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.
