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Fluidity is about materials in motion – materials active and activated, mobile and mobilised. It relates to manifold entanglements and mixtures of actual materials rather than to a general flux of matter. Moreover, it involves rhetorical tropes, material imaginations, and theoretical challenges. Fluidity is an intricate phenomenon: often messy, viscous or turbulent, and sometimes disastrous. This volume contributes to a critical cultural rheology examining the material complexities, epistemic functions, political ramifications, and ecological dimensions of fluidity.

The word ‘fluid'describes a phenomenon as well as a material property. Of special interest is how aspects of fluidity influence the active and direct handling of materials and how its special characteristics are expressed in experimental practices and thinking patterns. The motivation for focusing on fluidity as a prerequisite for ‘becoming'and the nature of processes originated from the art-based ‘Liquid Things'research project. As this subject covers a very wide spectrum, the approach was modified to allow the participation of several disciplines; the book draws on the philosophy of science, hydrodynamics, and the cultural sciences, and focuses on the role of fluidity in cognitive and experience processes with the aim of establishing a grammar of ‘movable'materials.