Abstract
This essay expands on a novel concept for performance studies scholarhsip: errorism (combining political and technological notions of error performance). The term is central to my analysis of the performativity of error in internet communication (HTTP), and the performance of error in recent US political history (i.e. the George W. Bush Administration). Both these conceptions are interlaced in a novel theorisation of performativity, which I present in a theoretical line outside J.L Austin’s word-based theory of performativity. Instead, I link the term to Talcott Parsons ‘performance process’, and, through systems theorist Nikolas Luhmann, to the writings of Jean Francois Lyotard. From this analysis of performativity as a system of normativisation through technologically-mediated social activity, I subsequently move on to a discussion of the theatrical performativity and political use of error-coding in net art, and digital agit-prop. I elaborate on two brief case studies of how error can be used creatively in politically dissident net art: the Argentine-based Internacional Errorista movement (2005) and Ricardo Dominguez’s use of error-messaging as part of Electronic Disturbance Theatre’s INFOact ‘Stop the War in Mexico’ (1998).