Call for Papers #08: The Arts at the Intersection: Hybridization and Intermediate Proposals in Contemporary Art

The Arts at the Intersection: Hybridisation and Intermediate Proposals in Contemporary Art

Keywords: hybrid arts, intermediality, digital culture, intermateriality, multimediality 

Fig. Alberto Bernal, Mobile (fragment). Piece for garden, walker and moving percussion, version 1, 2015 | © Alberto Bernal

Editors:

• Marina Hervás (Universidad de Granada, España)
• Rosa Benéitez Andrés (Universidad de Salamanca, España)

contact: mhervasm@ugr.es  y vasm@ugr.es
Deadline: 28/02/2025
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Although the crossing of languages is one of the fundamental characteristics of art since the avant-gardes - with important previous examples, such as the desire to achieve the Wagnerian "total work of art", among others (Morton and Schmunk, 2000) - for some decades now (and especially in the digital era) we find examples of different arts that attempt to expand beyond the limits that used to define them.  In this sense, we find a series of proposals that can only be understood through formal hybridisation, that is to say, that no longer fit in as deviations from a category (visual poetry, conceptual art, etc.), but are constituted as such. This poses a theoretical and institutional challenge to embrace and understand the limits, scope, and drifts of the artistic disciplines.
 
As a quick taxonomy (which could be expanded with Levinson, 1984), we find examples of proposals that work with this overflow of one or more disciplines by crossing them, such as the series that Gerhard Richter has been developing since the mid-1980s and which he entitles Overpainted Photographs; an eloquent way of underlining his intervention of photographs through painting. However, in his proposal, there is not so much a fusion as a differentiation between the practices of one field and the other. It is possible, then, to think of others that think of their overflow, such as Lola Nieto's expanded photography, which "extracts" the image from its support; or poetry that questions the framework of paper and the book, such as those die-cut poems made known to us by Francisco Pino.  Another important line to trace in these crossings is that which proposes to attack the very discipline from which it starts, such as the early Mo-no: Music to Read by Dieter Schnebel, defended as "music for the eye"; that is to say, not to be listened to (or at least not externally). Likewise, finally, it is important to differentiate between "inter-artistic transmediality", which obeys an "unfolding of the qualities and forms of a foreign medium"; and "intersemiotic transmediality", which, thanks to the use of foreign tools and languages, allows ways of expression and content that are unexplored in the original medium. We can take as an example the feminist sound collages of Hildegard Westerkamp or Ruth Anderson, in which the fragmentation and rearrangement of sounds allows us to generate a narrative that is critical of patriarchal structures. 
 
One of the centers of interest of these crossings is to be found in the questioning of the notion of the ideal receiver that arises from the disfigurement of the expectation that underlies one or other practices. The conceptual and perceptual inheritances that are distilled from the different practices have to be subjected to revision based on the crossovers. The critique of pre-established models of perception implies an alternative way of thinking about the limits and scope of the imagination and the relationship with the given. In the same way, authorship in the strong sense can also be weakened. Examples of this are the "sonic meditations" of Pauline Oliveros and, in general, any practice linked to text score (Yoko Ono, George Brecht, etc.), which are articulated as suggestions for action and reflection for co-creation through reception. These are works that lead to proposals such as The Sound of, by Christine Sun Kim. This artist, completely deaf since birth, uses the resources of music and social listening for her visual work, understood as sound art. Other ways of reconfiguring authorship work through the sum, so to speak, of the languages of artists who come from different backgrounds, such as the pairing of Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca and María Salgado, who developed audiotexts; the Chilean "orchestra of poets", which seeks to explore "poemusic"; or the updating of "asemic poetry" promoted by Marco Giovenale, which goes a step further than what has been called "visual poetry". Changing perceptual approaches also give rise to new ways of understanding phenomena and data. This is the case, for example, of the sonification of scientific data, which has displaced the centrality of the visual for analysis, something especially relevant for information that has no visual correlate (such as earthquakes) or that can offer partial information if only the visual is taken into account (such as the stars). At the same time, these emerging practices in the scientific context have had a direct impact on some projects, such as Chasmata, the commissioned work for the Guggenheim Bilbao written by José López-Montes and Ángel Arranz in collaboration with the European Space Agency for ensembles of saxophones, electronics, mobile phones, sculpture, and multi-projections. 
 
When we speak of an institutional challenge - which is at the same time conceptual - it is because a good part of the hybridisations and crossings implies either a self-expulsion or, at least, a suspension of the artistic disciplines; or a demand to reformulate the destiny of galleries, museums, exhibition or listening rooms to be able to accommodate unusual practices. This can be seen in the debates surrounding sound art, for example, which is linked to the spaces destined for the visual arts and in opposition - expressed in many cases - to auditoriums and other spaces destined for the practice of music. In this way, sound art is closer, at least programmatically, to the circuits and ways of proceeding of the visual arts. And the opposite is true of sound poetry, which leaves the framework of the page and moves into that of the auditorium.
 
Beyond the usual and/or traditional spaces, so to speak, for the deployment of the arts, it is of particular interest how new genres and practices have been shaped by the development of digital culture and experience, as well as their technological mediation (Wilson, 2002). Beyond net.art, it is worth highlighting, for example, the work in cyberliterature or electronic literature (with prominent examples such as those by Belén Gache) or extensions of "physical" experiences, such as the gamified and "avatarised" concerts in the video game Fortnite. A large part of the hybrid proposals come to explore a critical look at the everyday integration of the use of technology -that has become second nature- or, as is already suggested in the manifestos linked to the glitch, from the distrust or fallibility of the machinic. In general, the definition of "new media" and its impact on the tradition of articulating the notion of culture is an open debate.  Likewise, it is precisely from the digital era that the notion of "intermateriality" can be thought of in an expanded way, both because of new materials that are incorporated into the traditional ones of creation and because of the crossing paths that new technologies, such as sound cloths, allow.
 
At the same time, there is no room for a merely celebratory attitude to the intersection of the arts. The exhaustion of experience, which has even led to the classification of new generations as incapable of grasping the present (hence the rise of nostalgia) generates contemporary revisions of the "total work of art". This is revealed as a strategy for covering atrophied experience with hyper-stimulation, which leaves little room for thinking about precisely such atrophying. 
 
All these aspects are to be explored from a theoretical and creative perspective, following Umática's lines. In this sense, we propose not only the formal and linguistic revision of the arts that has already been exposed but also the modes of production and the role of the creator. This involves, for example, shared authorship or authorship mediated by technological resources, from AI to facial recognition interfaces or biosensors. In this way, it calls for the proposal of projects and essays that also cross the limits of the usual academic text and that contemplate their concretion in visual support.
 
Some of the thematic axes of the issue, which can be extended to other similar ones, are:
1 Theoretical problems and new currents of trans-, inter- and multimediality 
2 Analysis of case studies of mixed, juxtaposed, crossed, and stained practices.
3 Artistic hybridisation and digital culture
4 Overflowing perceptions, recomposed bodies through hybrid artistic practices.
5 Borrowings, transfers, and influences of science and technology on contemporary arts and vice versa
6 Politics of hybridity: appropriation and hierarchization of the arts.
7 "Archive fever": challenges of the availability and preservation of hybrid arts
8 Projects of sound creation, audiovisual experimentation, experimental poetry, and any other proposal conceived from the overflow of artistic languages.
 
 
Contributions structured according to the four sections of the journal Umática will be accepted: research articles, visual essays, and creative projects. More detailed information can be found here:  https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/umatica/Secciones. Contributions must comply with Umática's editorial guidelines, available at: https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/umatica/about/submissions. Contributions must be submitted through the Open Journal Systems application (https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/umatica/user/register).
 
If you have any questions, please contact the Umática editorial team at alo@uma.es.

Literature: 
• Clüver, Claus (2000/2001). Inter textus/Inter artes/Inter media. Komparatistik. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, pp. 14-50.
• Díaz, Lily; Gradu, Magda; Eilittä, Leena (eds.) (2018).  Adaptation and Convergence of Media. Espoo: Aalto University. 
• Higgins, Dick (2006). Intermedia. Leonardo, Volume 34, Number 1, Febrero, pp. 49-54.
• Higgins, Dick (2018). Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press. Massachusett: Siglio. 
• Levinson, Jerrold (2011). Music, Art, and Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Levinson, Jerrold (1984). Hybrid Art Forms. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 18, No. 4 , pp. 5-13.
• Milian, Patrick (2019). Intermedial Modernism: Music, Dance, and Sound. Tesis Doctoral. Washington: University of Washington.
• Morton, Marsha; Schmunk, Peter L. (2000). The arts entwined  music and painting in the nineteenth century.  New York: Garland
• Rajewsky, Irina O. (2202) Intermedialität. Basel-Tübingen: Francke. 
• Schnebel, Dieter (1969). Mo-No: Music to Read. Köln: MusikTexte
• AA. (2006). Hybridity: Arts, Sciences and Cultural Effects (sección especial). Leonardo, vol. 39, n. 2.
• VV.AA. (1999). Intermedia. Budapest: Barabás.
• Wilson, Stephen. (2002). Information arts : intersections of art, science, and technology. Cambridge-Mass.: MIT Press.