Ephemeral (pronounced
ih-fem-er-uhl)
(1) Lasting a very short time; short-lived;
transitory.
(2) In biology, a short-lived organism (usually
defined as a life-span less then twenty-four hours) as with some flowers,
insects, and microscopic life.
(3) In geology, pertaining to a usually dry body
of water which fills for brief periods during and after rain.
1560s: From the New Latin ephemerus from the Ancient Greek ἐφήμερος (ephḗmeros), the more common form of ἐφημέριος (ephēmérios)
(of, for, or during the day, living or lasting but for a day, short-lived,
temporary), the construct being ἐπί (epí) (on)
+ ἡμέρα (hēméra)
(day). Originally from the medicine of
antiquity as a descriptor of diseases and life-spans (lasting but one day), the
extended sense of "transitory" is from the 1630s. The evocative phrase from the Medieval Latin,
memento mori, translates as "remember
that you will die". Synonyms are: short-lived,
fleeting, transitory, short, temporary, brief, fugitive, transient, volatile,
episodic, evanescent, flitting, impermanent and fugacious. Ephemeral is a noun & adjective, ephemerality is a noun, ephemerally is an adverb and ephemeric is an adjective; the noun plural is ephemerals. An ephemeron (ephemera the plural) is "a temporary thing"
Ephemeral art
Ephemeral art, as a defined movement, dates from
the work of the Fluxus group in the 1960s.
Originally a platform created to disseminate political messages and
critiques of materialist capitalism, the genre developed from the merely
ephemeral to the concept of auto-destructive art in which objects existed only
for the purpose of their own destruction.
It was perhaps the purest and most original art of the high cold war.
Recreation of Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive
installation (1960), exhibition Art and
the Sixties: This was Tomorrow, Tate Gallery 2004.
John Sharkey
(1936-2004) and Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) were most influential in the development
of Auto-Destructive Art and best remembered for the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966 although the first public
demonstration of Metzger’s concepts was at the Temple Gallery, London, in June
1960. Metzger preferred to describe
auto-destructive art as “a public art for industrial societies” and for the installation
used in 1960, he hid himself behind a pane of glass covered with a white nylon
sheet. As the exhibition began, he used
a brush to apply a hydrochloric acid solution to the fabric and as the material
dissolved, creating a swirling, glue-like coating on the glass, he slowly
became visible through the holes. The
presentation also included waste in plastic bags and models for
auto-destructive sculptures. The work was re-created in 2004 by the Tate Gallery
for the exhibition Art and the Sixties:
This was Tomorrow.
Table (circa 1958), one of Gustav Metzger’s non-ephemeral works.
Metzger’s had first discussed his concept of
auto-destructive art in a manifesto issued in November 1959. In this statement, he emphasized how the most
robust, and apparently durable, mechanically-manufactured objects (and those in
which he though society was vesting a dangerous faith) ultimately would degrade
and eventually disappear, a process which humans might delay but not
prevent. A second volume of his manifesto
followed the next March in which he elaborated, explaining that
auto-destructive art existed to highlight society’s obsession with destruction
and the damaging effects of machinery on human life. Although he didn’t reference it, there were
elements in the manifestos which echoed the warnings of the dangers inherent in
an uncritical faith in technology made by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) in his final address to the court at the end
of the Nuremberg trial. As well as
carrying an anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist message, in the context of the
early years of the Cold War the anti-nuclear tone of Metzger’s auto-destructive
art was blatant. His views never changed
but, after taking the concept to a natural conclusion of public interest, his
work assumed more conventional forms although the political agenda remained, addressing
the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, terrorism
and climate change.
Photographers can emulate ephemerality even without post-production editing by using light to "overwhelm" the focus: This is a three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.
Albert Speer and the permanence of the ephemeral
Nuremberg Rally, 1934.Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains. Although he would later admit the monometalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his apologia was always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg. Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable. Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".
Few though were unimpressed by Lichdom. Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.” History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps. Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea of the searchlights to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used. Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational. It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.
Speer
had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in
Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence
he was lucky to receive. His interest in
light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic
of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand
pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European
buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at
different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers
& carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window
tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures. Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his
youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he
pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at
different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.
It was a shame the book was
never written. He recalled also the
effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights. The
result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against
the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of
architecture and light.” It was at
the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something
of a harbinger and deliberately so. He
was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom,
thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting,
like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly
he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only
for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the
most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial
phenomenon.” Surprisingly, for someone who planned the
great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures,
the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of
lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing. In all his post-war writings, although there’s
much rejection as “a failure” of the
plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical
on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer
(leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)
vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of
regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it. As he was contemplating a return to the
drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind
deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid
goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will
I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department
store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world? Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning
tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He
will erect buildings for eternity!’ And
now gyms!” As things transpired, not even a gym was
built and he instead wrote his history in text.
Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.
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