thresholds, the bi-annual critical journal of architecture, art and media culture of the department of architecture at MIT invites submissions for issue 31 'ephemera'

DUE: 31 October 2005
(please see details for submissions below)

THRESHOLDS 31 - 'EPHEMERA'

We have accelerated into an age in which information is as fleeting as our response to it, and the capacity for its processing the new world currency. The relevance of the moment has become eclipsed by that of its own passage, and absolute position has become an easy sacrifice for the velocity on offer. We have been at last swept by the flux of our times into a time defined by its own flux. Time has become both the axis and the function.

thresholds 31 seeks to explore this condition through identifying, suggesting, tracing and questioning the notion of ephemera through time and cultural relevance. What role does ephemera play within current cultural practice and thought? What are its historical traces and its cultural import? What are the projects in which it has become manifest — deliberately, or not — and why? Are we longing for a future or a past, or neither?

Contributions from all fields including, but not limited to, scholarly works are welcome. thresholds 31 will be the first issue to accept both text and time-based media submissions. Time-based media submissions might include but are not limited to, video, sound, animation, etc. and will be published in digital format.

ephemera, n., transf. and fig. One who or something which has a transitory existence. [Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition 1989]