Intra-actions speak to movements and becomings that occur in relational encounters between varied matter as its join together in a given context (Barad, 2007). For this work, the contexts for intra-actions were a series of participatory public art interventions (Dawkins & Loftus, 2015; Pinder, 2008; Richardson, 2010) inviting participants to engage with found trash items through imagining and crafting their stories. The three installations were distinct but related, situated in public spaces and corridors as means of disrupting daily moments while encouraging moments of pause to be with material objects in playful and creative ways (de Certeau, 1984; Debord, 1956). In these spaces, the interventionist installations created openings for entering into new relationships with other-than human matter.As the installations unfolded, the different materials, human and beyond, left marks and traces of their collaborative experiences. I explored these traces through overlaps between qualitative methods and visual art practices, employing making as a means to converse with non-human matter and analyze research material through different modalities. In their marks, they also offered openings for new imaginative journeys, new ways of engaging with these materials, and new ways of being with other mattered bodies. From these movements, I conceptualized the collection of installations as openings for pedagogical encounters (OSullivan, 2006; Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, & Kocher, 2017). Utilizing contemporary participatory art practices that seek to facilitate moving experiences (ODonoghue, 2015), these installations initiated moments of care and attentiveness between human matter and object-matter that had been discarded. Through these encounters, relationships formed; stories were created; and discarded objects were brought into new configurations with human participants through creative acts aimed at challenging social and economic systems built on humancentric and oppressive hierarchies of value. In their place, the movements of these installations invited interconnected ways of being, honoring the value and influence of matter across bodied forms. Through this work, I further found implications for participatory practices such as these to engage broad and varied audiences with contemporary arts practice while exploring compassionate and just ways of being with lifes varied matter.