POROUS MATTER
A performance by Anna Anderegg in collaboration with the University of Zurich
POROUS MATTER is an interdisciplinary performance that investigates the permeability—the porosity—of the body and explores its relationship to organisms beyond the human: as an open web of relations, permeated by microbes, data, and resonances.
Over the past decades, many fields of research have developed a growing awareness of the interconnectedness and mutual dependence of biological organisms and systems. In this context, a new perspective on the human body has also emerged: like all ecosystems, our bodies are not closed entities but porous, constantly engaged in exchanges with their surroundings. What does this mean for how we imagine our bodies—and for our being-in-the-world? These questions have been explored by Anna Anderegg in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of scientists and artists.
In POROUS MATTER, the body is approached as an archive inscribed with evolutionary memories, fossil traces, and microbiological histories. The body becomes a landscape—inhabited by microbes, fungi, and cellular colonies that shape our metabolism, our perception, and our existence. New technologies render these entanglements visible and tangible, reminding us that we are connected beings, that we are “nature.” Yet this also means that species extinction affects not only our external habitats but also the inhabitants within our own bodies—organisms on which our lives depend.
The performance further addresses the difficulty of reconciling these insights with lived reality—as members of a society that imagines humanity as separate from “nature” and positioned as its master. How do we navigate this involuntary complicity?
POROUS MATTER is part of Vorspiel, a citywide program before and during transmediale & CTM festivals.