Tuesday, November 4, 2025
2: 00 – 3:00 p.m.
Free Admission
In French
In this presentation, Jens Hauser will discuss the concept of “microperformativity.” With the convergence of hardware, software, and wetware, the paradigm of biomediality illustrates how media functions based on physical principles evolve alongside biological and convergent technologies. This expands the traditional media triad — storing, transmitting, transforming — to include new capabilities such as self-repair, adaptation, and evolution.
At the same time, contemporary artistic interest in the microbiome and synthetic biology — involving gene fragments, cells, proteins, pheromones, enzymes, bacteria, or viruses — challenges the human scale of action as the sole point of reference.
In this context, the concept of microperformativity highlights and contextualizes the recent focus on non-human agencies, both biological and technical. Corresponding artistic practices aim to raise awareness from the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensible complexity of the macroscopic, offering procedural artworks that, despite their mesoscopic aesthetic compression, demand a reevaluation of our human-all-too-human perceptual habits.
Non-human performativity can also be linked to the concept of the Holobiont, a term coined in 1991 by Lynn Margulis to define the symbiosis theory, which posits that eukaryotic organisms are not autonomous individuals — rather, we are holobionts, forming more or less durable relationships with microorganisms in our environment at various levels of integration.
The lecture will be held in French.
Source: Erandy Vergara-Vargas
About Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser is a media studies researcher, writer, and art curator who analyzes the interactions between art and technology. Based in Paris, he is currently a researcher at the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen and a distinguished faculty member in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Michigan State University, where he co-directs the BRIDGE artist residency program. He was recently a professor of art history at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). At the intersection of art history and epistemology, he developed a theory of biomediation during his PhD at Ruhr University Bochum. He also holds a degree in scientific and technical journalism from François Rabelais University in Tours.
As a curator, Jens Hauser has organized around thirty exhibitions and festivals, including L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007), sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008 / Luxembourg, 2009), Article Biennale (Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga, 2010), Que le cheval vive en moi — Art Orienté Objet (Ljubljana, 2011), Fingerprints… (Berlin, 2011 / Munich, 2012), Synth-ethic (Vienna, 2011), assemble | standard | minimal (Berlin, 2015), SO3 (Belfort, 2015), WETWARE (Los Angeles, 2016), Devenir Immobile — Yann Marussich (Nantes, 2018), {un][split} (Munich, 2018), MATTER/S matter/s (Lansing, 2018), Applied Microperformativity (Vienna, 2018), UN/GREEN (Riga, 2019), OU \ / ERT (Bourges, 2019), Holobiont. Life is Other (Bregenz, 2021 / Vienna, 2022), gREen— Sampling Colour (Munich, 2021), and gREen— De/Growth (Munich, 2022).
As a journalist and filmmaker, Hauser has collaborated with the European cultural channel ARTE since 1992 and has produced numerous reports, documentaries, and radio programs for German and French public broadcasters.
Cette publication est également disponible en :
Français (French)
