Microperformativity and Biomediality

Abstract

The neologism microperformativity denotes a concept that cross-fertilizes aesthetics, media and performance theory, as well as science and technology studies, to contextualize the recent attention paid to other-than-human agencies, biological and technical ones alike, which challenge and subvert the mesoscopic tradition within which human phenomenological considerations are, still, rooted. Given the contemporary artistic interest in biotechnology and ecology alike, and the progressive convergence of hard, soft and wetware, microperformativity is intertwined with the notion of biomediality: While art since the 1990s has appropriated a large variety of increasingly available biotechnologies as performative media in order to literally, and materially, stage ‘aliveness’, including at microscopic scales in vivo and in vitro, biomediality denotes the ensemble of all enabling factors that arise as a result of technical manipulation or appropriation of living organisms or organic biological entities, elements and processes.

In times when performance art—which until recently involved mainly human bodies—shifts towards the more general pattern of performativity in art, artists and performers profoundly redefine what actually is considered a body, human or nonhuman, consequently displacing the focus from its mesoscopic actions to its microscopic functions, from physical gestures to physiological processes, and from staged diegetic time to real performative time. Microperformativity, understood as a technical–cultural hybrid phenomenon, questions the human scale (both with regards to space and time)—philosophically, politically and aesthetically—as a crucial point of reference.

Artists who choose microperformative tactics and material instances of biomediality, from microbiome research and synthetic biology to concerns about anthropogenic effects on ecosystems, are indicative of the shift from performance to performativity, from human actions to non-human agency, including its progressive acceptance by audiences, and develop strategies of how the retreat of human performers can be compensated by inventive aesthetic solutions to create encounters with, and experiences for perceivers.

Notes

1 L’Art Biotech at Le lieu unique national art centre in Nantes (14 March to May 2003) was curated by the author and staged work by (in alphabetical order): Art Orienté Objet (Marion Laval-Jeantet; Benoît Mangin), Brandon Ballengée, Chrissy Conant, Joe Davis, Marta de Menezes, George Gessert, Eduardo Kac, Jun Takita, the Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts; Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary), Polona Tratnik, Adam Zaretsky & Julia Reodica.

2 Earlier statements that performative art with biomedia and performance art share central features have, in a first phase, resulted in profound misunderstandings by artists who took it for granted that performativity means that a performance has to happen. In countless examples, theatrical and often unrelated actions, decorative paraphernalia and props were added in order to hyper-compensate for the un-aesthetic qualities of the challenging works in order to involve participants in what in performance circles may be called ‘bad theatre’.

3 From 2004 on, Disembodied Cuisine was further shown only under the title The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine, presenting the remains and relics of the performance on a dining table along with a three-channel video installation that documented the project from the lab and farm through the exhibition to the final dinner.

4 Foetal calf serum (FCS) is derived from foetuses of pregnant cows. The calf’s heart is punctured, and blood withdrawn until the foetus’s heart stops beating. Serum drawn from unborn animals contains more substances important for the growth of cells.

5 Stands for Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium.

6 Futile Labor is a research-based art installation based on research funding from the Australian Research Council, enabling a collaboration between Ionat Zurr, Chris Salter, Oron Catts and Devon Ward. It was shown first at the John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Western Australia, in October 2015.

7 On the notion of ‘mirroring’, see the encounter with science philosopher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in this issue.

8 ‘Atomism’ here does not directly refer to the classical understanding of Democritus’s atomic theory that all things depend on their inseparable units, atoms, but, when ‘organized’, refers to the idea that basic elements (such as proteins, or the cell, which is considered the smallest basic unit in biology) can be loosely coupled but may contain agency in and of itself. At first sight, this seems to resonate with Karen Barad’s general point, based on Niels Bohr’s quantum physical theories, that ‘the primary epistemological unit is not independent objects with inherent boundaries and properties but rather phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting “components”’ (Barad 2003: 815). But Barad’s statement is indeed first and foremost concerned with the agency of non-living matter, while the quantum physics view brought forward here is less relevant for the realm of biological, living systems, to which the notion of ‘organized atomism’ relates.

9 This category corresponds to Eugene Thacker’s definition of biomedia, in the sense of technologized biological processes resulting from ‘what a body can do’, that is, as a ‘particular instance in which the “bio” is transformatively mediated by the “tech”’ (2004: 6). Thacker precisely grounds his definition of biomedia in the reciprocal complementarity of bioinformatics and biocomputing. Bioinformatics relocates the technical processes that relate to biological units to the computer medium, but ultimately has a real biological operation as its goal. On the other hand, biological processes are used directly in biocomputing, but the goal of the (computing) operation is non-biological; logical circuits are constructed in order to carry out calculating, programmable operations similar to digital media.

10 See also pp. 8–11 in this issue.

11 Since ‘Spitparty’, Spiess and Strecker have progressively extended their artistic practice to microperformative strategies where the non-human agency is being staged in increasingly complex ways, and within less theatrical settings – a development comparable to the Tissue Culture & Art Project.

12 I have elsewhere compiled a cluster of examples of how bacteria have been materially used and culturally addressed in artistic practice (including, but not limited to): unspecified bacterial flora or vital milieu, symbolic proxies of aliveness and processuality, microperformative movie actors, living pigments to produce colours and forms, contaminating pathogenic invaders and aggressors, cleaners or healers, biodeteriorators as well as preservers and bioremediators of cultural heritage, patina, or microbial dust as time capsules in suspended animation, astrobiological messengers, evolutionary indicators, quickly learning and adapting biosemiotic organisms, bio-, geo- or eco-sensors, supra- individual inhabitants of microbiomes shifting role models from individual to collective identity, naturally technical power plants, gold miners, metabolic producers, composters, factories of olfactive compounds, architectural constructors, breeding containers or standardized chassis in synthetic or DIY biology with implanted genetic circuits, bio-controllers or computers, or bacterial plasmids as malleable workhorses in molecular analysis (Hauser 2020: 198).

13 Such art projects combining the live sciences and artificial intelligence correspond to, and are explicitly encouraged by the newly created category of the Prix Ars Electronica ‘Artificial Intelligence & Life Art’, which, since 2019, replaces the former category ‘Hybrid Art’. While this change seems to narrow down the scope of the successful ‘Hybrid Art’ category in place since 2007, it corresponds to artistic tendencies that technically combine hardware, software and wetware, including performative practices from the microscopic molecular to the macroscopic environmental and cosmological level. It also brings together dichotomic developments within the fields of artificial intelligence and artificial life research since the 1960s – life versus mind, biological versus psychological.