intermedia

Intermedia is a term used in art and media studies to describe works and practices that blur or cross the conventional boundaries between artistic media. It emphasizes hybridity, process, and experience, often bringing together text, image, sound, performance, sculpture, and installation in a single work or series of works. Intermedia seeks to move beyond the autonomy of individual media and to explore how different forms can illuminate each other.

The term was popularized in the 1960s by American artist Dick Higgins, who described intermedia as art that exists between or across media and rejects the hierarchy that places one medium above others. It emerged from experimental circles such as Fluxus, Happenings, and early conceptual art, and became a vocabulary for projects that could not be easily categorized as painting, sculpture, poetry, or theater alone.

Practices labeled intermedia are often collaborative, participatory, or performative, and may be ephemeral or documented through multiple forms. They frequently use live events, installations, documentation, and media technologies to create networks of meanings. Intermedia has influenced later developments in installation art, video and media art, performance, and digital art, contributing to the broader idea of intermediality in contemporary art.

See also: Fluxus; Happenings; performance art; installation; video art; multimedia; intermediality.