A series of interdisciplinary contributions around the political and social dimensions of ecology and its implications in the humanities and social sciences, artistic practices and design.
The notion of ecology not only figures centrally in current debates around climate change, but also traverses contemporary discourses in the arts, the humanities, and the social and techno sciences. In its present reformulation it refers to the multi-layered and multi-dimensional nexus of reciprocities between living processes, technological and media practices, i.e. to the complex relations of human and nonhuman agents.
The book Hybrid Ecologies understands ecology as an ambivalent notion, whose multivalence opens up new fields of action and yet, thanks precisely to this openness and vast applicability, at the same time raises questions not least concerning its genealogy. The interdisciplinary contributions seek to explore the political and social effects that a rethinking of community in ecological and thus also in biopolitical terms may provoke, and which consequences the contemporary notion of ecology might entail for artistic and design practices in particular. The present publication is the result of the fifth annual program of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies, which was conceived in cooperation with the Chair of Philosophy | Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Susanne Witzgall is the academic head of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.
Marietta Kesting is junior professor of media theory at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.
Maria Muhle is professor for philosophy and aesthetic theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and founder of the August Verlag Berlin.
Jenny Nachtigall is professor of art history and theory in interim at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.
