No. 8 (2025): The arts at the intersection. Hybridisations and intermedial proposals in contemporary art

In recent decades, and particularly significantly in the context of digital culture, contemporary artistic practices have intensified the processes of crossing, shifting and overflowing the disciplinary boundaries that traditionally structured them. This edition of Umática positions itself within the domain of intersection, addressing propositions that can only be comprehended through a formal, medial and material hybridisation. These propositions no longer function as marginal variations of a discipline, but as practices constituted from the in-between, the crossing and the instability of languages.

The texts gathered here explore concepts such as medium, work, authorship, materiality, perception and aesthetic experience, challenging the established categorical frameworks that have historically been used to conceptualise the arts. A pivotal theme within the volume pertains to the re-evaluation of the modes of perception and attention that emerge in these hybrid practices. These practices, therefore, emerge as pivotal spaces for the destabilisation of sensory and epistemic hierarchies, as well as for the exploration of alternative modes of relating to the visible, the audible, and the legible, and the facilitation of these processes.

The present monograph proposes to address hybridisation not only as a formal category, but also as a field of theoretical, aesthetic and political friction from which to rethink contemporary arts. The collection of contributions does not offer closed taxonomies; rather, it forms an open space for reflection. This space invites the reader to approach current creation from the perspective of complexity, the intersection of knowledge, and the constant questioning of disciplinary boundaries.

Editors:

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

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Cover image: Carolina Cerezo Dávila, Ventrílocuo, para acordeón y flauta, 2022, Fragment  from score ©Carolina Cerezo Dávila –courtesy of the author–

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