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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.