Description
This issue aims to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of ‘microperformativity’. The concept denotes a current trend in theories of performativity and performative artistic practices to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic. Investigations into microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the technosciences actually consider a ‘body’ today, in times when performance art shifts towards generalized and pervasive performativity in art. Microperformative positions enquire how artistic methods can engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular level to merge bio- and digital media, including for global capitalization. How can performative art and discourses inform these processes to think biopolitics and necropolitics in relation to the dystopia of economy and the utopia of ecology alike? This issue contains contributions on biotechnological performances, physiological processes and micro-gestures, traditional rituals and techniques of craft, on microperformativity seen through the lens of the natural sciences, as well as in economics in times of algorithmic finance and high frequency trading.
Contents:
Editorial : On Microperformativity
Jens Hauser, Lucie Strecker
Epistemes of Performativity
Chris Salter
Microperformativity and Biomediality
Jens Hauser
Living Ashes : Associated milieus and distributed agencies
Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Luis Hernan, Pei-Ying Lin
Labor : The post-anthropocentric body ‘at work’
Paul Vanouse
Microorganisms on Stage : Winogradsky columns as performative displays in art and science
Mariana Pérez Bobadilla, Rodrigo Guzmán Serrano
My Name is Sculpture : For we are many
Thomas Feuerstein
Non-terrestrial Material Agency
Juan M. Castro, Akihiro Kubota
Microbial Keywording : Towards material speech acts
Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker
One Suppository : A para-medical insertion [artist’s pages]
K T Zakravsky/Zak Ray
‘Agency is Everywhere’ : An encounter with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Jens Hauser, Lucie Strecker
Culturing cut : Cyanobacteria against scientific objectivity [artist’s pages]
Hideo Iwasaki
Exploring the Aesthetic Potential of AMB’s MOC and AAM [artists’ pages]
Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Lioudmila Voropai
Anatomical Minutiae and Cannular Self-experimentation
Ana María Gómez López
STILLLEBEN with Symbionts
Irini Athanassakis, David Berry
Transgenesis as Art, Art as Infection : The case of Adam Zaretsky
Polona Tratnik
Microbiospherians : Leveraging microbes in biosphere 2
Karmen Franinović, Roman Kirschner
Neuronal Acts
Chris Salter
Contingent Claims : The performativity of finance, or how the future materializes in technocapitalism
Gerald Nestler
(Micro-)Performing Ancient Weaving in the PENELOPE project
Giovanni Fanfani, David Griffiths, Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Alex McLean
Audiencing Slowness : Tiny ontologies and the post-human turn
Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley, Lee Miller
Emersive Microperformativity : On physiological mediation in Yann Marussich’s ‘immobile’ performances
Bernard Andrieu, Anaïs Bernard, Giorgio Cipoletta, Yann Marussich, Yann Marussich, Petrucia da Nobrega
Genes, Memes and Dots
Nigel Helyer
Embodiment of Pakshi Kolam : Performing the molecular human
M R Vishnuprasad
Art and the Microbiome : New places for microperformativity in the work of Art Orienté Objet
Marion Laval-Jeantet
Speaking with Viruses
Tagny Duff
