Posthuman Aesthetics in Contemporary Visual Art and Performance

Kato Bukenya T.

Faculty of Business and Management Kampala International University Uganda

                                                             ABSTRACT
This study examines posthuman aesthetics in contemporary visual art and performance, focusing on how emerging artistic practices decentre the human and redistribute agency across human, nonhuman, technological, and environmental actors. It argues that posthuman aesthetics is not merely a thematic shift but a reconfiguration of ontology, perception, and artistic production shaped by technoscience, algorithmic systems, and material ecologies. Through engagement with installation art, generative and algorithmic practices, biotechnological performance, and immersive environments, the study demonstrates how contemporary works challenge anthropocentric models of authorship, spectatorship, and aesthetic experience. Drawing on posthumanist theory, new materialism, and actor-network approaches, it highlights how agency becomes distributed within assemblagesof bodies, objects, and systems. The study further explores the ethical, political, and ecological implications of such practices, particularly in relation to labour, care, and responsibility in algorithmically mediated cultures. Ultimately, it proposes that posthuman aesthetics redefines art as a relational field of co-composition between heterogeneous actants, where perception, participation, and meaning are continuously negotiated.

Keywords: Posthuman aesthetics; Nonhuman agency; Algorithmic art; Installation art; and Technoscience.

CITE AS: Kato Bukenya T. (2026). Posthuman Aesthetics in Contemporary Visual Art and Performance. IDOSR JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION AND ENGLISH 11(1):49-60.
https://doi.org/10.59298/IDOSR/JCE/111.19.4960