From ‘in-between’ to ‘node’: shifting conceptions of intermediality

Abstract

In her article ‘Border Talks: The problematic status of media borders in the current debate about intermediality’ Rajewsky points out that the concept of intermediality as a crossing of media borders has come under scrutiny. Critics emphasize that today’s art is characterized by an increasing dissolution of media borders and claim that the criterion of medial border crossing no longer applies. We can frame this stance within the context of the digitalization of contemporary culture where hybridity has replaced media specificity.

A similar shift in thinking has occurred in the work of the Intermediality working group. The group’s first book (2006) emphasized the notion of the ‘in-between’. Intermediality was put forward as an artistic force that operates in-between performer and audience, media and realities. The intermedial was conceived of as a creative gap, an enabling space where distinct media met and new modes of representation and experience came into existence.

The group’s second book (2010) set out to investigate intermediality in the context of digital culture. The focus shifted from the notion of the in-between towards the idea of ‘both-and’, that seemed better to characterize contemporary performance culture. Concepts such as ‘gap’, ‘clash’ and ‘hypermediacy’ were replaced by ‘node’, ‘network’ and ‘immediacy’. Intermediality was addressed as an aesthetic rather than an artistic force, implying a shift from a focus on art to a broader perspective on cultural production.

I will address the group’s shifts in conception of ‘the intermedial’ over the last decade by way of the question as to what is gained and lost in those shifts. For example, what are the consequences of no longer thinking about intermediality in terms of medial gaps, clashes and disturbances for the previously vaunted critical and political potential of intermediality?