Erika Fischer-Lichte’s theory of self-generation of the performative event does not emerge in isolation but is embedded within a broader intellectual current of the late twentieth century, in which the humanities increasingly turned to biological and systems thinking. At the center of this shift lies the concept of autopoiesis, as developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in their works Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1980) and The Tree of Knowledge (1987). In her effort to theorize the Art of Performance, Fischer-Lichte explicitly adopts the term, employing it as a rigorous theoretical tool. In particular, her understanding of the relationship between performers and spectators as a cyclical process of mutual feedback loop clearly manifests the presence of autopoietic logic in her theoretical framework. The notion of feedback loop, as observed in Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic systems, is transferred to performance: performers influence spectators, spectators respond, and the new response in turn affects the performers, creating an endless cyclical process of self-generation.
In biology, autopoiesis describes living systems that produce and renew their own components, define their own boundaries, and maintain their organization within a changing environment. Autopoiesis does not constitute a single function of the organism, but its very mode of existence: a cycle of continuous production and reproduction. When this concept was transferred to the social and humanistic sciences, it enabled the understanding of social and artistic phenomena as processes without centralized control, without hierarchical structure, and without predetermined meaning. Its value lay in its ability to describe systems that are not externally determined but are constituted by their own practices.
Within this conceptual framework, Fischer-Lichte develops a new ontology of performance in her work Ästhetik des Performativen (2004). Performance is not a representation that precedes its enactment, nor a closed aesthetic object. It is an event that comes into being through the living interaction between performers and spectators, through the relationship of bodies, space, and material or immaterial dimensions of the stage. The meaning of this process does not preexist its realization; it emerges through the act of performance itself, arising from the continuous variations produced by the participation of bodies, the reaction of the audience, and the shifting flow of energy in the space.
The closest connection to the biological logic of autopoiesis is found in the structure of feedback loops. In biology, autopoietic function is maintained through cyclical processes that continuously inform one another: the system produces its components, which in turn generate the conditions for the system’s operation. Similarly, in performance, performers influence spectators, spectators respond, and this response modifies the performers’ behavior, so that the process continuously reproduces and transforms itself. These loops are not merely functional; they constitute the ontological condition of performance. The performative event is the cyclicality of the relationships that constitute it. Fischer-Lichte writes:
The effectiveness of the feedback loop rejects the idea of an autonomous subject. Rather, it presupposes both the artist and all participants as subjects who exert and receive influence. It challenges the idea of a subject who decides by their own will what to do and what not to do and who is able, independently of others and external instructions, to shape themselves as they wish to be. It equally rejects the notion of a person who is merely a victim of influences without bearing any responsibility. The perceived self-generation of the feedback loop, as manifested especially in the context of role changes between actors and spectators, opens for all participants the possibility of perceiving themselves as subjects during the performance who can influence the actions and behaviors of others and be influenced in turn, as subjects who are neither fully autonomous nor mere victims of external influence, and who bear responsibility for a situation they did not create but in which they were involved. This experience is constitutive of the aesthetic experience offered by the self-generation of the feedback loop.
This logic renders performance analogous to autopoietic systems in terms of both dependency and autonomy. Just as an organism requires its environment to exist but autonomously regulates its internal organization, so performance depends on the audience, space, and conditions, yet its developmental dynamics are determined by its own internal logic. Just as a living cell produces its own components, performance produces its own meanings, points, and relationships, without merely implementing a preexisting intention. And as the organism operates within fields of probability rather than deterministic linearity, so the performative event is inherently unpredictable, allowing for displacement, deviation, and rupture.
The biological origins of this thought are not a mere metaphor but constitute a fundamental shift in the ontology of performance. Fischer-Lichte thus moves away from static semiotic models that viewed stage action as a system of fixed signs, proposing instead an understanding of performance as a living phenomenon that generates itself through its enactment. Performance gains materiality, the body–spectator relationship emerges as a central source of meaning, and the stage action becomes a dynamic, open, self-organizing system. Within this new ontology, self-generation is not merely a property of performance; it is its very mode of existence.
