Abstract This presentation proposes an ontological reflection on Live Arts based on the distinction between prediction and anticipation, arguing that they represent divergent modes of inhabiting time. Prediction, rooted in the modern episteme’s linear and control-driven logic, is viewed as a residue of reductionist scientific thought that forecloses indeterminacy. In contrast, anticipation is conceived as a vital, relational quality inherent to living systems and contemporary artistic practices unfolding from the immanence of experience.

Drawing on complexity theory (Gershenson, Rosen) and the biology of cognition (Maturana and Varela), we define anticipation as radical enaction: an epistemology and ontology of non-linear time where past, present, and future form an emergent continuum. This reframes artistic practice as an onto-epistemic laboratory where time is a field of co-emergence rather than an axis of succession.

By revisiting these reflections through the artistic practices of creators such as Del Re, Calfuqueo, Gallego, Bate, and Munguía, the presentation describes how Live Arts challenge the notion of predictive composition. Through a video-essay presentation format, we attempt to observe how these artists' practices embody temporality in anticipation, becoming examples of how distinguished they are from more conventional practices based on controlled disciplines. In doing so, the research transforms the traditional idea of control into a temporality grounded in anticipatory practices. We conclude that Live Arts operate as a privileged territory for exploring a non-linear ontology of time, offering a space of resistance to the hegemony of prediction and an openness toward anticipatory modes of existence at the intersection of art, science, and philosophy.

The contribution consists of a video-essay presentation followed by a moderated Q&A.