FORMATA is a hybrid installation that stages lively, autonomous blobs inside an experimental reactor emulating the conditions of an extraterrestrial planet with liquid formamide.  These vibrant blobs are composed of organic substances similar to those found in meteorites and comets, namely, abiotic fatty acids, amino acids and hydrocarbons. Unlike Earth, the atmosphere of the ‘mini-planet’ is made up of ammonia, carbon monoxide and argon gases, and its rocky surface is covered with warm pools of formamide.  In these pools, the oily blobs move away from stasis: they deform, actively move and self-divide. They become non-equilibrium entities, active material assemblages traversed by flows of matter and energy.

For us it is important that the audience experiences how non-terrestrial entities become operative and autonomous in an alien environment. We aim to reveal how their ability to act is rooted in their materiality, without the need for complex mechanisms, genetic instructions or water. In other words, we aim to exhibit how a self-assembled body, an embedded protometabolism, the capability to deform, move and self-divide are all present within these agents in the form of material agency.

In this work, alienness and the perception that these entities are not yet living but already more or less alive certainly confront visitors in multiple ways. This bodily encounter between the audience and alien active matter is critical to our project. It is important not only in the way that these entities help us to materialize the ʻother’ and the unknown; but also for the way in which they compel us to re-evaluate our place in an active cosmos.

That alien matter can be experienced as active and performative, as a physical and sensual encounter, can not only help us understand how matter itself behaves, but also allow us to rethink the basis for how we perceive and relate to materials, objects and the living. Through these bodily encounters, FORMATA challenges our current relation with matter, deconstructing the human/non-human hierarchy and replacing it with an ‘unscaled agency’ of living, partially alive and non-living things.