We document and reflect on Living Ashes II, a performance with protocells developed as part of the 2016 Click Festival in Helsingør. Protocells are animated by their membrane; they are formed by an alkali solution that is released on a fatty milieu. The chemical variations create an interface at the edges, thickening and weakening the membrane as it pushes the protocell to move along the chemical gradient outside. We use the membrane as a tool to explore the conceptual and technical hurdles we encountered as we attempted to bring the microprocesses of semi-living matter to the mesoscopic bubble of a human audience. As the chemical variations animate the membrane of protocells, we propose to use these difficulties to explore the material and conceptual boundaries the performance animates and temporarily dissolves. We follow an autoethnographic approach to understand the way that membranes influence the way we understand microperformativity, and the challenges faced by performers in working with living systems on stage.
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Ramirez-Figueroa et al. (2020) studied this question.
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