Susanne Witzgall Book order

A new approach to the notion of ecology emphasizing its relevance for art 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 this present form, ecology refers to the multilayered and multidimensional nexus of living processes and technological and media practices--that is, to the complex relations of human and nonhuman agents. Hybrid Ecologies understands ecology as an ambivalent notion, whose very broadness simultaneously opens up new fields of action and raises provocative questions, not least concerning its genealogy. This interdisciplinary volume explores the political and social effects of rethinking community in ecological terms, with a particular emphasis on what the contemporary notion of ecology might mean for artistic and design practices. 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, Hybrid Ecologies is a timely and thought-provoking study of one of the most important themes of our time.

The current outlook into the future seems to be largely informed by resignation and anxiety. The understandable scepticism which utopian visions of the future are met with today and the crisis ridden present give rise to nostalgic resorts to seemingly reliable ideas. The book 'The Present of the Future' investigates our present relation to the future and asks which means and strategies artists and scholars pursue today, to gain a new scope of action for shaping alternative futures. How do they create potentials for change and for the imagination of possible futures beyond modernistic idealisms and romanticist projections into remote times? 'The Present of the Future' is the result of the third annual theme of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

Materiality has emerged as a new focus for art, design, and architecture. Where there was once the belief that the form of a work offered more capacity to bestow meaning, "New Materialism" asserts the agency of material within the artistic process, enmeshed as it is within a web of relationships. For Power of Material--Politics of Materiality, editors Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier have brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary team of contributors to deepen the current discourse surrounding materiality. The contributors were participants at a lecture series held at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and, the book presents the resultant discussions and experimental practices.