Performance Bug. Monstrosity as the Horizon in Multispecies Performance

By drawing connections between the genealogies of the term “bug” as a “system error” and the development of aleatory theory, conceived as the opening to the indeterminate in performance, this essay explores the unstable and unpacifying scenario of multispecies cohabitation that emerges from the detection of “disturbing” animal presences within the contemporary performative scene. The theorization of the “performance bug” fosters a re-signification of the intermittent presence of animals on stage – historically instrumentalized – transforming it into a form of resistance. These forces, latent in nature, are identified not only in animal bodies but also in transcorporeal presences expressed through fragmented languages and rarified writings, which can be traced to an “animal specter” of representation. Through a “zoohauntological” approach, this study seeks to foreground the emergence of a monstrous dimension – termed Animalfuturism – within the representational framework of the selected case studies. This paper argues that this dimension, revealed through the action of the performance bug, enables the acceptance of the constitutive impurity of mutant bodies and of the vital and lethal relations that compose a chaotic collective form of dwelling, understood as a space from which new political configurations may emerge.