The Ephemera Society of America (ESA) holds an annual three-day conference in Old Greenwich, Ct. in March devoted to sharing and exploring various aspects of ephemera. The first day is devoted to presentations of papers around a specific theme and to exhibits and member forums. This is followed by a two-day ephemera trade fair with […]
Read More »
Australasian Journal of American Studies Call for Papers “The Materials of American Studies,” December 2012. Bill Brown observes that by the end of the nineteenth century, “the invention, production, distribution and consumption of things rather suddenly came to define a national culture” [Sense of Things 4]. This issue of the Australasian Journal of American Studies, […]
Read More »
People are making more waste than ever before. The desire to luxuriate and waste is part of human nature. Humans are inherently wasteful. We’ve heard it before. But I doubt it. So I did an experiment: Rubbish Topographies is a landscape made of donated trash. Although the pile of tea bags and cardboard may bring to […]
Read More »
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s recent article, “After the Great Quake, Living with Earth’s Uncertainty” is about how the earthquake and tsunami in Japan “remind us that we exist in geologic time.” He links the earthquake and its aftermath with climate change, saying, “[a]s we watch the specter of climate change unfold — trying to grasp the shifting, […]
Read More »
Picking up discarded items from the curb can be tricky, even in a city as practiced as New York. Who wants to risk hauling a TV down three blocks and up four flights of stairs to find out it doesn’t work? Or what if that nice side table has bedbugs? Luckily, artist Sarah Nicole Phillips […]
Read More »
This entry is based on the premise that 20th century models of pollution can no longer describe or solve the problems of 21st century plastic pollution. What follows is meant to be an accessible introduction to this problem. Two scenarios first caught my attention and lead me to study plastic pollution. The first is that […]
Read More »
Elextrolux has commodified, beautified, and publicized one of the worst pollution dilemmas of the century. Last Fall they unveiled “Vacs from the Sea,” a series of vacuum cleaners made from ocean plastics. Each vac uses plastic from one of five global gyre locations collected in collaboration with environmental groups. The North Sea edition, for example, […]
Read More »
Discard Studies 