On Microperformativity

Performance Research Volume 25 Issue 3

Our alumna Lucie Strecker published together with Jens Hauser the special issue On Microperforma-tivity with Performance Research (Routledge), including 26 interdisciplinary contributions from international authors.

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.

You can get direct access to the digital version of the publication (part of which is open access, other content requires an academic account) or order a physical copy of this challenging publication via the link to the Centre for Performance Research Book-shop, or via this link to other issues and bundle offers.