Sat 21 August 2010
10:00–12:00h
PACT Studio 3, Essen

Convened by Valérie Lamontagne (qc/ca)

The panel interrogates contemporary notions of performance and embodiment from a materialist and (post-)phenomenological point of view. In the light of this approach that includes performance and performativity in various contexts (e.g. Science and Technology Studies amongst other epistemic domains), the potential of the nonhuman to shape performative events enables new considerations about performative practices that comprise humans and nonhumans.

1. 10:00h | Valérie Lamontagne (qc/ca): Materiality, Posthumanist Performativity, and Wearables
2. 10:15h | Christopher Salter (qc/ca): Alien Agencies. Liveness, Materiality and Nonhuman Performativity
3. 10:30h | Harry Smoak (qc/ca): Your Participation Not Required. Machinic Performances On and Off the Stage
4. 10:45h | Patrick Harrop (qc/ca): Metastatic Membranes. Modulations of Threshold
5. 11:00h | Jens Hauser (de/fr): Looking Through Biomedia. Post-Anthropocentrism as Immediacy without Agency

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | P1 Enunciations of Nonhuman Performativity (PDF, 92 KB)

Valérie Lamontagne (qc/ca)

Materiality, Posthumanist Performativity, and Wearables

This paper outlines how wearables reconfigure notions of performativity because of their admixtures of human/nonhuman agencies. It argues that contemporary wearables, in a continuum with technological/body performative entanglement dating from early 20th century art (Avant-Garde), materially alter practices of performativity because they propose new and intimately co-dependent agencies of the human/nonhuman. The theoretical arguments to substantiate this human/nonhuman reconfiguration of performativity via wearables are culled from recent Science Technology and Society (STS) and posthumanist approaches to materiality and performativity.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Materiality, Posthumanist Performativity, and Wearables (PDF)

Valérie Lamontagne is a digital media artist, designer, and curator. She founded 3lectromode, a design group developing wearables combining D-I-Y technology with current fashion research. Her Ph.D. investigates "Performativity, Materiality and Laboratory Practices in Artistic Wearables".

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Christopher Salter (qc/ca)

Liveness and Nonhuman Performativity

What does the concept of performance mean today as artistic practices increasingly fuse together traditional human centred notions of performance with the actions and dynamics of organic and inorganic matter and techniques? This paper will briefly sketch out some ways of thinking about performativity from the point of view of what Tim Lenoir and recently, Jane Bennett call material vitalism - a vitalism that does not privilege the human subject over the technical-material milieu in which such actions, dynamics and material enunciations take place and articulate powerful affects.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Liveness and Nonhuman Performativity (PDF)

Chris Salter is an artist, Associate Professor in fine arts at Concordia University and researcher at Hexagram, Montreal. Salter’s performances, installations and publications have been presented at numerous festivals and conferences around the world. He is the author of Entangled (MIT press, 2010).

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Harry Smoak (qc/ca)

Your Participation Not Required. Machinic Performances On and Off the Stage

This presentation draws from a behavioralist perspective of artistic activities in relation to theories of cultural development. Insights found here, the author will argue, may be profitably introduced into current discussions considering how new technologies create new problems for research practices undertaken experimentally. A number of recent examples will be considered, including those drawn from the author's own artistic work involving media performance projects revolving around dynamical and computational media systems.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Your Participation Not Required. Machinic Performances On and Off the Stage (PDF)

Harry Smoak is a media researcher and producer based in Montreal developing new forms of content in partnership with clients in areas of cultural production, architectural design, and entertainment. He is also a doctoral student and part-time faculty member in Fine Arts at Concordia University.

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Patrick Harrop (qc/ca)

Metastatic Membranes. Modulations of Threshold

This presentation will discuss the potential of an architectural membrane as a material and responsive host for interactive mediation. It will regard this question by exploring a network of parameters (environmental, cultural and material) in activating the boundary of an environment as a locus of phenomenological event. While the discussion is grounded in a reading of architecture as a technical object through the work of Gilbert Simondon, it will also be reflected through the work of pneuma: Architectural practice based research based in Hong Kong and Montreal.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Metastatic Membranes. Modulations of Threshold (PDF)

Patrick Harrop is an Associate Professor of architecture at the University of Manitoba, CMRI research chair, as well as a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University. His research/creation is in the philosophy of technology and architecture, digital fabrication, responsive environments and materials.

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Jens Hauser (de/fr)

Looking Through Biomedia. Post-Anthropocentrism as Immediacy without Agency

The current molecular turn and its accompanying biologisms have led contemporary artists to construct links to nonhuman otherness while abstracting from previously dominant cognitivism. Biotechnological art that goes beyond metaphors and representation stages the very presence of the manipulated other (animals, plants, plantimals, tissue cultures, etc.) in performative displays. But is non human centered art even possible? This paper addresses volitionally post-anthropocentric art practices and their (in)ability to confer agency to their performative subjects and objects.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Looking Through Biomedia. Post-Anthropocentrism as Immediacy without Agency (PDF)

Jens Hauser is a Paris based art curator, writer and video maker focussing on the interactions between art and technology, trans-genre and contextual aesthetics. His current research at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr University Bochum is concerned with biomediality.

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