In this work, alienness and the perception that these agents 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 agents help us to materialize the ʻother’, the unknown and unfamiliar lifeforms; 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. It challenges our current relation with matter because it requires that the human/non-human hierarchy be deconstructed and replaced with an unscaled agency of living, partially alive, and non-living things.