A reflection on intermediality

Intermediality has become an often-used concept across different discourses and for this reason requires definition and contextualisation. As early as 1967, Fluxus artist Dick Higgins uses the term ‘intermedia’ to ‘emphasize the dialectic between media’, as opposed to the Renaissance idea of medium purity (Higgins 1967).    

From a formal perspective, intermediality brings about the attenuation of medium specificity and the diffusion of ‘monomedia’ through an affective interaction between and across monomedial forms (Schröter 2010, 107). Whilst it is possible for a specific medium – video, film, photography, live action - to be identified, apprehended or sensed in intermedial performances, medium specificity is always troubled by the intervention, co-presence and co-engagement of another medium. The concept of intermediality is, therefore, reified in hybrid forms associated with poststructural, postmodern and postdramatic performance practices. 

The hybridity produced by intermedial processes is often compelling at a formal level, but performance making requires an equally captivating thematic content to sustain engagement beyond the surface of audio-visual spectacle.