ephemerality
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Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, from digital media to types of streams. "There is no single definition of ephemerality". With respect to unique performances, for example, it has been noted that " hemerality is a quality caused by the ebb and flow of the crowd's concentration on the performance and a reflection of the nostalgic character of specific performances". Because different people may value the passage of time differently, ephemerality may be a relative, perceptual concept: "In brief, what is short-lived may not be the object itself, but the attention we afford it".Ronald Beiner, ''Political Philosophy: What It Is and Why It Matters'' (2014), p. 10.


Ephemerality and nature


Geographical features

An ephemeral
stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...
is that which only exists following
precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, rain and snow mixed ("sleet" in Commonwe ...
. They are not the same as intermittent or seasonal waterbodies, which exist for longer periods, but not all year round. Ephemeral streams can be difficult to "conceptually defin ; those that are discontinuous, due to altering between aggradation or degradation, have the appearance of continual change. Furthermore, the characteristics of terrain and rainfall are profound in affecting ephemeral streams. Ephemeral waterbodies experience formative change upon the end of a hydroperiod. "Due to lack of continuous hydrology data, the designation of sites as ephemeral or intermittent is necessarily tenuous". Ephemeral streams feature a low degree of hydrological connectivity. Small wetlands are often ephemeral and ephemeral ecosystems are often aquatic; ephemeral wetlands, streams and ponds are a varied and global occurrence. In
northeastern United States The Northeastern United States (also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. Located on the East Coast of the United States, ...
, ephemeral freshwater systems are abundant and are "critical to the maintenance of forest biodiversity". Hydroperiod, predation, competition and food availability are among the "highly heterogeneous" elements of these features. In tropical biomes,
amphibian Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniote, anamniotic, tetrapod, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class (biology), class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all Tetrapod, tetrapods, but excl ...
s often reside in ephemeral habitats during dry seasons; opportunistic species utilise similar and ephemeral habitats for food, sleep or mating. Environments akin to ephemeral ponds can be very significant sites of reproduction for amphibians; many other organism make use of ephemeral ponds, pools and streams to breed. Those which do utilise these sites are significantly constrained by time thus they mature, reproduce or disperse before evaporation. Ephemeral pools lasting only days or weeks are exclusively used for breeding by Fletcher's frog regardless of the precarious survival of offspring. Fletcher's frogs use these sites to exploit them, by-passing predation and competition. Tadpoles, however, are hindered by ephemeral streams, as can surrounding systems. Limited and unpredictable food availability means ephemeral waterbodies may be rife with cannibalism. Specific adaptions to ephemeral pools are abundant. Human alterations to the habitats of ephemeral nectar that flying foxes consume has led to urban migration.
Climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...
significantly affects ephemeral freshwater systems and changes in climates may be precisely identified by the ecosystems of ephemeral pools. Ephemeral habitat patches have repeatedly been assessed as detrimental to metapopulation persistence, although metapopulations are not always negatively affected by ephemeral landscapes. These patches occur as a result of the habitat's turnover. Ephemeral streams have, relative to their perennial counterparts, lower species richness; the streams are "potentially demanding" for inhabitants, although some species do reside. Ephemeral rivers sometimes form waterholes in geological depressions or areas scoured by erosion, and are common in arid regions of Australia. The ephemerality of a river network is a particularly significant element in the
hydrological Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydro ...
transmission of waterborne diseases, via a direct and indirect presence in the transmission cycle – the nature of the disease and area covered are important factors as well. Diseases like
malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...
,
dengue fever Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease caused by dengue virus, prevalent in tropical and subtropical areas. Asymptomatic infections are uncommon, mild cases happen frequently; if symptoms appear, they typically begin 3 to 14 days after i ...
, chikungunya, zika and schistosomiasis are found in ephemeral waterbodies due to their vectors' relation toward and/or reliance on them. Examples of ephemeral streams are the Luni river in
Rajasthan Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, Ugab River in
Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...
, and a number of small ephemeral
watercourse A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...
s that drain Talak in northern
Niger Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state Geography of Niger#Political geography, bordered by Libya to the Libya–Niger border, north-east, Chad to the Chad–Niger border, east ...
. Other notable ephemeral rivers include the
Todd River The Todd River (Arrernte language, Arrernte: ''Lhere Mparntwe / Lhere Imatukua / Artepe Ulpaye'') is an Ephemeral, ephemeral river in the southern Northern Territory, central Australia. The origins of the Todd River are in the MacDonnell Ranges ...
and Sandover River in
Central Australia Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and ...
as well as the Son River, Batha River, and the Trabancos River. Any
endorheic basin An endorheic basin ( ; also endoreic basin and endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water (e.g. rivers and oceans); instead, the water drainage flows into permanent ...
, or closed basin, that contains a playa (dry lake) at its drainage lowpoint can become an ephemeral lake. Examples include
Lake Carnegie Lake Carnegie is a reservoir that straddles the borders of the towns of Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton, West Windsor, New Jersey, West Windsor, Plainsboro, New Jersey, Plainsboro and South Brunswick, New Jersey, South Brunswick in Mercer County ...
in
Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
, Lake Cowal in
New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
, Mystic Lake and Rogers Lake in California, and Sevier Lake in
Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
. Even the driest and lowest place in North America,
Death Valley Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is thought to be the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth during summer. Death Valley's Badwat ...
(more specifically Badwater Basin), became flooded with a short-lived ephemeral lake in the spring of 2005. Costelloe et al. (2009) describes salt lakes found in the arid zone of Australia as profoundly ephemeral. There are also ephemeral islands such as Banua Wuhu and Home Reef. These islands appear when volcanic activity increases their height above sea level, but disappear over several years due to wave erosion. Bassas da India, on the other hand, is a near-sea level island that appears only at low tide. On account of changing demarcation, shores exist as ephemeral. Only a small amount of southern
Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...
's secondary forests reach maturity, indicating that they may be "generally ephemeral".
Deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...
forests, via the seasonal change of leaves, are subject to natural ephemeral changes. Ephemeral pools located in forests are commonly known as "vernal pools", often lasting in a seasonal manner.
Landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...
s feature ephemeral changes of both natural and man-made origin. Furrows, haystacks and sheaves are ephemeral aspects of a landscape.


Biological processes

Plants whose life cycle is significantly less than the time of a growing season are deemed ephemeral. Winter annuals, Epilobium and Senecio vulgaris are examples of ephemeral plants. The conditions for ephemeral plants are markedly present in deserts. Animals can be ephemeral, with brine shrimp and the mayfly being examples. The placenta is considered an ephemeral organ present during
gestation Gestation is the period of development during the carrying of an embryo, and later fetus, inside viviparous animals (the embryo develops within the parent). It is typical for mammals, but also occurs for some non-mammals. Mammals during pregn ...
and
pregnancy Pregnancy is the time during which one or more offspring gestation, gestates inside a woman's uterus. A multiple birth, multiple pregnancy involves more than one offspring, such as with twins. Conception (biology), Conception usually occurs ...
. Ephemerality is a component of
olfaction The sense of smell, or olfaction, is the special sense through which smells (or odors) are perceived. The sense of smell has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, hazards, and pheromones, and plays a role in taste. In humans, ...
, breathing, speech and memory, aligned with permanency in the latter. With regards to witnessing an artwork in a museum, limited research indicates that the ephemerality of solely gazing at the artwork results in greater remembrance compared to the resulting memory from taking a photograph. Psychologists have studied why ephemerality may improve memory retention; social psychologist Karl E. Scheibe, conversely, suggested that ephemeral images are only memorable if repeated. The ephemerality of memory leads objects to assume the function of begeting remembrance on account of their greater stability.


Ephemerality and society


Ephemeral objects

Objects which are ephemeral, per one perspective, are those whose compositional material experience chemical or physical changes and are thus permanently altered; this process occurs in a matter of decades. Furthermore, ephemerality can be perceived as defiance of value or durability; common uses of the term indicate a "complicated relationship between temporality and value". Ephemerality is a matter of varying scale and can affect the entire spectrum of literature, from a "finely bound" Bible to a "hastily printed" handbill: "Paper is the medium of permanence and ephemerality at once". Due to them often outlasting their expressed purpose, these objects can be perceived as temporal and ontological oddities; ephemerality has been described as constitutionally liminal. Ephemerality has been seen as indicative of epochs like the Printing Revolution, a greater expansion thereof, the
Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
era, the
Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
, the Georgian era,
modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...
, or the "emergent post-print age". The likes of food, clothes, novels, zines, illnesses, breath, regimes, persons, glass, ash and ephemera have been said to illustrate and/or be affected by ephemerality. The new media of the 20th century conditioned perceptions of ephemerality in the 21st century—the advent of the
telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
,
camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
, and film projector instilled an understanding of ephemeral media. Scholars such as
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...
,
Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach ...
, and
Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
saw the distinctly and intentionally ephemeral practice of fashion as emblematic of modernity. Scholars have described ephemerality as affixed to the present, a present that is ephemeral insofar as it is contingent. Baudelaire, who considered
aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
to be centered around an interplay of the perennial and the ephemeral, defined the artistic component of modernity by its ephemeral quality. Sarah Kofman posited that art is utilised to abate the "intolerable nature of all ephemeral things". Ephemerality has been relevant to a considerable amount of art; various artists have drawn upon the matter to explore time, memory, politics, emotions, spirituality and death. The
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...
,
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...
, Surreal, and Futurist movements all incorporated ephemerality as have Kuba, Mono-ha, and ''
ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...
''. Perceptions of ephemerality vary between cultures, from melancholy and mitigation to embrace. Performance art has frequently been described as ephemeral in nature; with regards to historical performances, the traces: playbills, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and material artifacts are themselves ephemeral. Literature is ephemeral, including definitions and "all printed texts". ''Ephemeral'' was first used colloquially in reference to printed matters. By 1750, an "expansion of all kinds of ephemeral print" had occurred. Hazlitt contended that such ephemerality was the result of widespread aestheticism, thus the creations were subject to being abruptly disregarded due to the cascading "gaze of fashion". Wallace Stevens adjusted his poetic standards due to a "perception of ephemerality" that living in New York City instigated.
Art Spiegelman Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman ( ; born February 15, 1948), professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazin ...
asserted that the format of comics, even during degradation, defies ephemerality, although they have been deemed as such. Women's writing, the likes of diaries and political pamphlets, have amassed a status as long being ephemeral, acknowledged by some affected in the then-present. The ubiquity of digital media has spurred the opinion that print material is comparatively less ephemeral. Elisa New and Anna Akhmatova varyingly opined that poetry is a means of repealing mortal ephemerality, with Akhamatova invoking the aphorism ("skillfulness takes time and life is short"). Ephemeral objects chiefly disappear; when preserved it is often knowingly, having been "rescued from ephemerality", though this practice is still fraught with uncertainty and an object's ephemerality may only be suspended, thus still capable of being transitory. The legacy of ephemerality often manifests as "traces, glimmers, residues, and specks of things". Literature may contest, document or approximate ephemerality although the immateral nature means that there can only be an approximation: "In other words, there must always be an ephemeral beyond the ephemeral". Film has been used to document and combat ephemeral aspects of human development. Digital media's encompassing archival process means that information of varying importance can either be affixed or ephemeral, the former seen as the more generally common outcome. Digital personas, on account of precariousness and whim, can be entirely ephemeral, without any record.
Grey literature Grey literature (or gray literature) is material and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional publishing, commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (a ...
has prove particularly vulnerable to the internet's ephemerality. ''Ephemeral'' acquired its common meaning of short-living in the mid-19th century and has connotations of passing time, fragility, change, disappearance, transformation, and the "philosophically ultimate vision of our own existence". Sarah Kofman questioned if "the beauty that conceals the evanescent nature of all things were itself ephemeral". Rather than melancholic,
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
and Walter Pater viewed ephemerality as valuable; awareness and acceptance were to Freud commendable.


Ephemerality as a human condition

Multiple scholars have viewed ephemerality as intrinsic to the
human condition The human condition can be defined as the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, reason, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered ...
, a phenomenon of physicality. A significant amount of living is ephemeral, considered by some as a component of everyday life: "we might best understand the ephemeral as a routine and constant force... that establishes the presence of the everyday". Ephemeral aspects are evident in communication, of both digitial and physical origin. In the digital realm, online interactions straddle permanency and ephemerality, new posts proliferate such that participants adopt a social norm that "the discourse will pass and be forgotten as the past". Ephemerality is a technologically and socially reliant concept – relative and historically changing. The rudimentary technology of early radio led to the media broadcast being ephemeral and for a substantial amount of time spoken communication was ephemeral. Written communication, historically and presently, has been influenced by ephemerality. The emergence of new digital media and technology develops what we deem ephemeral, to the point that ephemerality is perhaps an "outdated concept". Within the context of modern media dissemination, YouTube videos, viral emails and photos have been identified as ephemeral; as have means of advertising, both physical and digital and the internet collectively. ''Ephemeral media'' has been described as that which is brief in duration and/or circulation, adjacent to "the primary texts of contemporary entertainment culture". YouTube has "become a hugely successful aggregator of ephemeral media". In 2009, Ian Christie considered that a substantial amount of modern media, aligned with "rapid proliferati n, "may prove much more ephemeral than the flip-book". Wang Tao, Stevens and Rubem Fonseca evoked ephemerality via female characters;
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...
used the rainbow as a symbol whereas grass occupies a similar role in the Bible; F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Keats elicited melancholic ephemerality in showcases of consumption. Historically, the ephemerality of dreams was utilised in ample East Asian literature as a metaphor for immaterial reality whereas Baroque writings depicted the matter as analogous to life. Scholar of
comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...
Stuart Lasine noted that writers have frequently invoked ephemerality as a negative aspect of the
human condition The human condition can be defined as the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, reason, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered ...
. Ephemerality was profound to Dōgen and was intertwined with sorrow and regret; he used "the imagery of ephemerality" in a '' waka'' concerning death. Ephemerality has received increased attention from modern academics, in fields such as: literary studies,
art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...
, book history, digital media studies, performance studies – "and the 'archival turn' in the
humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...
as a whole". The ephemerality of dance has engendered concern since at least the sixteenth century. Curators of modern and contemporary art have increasingly expressed a similar interest; curator of said genres Jan Schall described them as varyingly ephemeral. Ephemerality present in digital literature and poetry has seen critical analysis. Russell questioned if scholarly conceptions of "the everyday" was deeply intertwined with ephemerality, despite attention to a relation being thus far faint. Social historians and historians of sound have contended their subject's ephemerality by utilising more material forms; creative soundwork has long been subordinate to these forms on account of its ephemerality. The ephemerality of the internet and features that engender ephemerality, such as
link rot Link rot (also called link death, link breaking, or reference rot) is the phenomenon of hyperlinks tending over time to cease to point to their originally targeted file, web page, or server due to that resource being relocated to a new address ...
, has elicited concern in regards to scholarly practice. Ephemerality has been studied in the context of dancing. Witnessing a dance that will be rendered ephemeral is resultingly commodified and of greater desire to prospecting audiences; the same is true of
fair A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Fairs showcase a wide range of go ...
s. Muñoz posited that the physical proximation of dance, which coupled with the "shared rhythm", results in a unified yet ephemeral status of those engaged. '' La Sylphide'' sees ephemerality as a notable theme. Professor of Dance Mark Franko contended that the artform is approaching a state of being "post-ephemeral" while Diane Taylor viewed the lasting impact a performance may have as negating notions of ephemerality. The documentation of other ephemeral events: protests, installations, exhibitions, are often meager – public events, of varying size, naturally generate ephemeral material. " phemeralityand disposability" have been perceived as components "of an American ethos"; alternative history novels such as '' The Man in the High Castle'' and '' The Plot Against America'' depict Americana and the nation itself as ephemeral. Ephemerality has been central to Buddhism; ''
Yogācāra Yogachara (, IAST: ') is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through the interior lens of meditation, as well as philosophical reasoning (hetuvidyā). ...
'' teaches a version of ontology that centers around universal ephemerality''.'' Ephemerality has been identified as relevant to queer cultures; José Esteban Muñoz argued that queerness and ephemerality are intertwined, as the former has been expressed in methods which are prone to fade upon the "touch of those who would erase queer possibility". Freud considered culture as the prevailing element exempt from ephemerality. Scheibe saw the likes of live theater, travel abroad, stand-up comedy, and political pundits as engendering greater ephemerality by reducing attention spans and sense of personal history.
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
and
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
Reiko Tomii described ephemerality as a "defining issue of the 1960s". In the 21st century, ephemerality "continues to signify concerns about the overflow of information, its evanescence, and questions of what or should be preserved". David Harvey defined
postmodernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
as "a total acceptance of ephemerality". Architecture of an ephemeral nature appears as increasingly commonplace, on account of global and capricious hyper-mobility and mass displacement. Marc Augé observed ephemerality as key to the likes of airports, malls, supermarkets, office blocks, and hotels thus rendering them, per his definition, " non-places". Architecture scholar Anastasia Karandinou argued that the practice's modern relation to ephemerality correlated with digital media's evolution, which she says has enabled new conceptions of space and everyday thinking. Of an indefinite and contentious nature, the definition of a
region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...
is ephemeral.


See also

* Ephemeroptera * Vanitas * On Transience * Liminal space


References

* * * * * * * *


Further reading

* Christine Buci-Glucksmann, ''Esthetique De L'ephemere'', Galilee, {{ISBN, 2-7186-0622-3 Concepts in aesthetics Metaphysical properties