On the importance of transgression in academic outcomes

This Special Issue of Technoetic Arts ( TA ) journal is dedicated to the explorations and provocations emerging from the latest edition of the conference Taboo–Transgression–Transcendence in Art & Science ( TTT ). These seven articles, initially selected, presented and discussed on the island of Malta (2023), show the international and interdisciplinary range of a community which started to take shape almost a decade ago. At the time of the release of this publication, practically two years after TTT2023 , we stand on a particular moment in between post-pandemic exhaustion and inability to conceive the practicality of bellic conflict. How distasteful, the lack of better narrative still based on dubious nationalist ideas, hideously hiding economic interests of an elite who seems to care less, and blame more, the anonymous citizen as scapegoat to induce self-blame on ecological precarity and the loss of vision for possible grassroots – the themes of taboo, transgression and transcendence have never been more relevant. As Goya perceived wonders in the collaboration between reason and imagination too saw hope along unmapped roads which were the sole reason why giving up was not the wisest choice and why those who embrace the unexplored should not despair. In this line of thought, the authors included in this issue demonstrate how art and humanities are responding to these post-truth conditions by questioning assumptions about citizen vs. technology power relations and the ethics of life and death research practices.