• Interactive presentation by Art-Based (Un)Learning contributor Anna Wetzel about her research into nature-based textiles
• Our first launch of Art-Based (Un)Learning, taking place during Dutch Design Week

What: Research presentation + book launch
When: Friday 23 October, 9.30–11.00 (doors open 9.00)
With: Anna Wetzel, Pauline van Dongen, Daniëlle Bruggeman and Fabiola Camuti
Where: New Order of Fashion, Torenallee 22-06, Eindhoven
Entrance: Free with DDW wristband, or by registration: emily@valiz.nl
Language: English

What does it mean to design with nature? In this interactive presentation, textile researchers Anna Wetzel and Pauline van Dongen reflect on their work about designing textiles with nature. For their project ‘Designing Shape Changing Textiles’ they investigate designing textiles by learning from the ecosystem of trees, specifically the beech tree, working with the veneer that comes from it. They reflect on the agency of natural matter and on the relationship between human beings and the specific ecosystem of the beech tree. What does it entail to design in close collaboration with more-than-human entities and with living matter? And how does this affect the role of the designer and the material object itself?

By activating samples from their research, Anna and Pauline invite you to explore more-than-human practices of designing textiles, and to reflect on how this potentially helps to unlearn our anthropocentric relationship with nature and its living matter.

The research project is included in the new publication Art-Based (Un)Learning: Unexpected Dialogues with Artworks (Valiz, 2026), which examines how art and its objects can become teaching objects that open new avenues for (un)learning. Written by Anna Wetzel together with cultural theorist Daniëlle Bruggeman, their contribution to the book is one of many case studies on art and (un)learning included in the book. Following the presentation, Daniëlle Bruggeman and Fabiola Camuti, one of the book’s editors, will reflect on this research project in relation to Art-Based (Un)Learning.

About the speakers:

Anna J. Wetzel is a textile researcher, maker, and designer driven by curiosity and collaboration. As a graduate of ArtEZ University of the Arts (2020), she explores relationships between humans, nature, and technology through material innovation. Her practice focuses on regenerative (flax-linen) ecosystems for textiles. Alongside her studio work, Wetzel worked as researcher at ArtEZ (2022–2023) and as researcher, designer and R&D manager at Studio Pauline van Dongen (2021–present). Recent exhibitions include Wax meets Flax at Fashion Tech Farm during Dutch Design Week (2025). She lives and works in Nijmegen.

Pauline van Dongen is a designer and researcher. She explores human-garment relationships and alternative fashion (design) practices through the development of smart textiles and clothing. By integrating interactive materials such as solar cells, light, sensors and haptic actuators, these garments enhance the sensory and emotional experience of clothing and reveal the nurturing potential of textiles. In 2019 Pauline received her doctoral degree at Eindhoven University of Technology. Her studio is currently developing Heliotextile, an innovative solar textile that weaves organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules into a technical textile meant for architectural applications. She lives and works in Arnhem.

Daniëlle Bruggeman is cultural theorist and Professor of Fashion at ArtEZ University of the Arts where she also teaches at the MA Critical Fashion Practices. In 2024, she was appointed Professor by special appointment of Fashion and Sustainability at Radboud University. Bruggeman holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and has published on topics like fashion as a new materialist aesthetics, on the issues of human and material agency, and on more-than-human art and design approaches. Recent publications include Practising Solidarity: Critical Fashion and Agency that Matters (2025). She lives in Voorburg and works in Arnhem and Nijmegen.

Fabiola Camuti is Professor of Critical Creative Pedagogies at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. She conducts research, leads projects, and gives seminars on topics including artistic research, socially-just pedagogies and pedagogies of care, participatory arts, and neuroinclusive arts education. She is the Research in Education Program Leader for the KUO sector (Association of Universities of Applied Sciences) and chair of the HKU Research Ethics Committee. She lives and works in the Netherlands.