ImPermanence : Cultures In/Out of Time

(Im)permanence: Cultures in/out of Time explores the interplay between permanence and impermanence in cultural and artistic practices in the West and elsewhere. This volume engenders questions of the transition from traditional and contemporary takes on permanence in art, the preservation of ephemeral artwork, permanence and impermanence as understood in the Western, East Asian, and American Indian cultures, and art forms and permanence.

This volume addresses particularly crucial artists, including Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy, as well as a wide variety of historical epochs and cultures, from the destroyed Buddhas at Bamiyan through attempts at preservation and commemoration in the wake of historical catastrophes like 9/11 and the genocide in Cambodia to the current trend toward globalization in contemporary art.

Contributors include Bill Anthes, Jenny Blain, Lowry Burgess, Erica DiBenedetto, Erika Doss, Libby Karlinger Escobedo, Margaret Headstrom, Tienfong Ho, Xiaofei Kang, Pip Laurenson, Margaret Lindauer, Daniel Listoe, Clark Lunberry, Howard S. Melzer, Lenore Metrick, Mary O’Neill, Anna Perricci, Jan Schall, Franco Sciannameo, Terry Smith, Donald S. Sutton, Andrew Todd, Alexander Vari, and Robert J. Wallis.

Judith Schachter is Professor of Anthropology, History and Art at Carnegie Mellon University and former Director of the Center for the Arts in Society. Her publications include Ruth Benedict (1983), Kinship with Strangers (1994), A Town Without Steel: Envisioning Homestead, with C. Brodsky (1998), and A Sealed and Secret Kinship (2000).

Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital (2006), German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour (2004), and Literature and German Reunification (1999).