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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses Liminal Seashells, a project which through staging an intervention shows how entanglements could be studied within a studio setting. While shifting the attention to the collective enactment, dynamics between temporarily intertwined fragments can be observed.

Paper long abstract

Liminal Seashells treats the seashell as an epistemic agent, shaped by molluscan life, geological sedimentation, industrial extraction, and cultural reuse. Its material history is dispersed across bodies, carbon cycles, architectural infrastructures, and multispecies dwellings. Following work in multispecies relationality, the shell can be understood as an assemblage whose coherence is always temporary.

The intervention takes place in the studio. Participants are given fragments of a larger theoretical poster and tasked with assembling them into a coherent composition. No piece contains the whole argument; coherence only arises through negotiation of perspectives. The process surfaces interpretive differences while demonstrating how provisional agreement is materially achieved.

Crucially, the studio format mirrors the condition it investigates. The seashell assemblage is itself temporally and materially distributed across agents and environments; the fragmented poster reproduces this distribution in another register. By gathering dispersed elements into an artificially bounded space, the studio allows an in-depth investigation of the relations between individual elements without collapsing them into a single narrative.

The project contribution is practical and methodological. Through biomimetic sensibilities, it offers a concrete example of how negotiation can operate as both method and data. At the same time, it acknowledges the limits of studio practice: artificial environments may foreground certain voices or risk aestheticising complex realities. By reflecting on these tensions, the paper argues for a careful but sustained role for studio-based methods in contemporary anthropology—particularly in an era when ecological entanglements challenge inherited distinctions between observation and intervention.