Editorial Team
THE ENTANGLEMENTS THAT DEFINE US

The concepts of “hybrids” and “hybridity” have long transcended biological definitions, becoming indispensable when describing contemporary culture and art and the spaces in which we function. The seventh issue of Elements explores these complex and ambiguous phenomena that permeate our everyday lives, blurring traditional divisions between the natural and the artificial, the organic and the technological, the real and the virtual. No longer a marginal phenomenon, hybrids have entered the mainstream that shapes our perception of the world.

This issue is divided into three thematic sections, each capturing a different aspect of hybridity. The focus of the first section are artistic strategies that explore hybridity. Looking into hoaxes as a creative method, Szymon Zakrzewski investigates how artists construct counterfactual narratives by drawing on authentic historical events. Viktor Witkowski demonstrates that artificial intelligence applied in artistic practice becomes both a tool and a subject of dispute. By comparing works by Alex Israel and Hito Steyerl he is able to analyse different artistic attitudes towards artificial intelligence – from uncritical enthusiasm to warnings against the technological dependencies imposed by corporations. Miłosz Markiewicz discusses art that transcends the boundaries of the human body. His text takes us on a journey through artistic practices, from Stelarc to collectives such as Forensic Architecture, which explore corporeality as a medium for hybrid communication. Ewa Wójtowicz, in turn, examines hybridity through the prism of language and its limitations. She takes as her point of departure Benjamin Bratton’s thesis about the incongruence between vocabulary and a rapidly changing reality. The author discusses artistic attempts to capture the “in‑between” moment when the hybrid is still identifiable as such before it becomes the “new normal.” A selection of such works – from Eva and Franc Mattes to Marguerite Humeau – is provided to portray hybrids as aesthetic and ontological monsters that pose a challenge to our cognitive categories.

The second section is devoted to spaces that lose their unambiguity, becoming sites of exchange and negotiation. Mathilde Roman and Łukasz Białkowski begin this section with a reflection on installations as entities suspended between autonomy and heteronomy. While Mathilde Roman highlights the subtle interplay between an installation’s autonomy and its resonance with the exhibition space, Łukasz Białkowski determinately calls into questions this autonomy, pointing at the co‑creative role of the audience, whose work endows the installations with symbolic and economic value. Hanna Doroszuk revisits the tradition of Surrealist exhibitions that transformed entire galleries into spatial art objects to trace the history of such endeavours in Poland. Błażej Filanowski transports us to a city where hybridity manifests itself in “ecotones” – zones of contact for different social groups. He describes how artists and activists working within them transform urban space, imbuing it with new meanings.

The final section of the issue takes a look at hybridity as a cultural and social phenomenon. Mario Z. Nemes presents it as a force field between the euphoria and the phobia of hybridity, which we have been observing alternating in Western culture for the past two hundred years. On his voyage from fingernails to teeth, Marcin Polak shows how hybrid substances transform our bodies into aesthetic objects and fetishes. The issue closes with Aleksander Wójtowicz’s analysis of culture wars in Poland and their impact on art. He shows how the artistic community responded to social polarisation, becoming both a target of attacks and a space of resistance.

The seventh issue of Elements demonstrates that hybridity is not just an artistic strategy or technological innovation – it is how we experience the world. All the texts share a common belief that boundaries today are fluid and crossing them can both arouse anxiety and boost creative energy.

Enjoy your reading!