Performing More-than-Humanness: Boundary-Making Practices and the (In)Determinacy of Phenomena

Essentialist understandings of the human have proven remarkably resilient. They remain impactful despite of arguments emphasizing the inherent more-than-humanness of humans
through notions of relationality, ecology, or posthumanism. It thus remains a task to come to
terms with this inherent more-than-humanness, a task which has to revisit the human: If
humans are always already more-than-human, how can they learn to embrace their own morethan-humanness?
Combining theoretical insights from performance studies with an analysis of performance
artworks, I offer an approach to answer this question. Thinking from the concept of
performativity, which emphasizes that humans, non-humans, or more-than-humans do not
exist independently but emerge in relation, I argue that embracing more-than-humanness is a
matter of performing in certain ways rather than in others. Staging such performances allows
to better understand how more-than-humanness emerges. It creates a space that is open for
unlikely or absurd performances, allowing to experiment with the performance of more-thanhumanness. At the same time, it shows that the emergence of more-than-humanness is not
limited to an actor performing themself but is equally a question of how this actor is perceived.
Performing more-than-humanness is a matter of looking and being seen, speaking and being
heard, acting and being acted upon, both on and off stage.
In analysing performances of more-than-humanness, I focus on two case studies: BVDS’ Song of Songs and Frida Laux’ Paradance. While BVDS explores how bodies emerge which blur the
lines between human and non-human, organic and technological, Frida Laux offers a set of
scores, inviting the audience to experiment with their own felt more-than-humanness. The
pieces, thus, both enable a better understanding of the performative becoming of more-thanhumanness, while also offering strategies to incorporate them into off stage performances.