Software art involves an artistic activity which, in the medium —or rather, the material— of software, allows for critical reflection on software (and its cultural impact). It thus highlights the aesthetic and political subtexts of seemingly neutral technical commands. In this article Inke Arns argues that, in the context of software art, a far more interesting notion than the generative nature of code is its performativity. This notion —borrowed from speech act theory— not only involves the ability to generate in a technical context, but also encompasses the implications and repercussions of code in terms of aesthetics, politics and society. This article proposes the notion of the performativity of code as one of the reasons for contemporary artists’ growing interest in using software as an artistic material.