*•Ephemeral•*

looking to raise awareness on the effects of climate change to our beloved planet

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Photos of trash disposal site by Allison, Sheila and Stephanie

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Ephemeral Presents:

Final Destination

With this project our aim was to have the students of Florida International University become aware of where the trash they throw out goes. We went to our local trash disposal center and accumulated some photos of the workers, trash, and environment of these disposal centers. We then walked around our campus and asked the students to give their take on trash and recycling. Our group as well as the interviewed students noticed that so much stuff that is thrown out has potential to be recycled or reused. In this video is a series of responses and reaction given by our fellow school mates.

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Task List:

Take photos of landfills and trash disposal places/centers

Print photos

Create boards and arrangement of photos

Come up with a question to ask viewers

Go around campus and interview students and faculty about the trash disposals

Create a video of interviews and project images

Timeline:

Monday 11/29-

Allison, Stephanie, and Sheila:

9:30 am - 12:15 pm Take pictures of landfills and trash disposal places/centers

Sheila:

12:15 pm - N/A go to Walgreens or CVS to print photos that were taken earlier in the day

Allison:

12:15 pm - N/A create image arrangement plan, using photoshop and the images taken earlier in the day

Tuesday 11/30-

Allison, Stephanie, and Sheila:

N/A - create questions to ask students when interviewing

Wednesday 11/31-

Allison, Stephanie, and Sheila:

9:30 am - 9:50 am put photos on board to carry around campus

9:50 am - 12:15 pm walk around campus interviewing students and faculty about trash and the images that see on our board

Stephanie - interviewer

Sheila - filmer

Allison - holds the board

Allison:

12:15 pm - N/A create and edit video

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🌱Proposal #3🌱

For this proposal we want to bring awareness specifically to coral reefs and damage that liter does to the ocean life. We will influence society around us by displaying posters with beautiful coral reef and fish, all around the city of Miami. While we as a group, go out to collect trash and litter to then create something out of it. Mandy Barker is a photographer who creates visually stunning works on the impact of oceanic waste. Hong Kong Soup:1826 depicts plastics gathered from over 30 different beaches in Hong Kong, where over 1,826 tons of plastic waste are added to landfills every day. Tuula Närhinen is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. For Baltic Sea Plastique she created nine sculptures made of materials washed up by the sea on Harakka Island. She then filmed the “creatures” she created in the water surrounding the island and built an exhibition presenting these creatures as if they were scientific specimens.

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🌱Proposal #2🌱

For our second proposal, Ephemeral plans to travel to our nearest landfill or trash disposal center and take photographs of how and where the trash we throw out so carelessly ends up. We took inspiration for this project from artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ series of photos where she records and takes Polaroid pictures of maintenance workers at their jobs and displays them as art.

We plan to take photos of the workers at the disposal centers as well as the trash we see around the area. We would also like to take photos of regular people we find who are throwing out trash with their permission of course. Finally, we grab all the photos we took and align and place them in a popular place around our campus or city and have people view the photos. We will try to get feedback from our viewers asking them how it made them feel to see where their trash goes. Our idea is to emphasize the final destination of our everyday trash collection in hopes that in the future people will think twice before throwing something away and consider reusing or recycling it.

- Sheila Hernandez Cruz

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🌱 Proposal #1 🌱

For our first proposal, Ephemeral wants to create a range of different coloring pages that highlights the effects of climate change on Florida. These pages will be distributed and discussed over as people come and color them. We wish to distribute these pages either on campus or at a local park/event

Focusing on climate change’s effects on coral reefs, Florida's everglades, agriculture, and storms/hurricanes. In addition, we want to create our own natural paints for people to use on these coloring pages. Made from version flowers and other plants that can be found in Florida. We have come up with two ways of making these paints, as shown.

- Allison Alperin

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Pablo Helguiera

Pablo has a lot of work all over the world that has been controversial for society. He sparks up conversation and new thoughts to any viewer of his work. He is 50 years old now and an Assistant Professor at the College of Performing Arts at the New School. Based in New York where he continues to influence the most popular city in the world. is Born April 25,1971 in Mexico City, Mexico. Kingston University Penrhyn Road Campus. He mainly works with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction.

His activist work called “Ask Leo” is one example of many where he is being socially engaged.

Gonzalez

“Thank you so much for having me here. My position in this discussion is that this so-called revolution or shift in art making, while I concede its interesting, I would not rush to declare it a seismic movement that may change things in a fundamental sense”

Muse

“I would like to question your comparison between culture and counterculture and what is happening in art right now.”

-Stephanie Rodrigues

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John Ahearn

John Ahearn was born in Binghamton, New York in 1951. Ahearn attended Cornell University in the 1970s and later moved to the South Bronx in New York City. He is most well known for his lifecasting, his first experience with casting was when he moved to the City and started his art career. I think Ahearn loves lifecasting people to capture the essence of the people in which he cases. Ahearn said once in an interview that “having an immediate physical relationship with the people that I work with, and I like having an activity that involves direct participation in the making of the artwork.” So it is not just capturing the essence of the people he casts, but it is the collaboration with his community.

Speaking of his community, as I mentioned before he lives in the South Bronx, these are the people highlighted in his exhibition “South Bronx Hall of Fame” which will be one of the exhibitions focusing on this presentation.

The “South Bronx Hall of Fame” is a collection that has been going on since its conception in 1979. Ahearn originally spent a year creating this life case. Within this year Ahearn was trying to embody each person he got to case. Each one has their own narrative describing something about the person it pictures. Just look at "Mario and Norma" it depicts a couple holding each other. Just by looking at their faces we can see so much emotion. It makes us the viewer wonder what they are thinking about? What has happened in there life to make them look this way? We are get a small glimpse into their lives, even if we don't understand them fully.

He has also taught kids at Next Generation Center in New York City how to life cast like he does. The NGC is an organization that help young people pursuit of their aspirations. He help them cast, paint and display their self portraits permanently at the center.

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Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Mierle Laderman Ukeles was born in Denver, Colorado in 1939. She was raised in a Jewish household with her father being a rabbi and received her associates in International Studies in Barnard College. She then went on to receive her artistic training at the Pratt Institute in New York. Finally Ukeles, achieved her honorary doctorates in art at School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She wrote a manifesto titled “Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969!” where she talked about the role a woman plays in her home as well as proclaiming herself to be a maintenance artist. What provoked Mierle Ukeles to make this kind of work was the simple fact that she believed that there is so much work that goes unrecognized by people who devote their lives and she didn’t want those people to go unnoticed.

- Sheila Hernandez Cruz

I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day (1976)

Touch Sanitation Performance (1979-80)

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Socially engaged art

Socially engaged art is art that involves the public and communities in collaboration or social interaction. This type of art can take place in many forms; it just needs to be able to engage with its audience.

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Our groups interests :D

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New Icon Photo

art by: Allison Alperin

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plaster of our groups hand, forearm, and shoulder…

our goal is to connect these three parts with a wire as well as add natural plants onto it