Some thoughts on ephemerality
For centuries, from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, humanity has inscribed symbols and stories on the walls of public buildings, particularly churches. Architectural structure and figurative imagery combined to communicate and reaffirm fundamental beliefs, the very essence and values of communities. Columns, arches, naves, apses, have been home to frescos, sculptures, mosaics, and have offered an enduring frame of significance.
These testimonies, some of which are also great works of art, leave me wondering what will be of the images we are leaving to those who will come after.
The question isn’t just whether immaterial images can endure through the centuries like those painted and sculpted within cathedrals. More important question is: what sense will future viewers make of the proliferation of images our civilisation is chaotically amassing? Will they be able to understand the cultural meaning of billions of images produced to be instantaneously consumed and immediately forgotten? Or will they simply dismiss them as the by-product of a mass consumerist civilisation, alike the wastes we’re accumulating at the borders of our cities?
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