Performance Research

A Journal of the Performing Arts

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprs20

On Microperformativity

Jens Hauser & Lucie Strecker

To cite this article: Jens Hauser & Lucie Strecker (2020) On Microperformativity, Performance
Research, 25:3, 1-7, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2020.1807739

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2020.1807739

Published online: 09 Nov 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 914

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rprs20
Editorial
On Microperformativity
JENS HAUSER & LUCIE STRECKER

When post-anthropocentrism reaches the temporal) as the dominant plane of reference and
realm of contemporary performative practices to emphasize biological and technological micro-
in the arts, is the emergence of a concept like agencies that, beyond the mesoscopic human
‘microperformativity’ a logical consequence? body, relate the invisibility of the microscopic
Given the increasing technical manipulation of to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic.
and impact on biological and ecological systems Microperformative positions enquire how artistic
with ever more tangible consequences at all methods can engage critically with technologies
levels, do the arts and the humanities tackle real- that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular
world problems by questioning what we may call level to merge bio- and digital media.
the ‘mesoscopic bubble’ within which our human Such investigations redefine what art,
perception and phenomenological considerations philosophy and the techno-sciences actually
are still enclosed? And might such a concept consider a ‘body’ today, in times when the genre
even help to provide alternative readings of of performance art is increasingly being enriched
the currently raging microperformativity of by a shift towards generalized and pervasive
the coronavirus? Performance theorist Richard performativity in art. As such, the inclusion of
Schechner’s provocative dictum ‘aliveness’ enlarges the scope of the
that ‘humanism is a very evolving field of the ‘live arts’.
arrogant, anthropocentric, Non-human agencies are
expansionist, and high- being staged in relation
energy ideology’ (1982 to performative
[1979]: 96) is echoed techno-scientific
today by an ever- or algorithmic
growing body of systems, thus
works that, on addressing
the one hand, contemporary
purposefully dynamics
decentre linking the
the human organic and
performer and, the machinic.
on the other, ‘Bacteria
emphasize the perform
performativity processes.
of a large panoply Scientists
of other-than- perform
human agencies, experiments.
biological and Algorithms perform
■ Petri dish with yeast cell
technical ones alike. actions. Humans perform cultures from saliva
The concept of gender and sex. The question samples, Microbial
Keywording by Spiess/
microperformativity denotes is who or what nowadays doesn’t Strecker, as part of the
a current trend in theories of perform?’ asks Chris Salter in his Applied Microperformativity
festival, AIL Vienna,
performativity and performative artistic practices theoretical foray into the epistemes of December 2018. Courtesy of
to destabilize human scales (both spatial and performativity and all these levels actually become the artists. Photo © Peter Mayr

PERFoRMANCE RESEARCH 25·3 : pp.1-7 iSSN 1352-8165 print/1469-9990 online 1

http: //dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2020.1807739 © 2020 informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 entangled in this issue ‘on microperformativity’. in the responses to our call for proposals issued
From our perspective, the concept has emerged in last year, whereas a large range of papers and
and over time through lectures, tentatively artistic practices deal with bacteria or microbiota,
theoretical text work, performances, artistic relating to the growing field of contemporary
research projects, exhibitions and festivals curated microbiome research and its seemingly
1
The following exhibitions, roughly since the year 2000.1 The aim is to broadly irresistible appeal to cultural practitioners.
festivals and artistic
research projects have
open up the term as a discursive tool and Before SARS-CoV-2 widely affected or infected
served as a testing ground interdisciplinary – albeit slippery – ‘travelling contributing authors, artists and editors, the viral,
for the concept of
concept’ (Bal 2002): it synchronically crosses as material and metaphor, was barely present
microperformativity: L’Art
biotech’ (Le lieu unique, disciplinary and cultural boundaries, as well as in the reflections submitted on performative
Nantes, 2003), sk- artistic genres and formats, and practices. This phenomenon deserves some
interfaces: Exploding
borders – Creating diachronically links a given context to earlier attention – especially given some of the sudden,
membranes in art, epistemological contexts, while paying ‘increased hasty-looking attempts to come up with
technology and society
(FACT Liverpool 2008/ attention to its material and medial foundations’ inflationary and quick ‘virus art and philosophy’.
Casino Luxembourg – (Neumann and Nünning 2012: 9). In the process of The virus and virality were steady memes and
Forum d’art contemporain,
2009), May the horse live in foregrounding and backgrounding the most indispensable companions of digital art and
me/Art Orienté objet diverse instances of microperformativity, the cultures in the 1980s and 1990s, synonymous
(Kapelica Gallery,
Ljubljana, 2011), SO3 (three contributing authors address a large variety of with the mode of performativity as such, but it
tender significant others) epistemic and ontological challenges inherent in seems that since, in the successive rematerialized
(Espace Multimédia
Gantner, Bourogne, 2015), who or what microperforms: media art practices, the virus has lost a lot of
CLICK Festival ‘On extra-terrestrial organic matter (ETOM); protocells consideration, for example, often being reduced
Microperformativity’
(Helsingør, 2016), Devenir – precursors of cells formed by innate, complex to a mere tool to smuggle deoxyribonucleic acid
Immobile/Yann Marussich chemistry, created live on stage; ‘psilamine’, an (DNA) sequences into cells – both better suited to
(Le lieu unique, Nantes, artistically created psychotropic molecule; volatile serving as identity proxies than the virus as a bare
2018), {un][split} Micro
organic compounds and aerosols; DNA sequences,
Performance & Macro code that resists ontologization.
Matters (Muffathalle, manipulated by processes such as electroporation,
And how many of us have watched movie
Munich, 2018), Applied lipofection or biolistics via genetic guns; protective
Microperformativity: Live immunoglobulins; enzymes and pheromones; classics during the lockdown with its
arts for a radical accompanying discourses of the ‘war on the
socio-economic turn
bio-solar cells, pluripotent stem cells; growth
(Angewandte Innovation media, amino acids and signalling proteins to virus’ or the ‘fight against the invisible enemy’,
Lab [AIL], Vienna, 2018), in culture cells inincubators; spiking neurons grown like Steven Soderbergh’s anticipatory Contagion
connection with the on microelectrode arrays; yeast cells; aquatic
Elise-Richter-PEEK project (2011)? Tellingly, the thriller’s plot, staging
cyanobacteria; chemolithoautotrophic bacteria
‘The Performative Biofact’ a worldwide pandemic of a deadly virus in times
funded by the Austrian (Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans) and human skin
Science Fund (FWF), bacteria (Staphylococcus epidermidis, Corynebacterium
of global interconnectedness, space–time travel
OU\ /ERT. Phytophilia -
xerosis and Propionibacterium avidum); fungi (Psilocybe and technological acceleration, also raised
Chlorophobia - Situated
Knowledges (Emmetrop- cubensis); bodily fluids such as mucus, breast milk, questions about the representability of viral
Antre Peaux, Bourges, blood, sweat and tears; microbiomes sourced from agency, beyond human action, which cinema
2019).
breast milk or Pygmy populations; sweat glands; typically deals with. Because, to speak with Jean
Begonia seeds; jelly fish, xenopus, zebra fish and Baudrillard about the abstract nature of both
mealworms; techno-scientific experimental devices
digitality and virality, the ‘pathology of the
such as Winogradsky columns, blunt-tip applicators,
body is now beyond the reach of conventional
or microfluidic machinery with its associated
giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) and water-in-oil medicine, since it affects the body not as form,
droplets (W/Os); phoneme caption devices and voice but as formula’ (2002: 1). It is more than just
spectrograms; machinic graphics processing units an anecdote to remember that literally living
(GPUs); Artificial Intelligence based deep learning billboards were produced to advertise the movie’s
networks and corporate surveillance systems; high launch in 2011, with outsized, rectangular Petri
frequency trading algorithms; weaving robots and dishes in which pigmented Serratia marcescens
looms … and also – last but not least – viruses, indeed.
bacterial cultures were grown to form the letters
However, at the time this issue is published of the film’s title – living images not of but out
it seems surprising that viral agency has not of single-celled organisms, intended to ‘upgrade’
appeared to be a central focal point of interest the representative medium that is cinema.

2 P E R F O R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 25·3 : O N M I C R O P E R F O R M A T I V I T Y
Nevertheless, this desire to find instances of anthropomorphize viruses ‘as vicious and
biomediality able to materially give the viral secretive enemies of war, zombies, aliens and
performativity a visual form completely failed criminals that steal human lives’. She rather sees
conceptually: the incoherence inherent in the viruses as evolutionary companions, as a ‘library
fact that viral and bacterial contamination of the living’ that impacts on ‘evolution across
spread in totally different ways, thus debunking species on the planet.’2 2
Her position is inspired by
and in line with Gilles
the advert, pairs with the movie industry’s While such positions converge with the concept Deleuze and Félix
underhandedness to blatantly copy performative of microperformativity, viruses are nowadays Guattari’s praise of viruses
as crucial vectors of an
biomedia art practices, for example by the not only considered as evil enemies but have
‘aparallel evolution’
Critical Art Ensemble or Eduardo Kac (debated in also been rediscovered as an efficient means (1987: 10): biomediality is
this issue). of fighting bacterial infections. Therapies with considered responsible for
life’s diversity, comparable
While even within a few months, Corona bacteriophages – viruses attacking bacterial cells to the culturally
discourses changed from the early martial but not mammalian ones – were first practised in transformative power of
books as stored
lockdown ‘war on the virus’ talk to ‘let’s see how the 1920s, but then neglected after the massive information to be
to live with the virus’, the distributed agency of advent of antibiotics. Now, with the problem of activated, and that can
‘move into the cells of an
virality and its lack of materialized multiple antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic entirely different species,
representability seem to pose a number of bacteria, researchers are looking afresh at those but not without bringing
with its “genetic
challenges. In this issue, art itself may even be curing viruses. information” from the first
symbolically evoked as a contagious virus, or the In the light of Duff’s essay, it is tempting to host … Transversal
communications between
infectious agent is described as something against imagine that the epistemological career of such different lines scramble the
which masked dance performances may be post-digital viruses may follow that of bacteria: genealogical trees. Always
look for the molecular, or
employed to keep away bird flu. But Covid-19 has from Robert Koch to Louis Pasteur, bacteria were even submolecular, particle
also already profoundly changed the way many traditionally described as ‘invading animals’ and with which we are allied’
(Deleuze and Guattari
other performance practices portrayed in this notorious pathological agents in the age of 1987: 10–11).
issue are being read. For example, the new science’s discovery, in the nineteenth century, of
awareness about the role of aerosols in airborne the causality between disease and bacteria. It was
virus transmission allows ‘speech acts’ to appear the epoch of dominant hygiene vocabulary and its
in terms of J. L. Austin’s (1962: 6) concept that cultural metaphors led to biased preconceptions
‘performative utterances’ do not just represent an of bacterial presence. Addressed as ‘colonization’,
action in language but materially enact changes ‘immigration’, ‘infiltration’ or ‘intrusion’, these
in a fully new dimension of ‘spit acts’: to sputter threatening ‘enemies’ were opposed to primary
and to splutter now refers to material human body cells labelled, in turn, as ‘good
explosiveness, implying the physical ejection of republicans, peaceful, sedentary, with legitimate
particles, evoking the danger of infection, more kinship and safe loyalties within the body’
than just the discomfort of choking sounds, (Sarasin 2007: 445, 450, 454). Today, role models
becoming literally performative in a very of bacteria, and of the microbiome, have 3
The main argument here
is that ‘the colony of
biological sense. dramatically changed, as many contributions by individuals, the social
It is for these reasons that we have included artists and theoreticians to this issue demonstrate group, gleans information
from the environment.
a provocative essay by Tagny Duff, who has – be it a faecal transplantation from a Pygmy
They “talk” with one
worked ‘hands-on’ with viruses in laboratories community or an artistically produced probiotic another, distribute tasks,
throughout her career. Duff refuses to speak about drug conceived to enhance the art consumer’s and convert their collective
into a huge “brain” that
viruses, but speaks with viruses, insisting on anti-capitalistic mindset … Within an ecological processes information,
giving ‘the’ virus, in its distributed plurality, account of natural agency, bacteria are even said learns from past
experience, and, we
a voice, as a choir instead of ‘a singular subject, to partake in a ‘cognitive turn in microbiology’ suspect, creates new genes
one that is our natural enemy that we are at war considering that ‘bacteria are purposive agents, to better cope with novel
challenges’ (Ben-Jacob et
with’. Duff not only considers how human and purposive agency is the mark of cognition’ al. 2011: 56–7).
expansion, such as deforestation or other forms of (Fulda 2017: 70–71). Microorganisms are, 4
We thank Chris Salter and
destruction of natural environments, is linked to moreover, seen as ‘analogous to complex human- Klaus Spiess for their
additional editorial support
the appearance of contemporary zoonoses, but made cybernetic systems’ (Ben-Jacob et al. in providing feedback to
addresses how humans have a tendency to 2011: 57).3 a number of papers.

HAUSER & STRECKER : Editorial 3

 indicates a more general ‘shift from performance
to performativity, from human actions to
nonhuman agency, including its progressive
acceptance by audiences’, prompting ‘strategies
of how the retreat of human performers
can be compensated by inventive aesthetic
solutions to create encounters with, and
experiences for perceivers’ (see Jens Hauser,
‘Microperformativity and biomediality’). In
their auto-ethnographic account of their live
performance to synthesize protocells, Ramirez-
Figueroa, Hernan and Lin give us a first example
of how performers can ‘destabilize assumptions
of what is alive, and what counts as performer
on stage’. Paul Vanouse’s installation Labor,
a post-anthropocentric scientific theatre, is
also of this kind: here, skin microbes ‘fulfil
a highly cultural role in non-verbal cueing
and signification’ by creating the scent of
■ Dendrites growing in real From such a perspective the ample presence human sweat without any human body or
time out of vaporised
menthol crystals on a
of bacteria in this issue becomes plausible, labour, thus critiquing how ‘we’ seem to define
performer’s body in Crystal, despite the conceptually broad scope of ourselves by work, while microorganisms as
a project by artist Julia
microperformativity ranging from living matter collaborative, symbiotic agents shape the
Borovaya/SAVE lab with the
support of Edward (Bennett 2009), various biological actants, olfactory profiles of ‘our’ human identities.
Rakhmanov and Anastasia natural-cultural hybrids such as experimental In their contribution on the Winogradsky
Kraseva; shown at the
{un][split} Micro Performance systems, ‘epistemic things’ (Rheinberger 1997) column, Pérez Bobadilla and Guzmán Serrano
& Macro Matters festival, or neuronal networks, to micro-gestures in likewise explore how this scientific tool favours
Muffathalle Munich, 31
August to 2 September performances, and to machinic and algorithmic a more ecological, interdependent and multi-
2018. Photo © Julia Borovaya agency. What unites the manifold contributions is species interpretation of life than the Petri
not only challenging the preponderance of human dish, thus boosting its current use as medium
agency but a desire to deconstruct ontologies and for artists, who sometimes even deliberately
their related representations ‘in the making’.4 credit microorganisms as collaborators. In
Before diving into the five sub-sections – Thomas Feuerstein’s large biotechnological
Biological agency, Opening up experimentation, installation conceived as a fabrica, Prometheus
Staging multi-scaled agency, (Micro)gestures, The delivered, chemolithoautotrophic bacteria
other and the pathological – we therefore begin that can metabolize a marble sculpture of the
with a map proposed by Chris Salter that shows Greek hero are performers originating from
interconnected registers and scales, key concepts, stone, enacting a metabolic transformation of
writers and artists, attempting to show how the inorganic material in order to finally generate
notion of the performative engenders ‘boundary a growing liver sculpture of hepatic cells. By
objects’ across the arts, social, natural and human expanding the language of art beyond the iconic
sciences that help to link ‘disparate disciplines and linguistic levels by chemical and biological
and people together who, because of disciplinary ones, literally ‘the works are working’. Similarly
affiliation, might not realize the connections to at the threshold of non-living and living systems,
other disciplines’. turning non-terrestrial material assemblages into
In the first part, we concentrate on how the lively, kinetic and active agents is at the core of
neologism microperformativity first emerged in Castro’s and Kubota’s art-science practice with
the context of post-digital artistic work since extraterrestrial organic matter (ETOM); they
the late 1990s. Employing biological agency in confront audiences with new degrees of aliveness,
performative ways, biomedia art increasingly with the intention to question the geocentric and

4 P E R F o R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 25·3 : o N M i C R o P E R F o R M A T i V i T Y
anthropocentric mind-set in our understanding of production on the scale of complex microfluidic
matter as passive, inactive or neutral substance, machinery, thus emphasizing the epistemological
which they feel ‘is disturbingly linked with the indeterminacy and the role of circumstantial
destruction of ecosystems, the depletion of factors for the results of experiments. Last, Gómez
resources and the extinction of wildlife’. López discusses the long-standing tradition of
The second section, Opening up experimentation, self-experimentation in the medical sciences,
mobilizes microperformativity as a conceptual involving the testing of prototypes, and proposing
tool to analyse entanglements of non-human ocular germination of a seed within her tear duct
agencies in experimental systems, such as the and extra-corporeal auto-transfusion of blood
artistic intervention ‘Microbial Keywording’ as experiences to be re-enacted by others via the
proposed by the interdisciplinary team led by distribution of ‘how-to’ guides.
Spiess and Strecker. Here, the linguistic concept The third section explores the staging of
of ‘speech acts’ extends towards its ultimate multi-scaled agency via various micro–macro
materialization: in analogy to the cell as the relationships entailing bacteria, biological
smallest biological unit of life, phonemes as and artificial neurons, as well as algorithms
the smallest entities of a spoken word, in as central agents in global financial networks.
turn, leave memory traces on single-celled With STILLEBEN, Athanassakis and Berry
oral microbes sourced from speakers’ mouths, address breastfeeding and the accompanying,
ultimately resulting in ‘phonetic probiotic’ invisible microbial transfer, and propose valuing
drugs. Another of many potential outcomes is breast milk and its microbial constituents as
a suppository described by KT Zakravsky/Zak Ray, primordial assets and currency, counteracting
further exploring the relation between matter capitalist economic principles. Political and
and language – between the co-performing ethical interrelations of macro and micro scales
pharmacological substance and a literary medical in the artist Adam Zaretsky’s provocative public
leaflet, while the patient information slip links workshops are put ‘under the microscope’ in
to the long tradition in Fluxus and performance Tratnik’s essay on how processes of genetic
art to use instructions. Science philosopher engineering can be demystified, using kitchen
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger takes us further into and household products and sexually connoted
the epistemology of experimental systems, metaphors such as ‘penetrating the genome’
discussing the term ‘microperformativity’ in or ‘sexing the environment’. Reversing this ■ Agnes Meyer-Brandis
Microfluidic Oracle Chip &
relation to the way substances and organisms are perspective, Franović and Kirschner start by Autopoesis Answering
made to interact with one another in laboratory analysing the ecological ‘glass box theatre’ Machine, detail of one chip,
2019. Photo © Agnes
contexts. He advocates a close look at the agential of Biosphere 2, where a group of humans, Meyer-Brandis, VG Bildkunst,
relationships between the micro-, meso- and alongside other plant and animal species, was 2019
macrocosmic dimensions, also with regard to
what he sees as a ‘reversion of performance’
in the much-cited term of the ‘Anthropocene’:
‘The globe, the planet is striking back – and it is
no longer primarily the people who are acting.’
Two related artistic contributions deal with
the deconstruction of scientific and authorial
authority. First, the biologist and artist Hideo
Iwasaki has paper cut-outs from his own research
articles overgrown by cyanobacteria, his very
model organism, provoking complex patterns of
not yet studied phenomena to appear materially
on the remaining scientific paper. Second,
artistic ‘microfluid oracle chips’ are discussed
by Meyer-Brandis and Voroprai: these stage the
dichotomous and iterative character of knowledge

HAUSER & STRECKER : EdiToRiAl 5

 isolated in order to gain an ‘innerview effect’ of uses the concept of microperformativity
‘metabolic connectedness’ – however challenged to access knowledge otherwise tacit in the
by the overlooked, undeniable power of microbes production process. In a different vein,
to steer ecosystem processes, identified as central Whalley and Miller apply the notion in order
‘leverage points’ capable of prompting dramatic to focus on temporal rather than spatial scales,
changes in complex systems. and investigate strategies of slowing down
The interface between biological and machinic gestures in performance art and their effect on
agencies is addressed in Salter’s analysis of audiences. Especially with regard to non-human
neuronal acts, first taking the neuron as a point of performers such as jellyfish and mealworms
departure for art making, resulting in cellF, ‘the acting over many days, they ask what kind of
world’s first neuronal synthesizer’, and further co-creative ‘granular engagement is required
‘taking us beyond the arts to neuroscience, of the human-animal audience member’ who
artificial intelligence and to the chimerical ‘can never grasp the totality of the non-human
heart of contemporary microperformativity: performer’s engagement in the work’. However,
economics’. Salter describes the connection similar questions transpire in relation to an
between physical–chemical neurons and logic indeed human performer with regard to Yann
gates that perform in the new economic boom: Marussich’s seemingly immobile performances,
Just like we don’t really know what the spikes based on somatechnies through which the artist
produced by cultured neurons used in artworks accesses and expresses implicit activities of his
mean, so too do we also not grasp the increasing body (cardiac frequency, involuntary gestures
mathematization and modelization of contemporary and so forth). Here, these are studied via the
capital flows that are now being made directly analytical grid of emersiology, ‘explaining how
possible by the classification properties of
unconscious and uncontrolled activities of the
hundreds of thousands of artificial neurons making
financial decisions.
living human body surface’ (see Andrieu, Bernard,
Cipoletta, Marussich and da Nobrega, ‘Emersive
In the light of automated finance operating microperformativity: On physiological mediation
in the invisible realm of microseconds, ‘how do in Yann Marussich’s “immobile” performances’).
we move and see through the maze of finance The fifth section, on the other and the
performativity?’ Gerald Nestler consequently pathological, aims to further create and analyse
asks. Since financial microperformativity fissures in rigid concepts of the self and the
‘has a real impact on bodies, performance foreign to unfold as rich artistic material. In
art needs to include sensory perception, Helyer’s sound works, which combine human
affect and physical experience’, which is the and biological agency to re-invent musical scores
intention of his experimental performances from largely different human cultures, the ‘other’
‘transferring the abstract complexities of are E. coli bacteria that not only store but alter
algorithmic finance to the scope of physical and transform genetic information containing
experience’ to prepare audiences for the era of musical compositions – an ancient mnemonic
techno-capitalist biopower. system subverted in order to use its physical
The fourth section, (Micro)gestures, takes up morphology to re-mix musical structures.
this topic of algorithmic agency first by trans- In M R Vishnuprasad’s analysis of the Pakshi
historically analysing weaving as an embodied Kolam trance-dance of a bird in traditional Indian
practice of doing and thinking, as cognitive performance, the ‘other’ consists of pathogenic
projections, arguing that ‘properties and agents spread by birds, responsible via zoonoses
algorithms transferred from weaving into early for diseases caused by infectious agents. In this
theories of arithmetic [have been] the basis for ritual performance, he demonstrates how layers
mathematical laws’ ever since the science of of mimetic and enactive dimensions of human
ancient Greece (see Fanfani, Griffiths, Harlizius- performance are supposed to help to become ‘the
Klück, Mamidipudi and Mclean, ‘(Micro-) other’ and part of a healing process. Finally, the
Performing Ancient Weaving in the PENELOPE Art Orienté Objet duo present two performative
project’). Here, the PENELOPE research group works carrying out microbiome-based art

6 P E R F O R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 25·3 : O N M I C R O P E R F O R M A T I V I T Y
experiences. The first, May the Rain Forest Live in REFERENCES
Me, consists of grafting the rich microbiota of an Austin, J. L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words, London:
inhabitant of the primordial forest onto the artist Oxford University Press.
Marion Laval-Jeantet, speculating on consequent Bal, Mieke (2002) Travelling Concepts in the Humanities:
A rough guide, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
mental states of having the same microbiota
as a Pygmy, and to potentially learn to feel the Baudrillard, Jean (2002) Screened Out, London and New York,
NY: Verso.
forest environment thanks to the transplant of
Ben-Jacob, Eshel, Shapira, Yoash and Tauber, Alfred I. (2011)
an internal ecosystem. The second, Holy Coli, ‘Smart bacteria’, in Lynn Margulis, Celeste A. Asikainen and
transforms the microbiota of a mouse with Wolfgang E. Krumbein (eds) Chimeras and Consciousness,
a genetically modified Escherichia coli strain that Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 55–62.
produces a mouse’s faeces’ scent of violet, instead Bennett, Jane (2009) Vibrant Matter: A political ecology of
of shit – supposedly matching the smell emitted things, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
by holy bodies evoked in anthropology and the Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (1987) A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi,
history of religion.
University of Minnesota Press, London and New York, NY.
At the very end, we encounter the artist Tagny
Fulda, Fermín C. (2017) ‘Natural agency: The case of
Duff ‘speaking with viruses’, here and now bacterial cognition’, Journal of the American Philosophical
in the current crisis as we know it. Instead of Association 3(1): 69–90.
portraying her own years-long artistic practice Neumann, Birgit and Nünning, Ansgar (2012) ‘Travelling
of materially working with the most biologically concepts as a model for the study of culture’, in Birgit
diverse viruses, this experimental piece of writing Neumann and Ansgar Nünning (eds) Travelling Concepts for
the Study of Culture, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 1–22.
deliberately interlaces the form of trans-historical
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg (1997) Toward a History of Epistemic
theatrical dialogues, media-philosophical Things: Synthesizing proteins in the test tube, Stanford, IL:
reflections on ‘the viral’, scientifically informed Stanford University Press.
footnotes and imagery, and the evocation of Sarasin, Philipp (2007) ‘Die Visualisierung des Feindes: Über
performative stagecraft. The curtain falls. metaphorische Technologien der frühen Bakteriologie’ [The
visualization of the enemy: On metaphorical technologies of
early bacteriology] in Philipp Sarasin, Silvia Berger, Marianne
Hänseler and Myriam Spörri (eds) Bakteriologie und Moderne:
Studien zur Biopolitik des Unsichtbaren 1870–1920
[Bacteriology and Modernity: Studies on the biopolitics of
the invisible 1870–1920], Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
pp. 427–61.
Schechner, Richard (1982 [1979]) ‘The end of humanism’, in
The End of Humanism: Writings on performance, New York,
NY: Performing Arts Journal Publications, pp. 95–106.
Previously published in Performing Arts Journal 4(1/2): The
American Imagination: A decade of contemplation, pp. 9–22.

HAUSER & STRECKER : Editorial 7