Rather than denoting disappearance, ephemerality often signifies transformation – of information, matter and relations. Some ephemera do not simply vanish; instead, systems privileging permanence tend to overlook or devalue states of flux. The network thus examines the ephemeral as a dynamic process that unsettles rigid ontologies of being and endurance.

What endures and what fades is closely bound to structures of power. The fragility of existence may function both as an expression of precarity and as an act of resistance against cultures that fetishize stability and preservation. The study of ephemeral materials (or immaterials) exposes how methods of making permanence can enact violence by erasing alternative temporalities and knowledges.

Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, the network seeks to broaden understandings of what counts as transient and to relativize disciplinary standpoints. It interrogates academic and archival practices that privilege permanence and control, contributing to the decolonization of knowledge infrastructures and to the revaluation of impermanent modes of knowing and creating.

The network foregrounds that ephemerality is relative rather than absolute. What is deemed fleeting or enduring depends on perspective and systems of comparison: bureaucratic paper records appear perishable next to digital data; oral literature is framed as more transient than the written word; and all human-made artefacts seem ephemeral when juxtaposed with radioactive waste. These hierarchies reveal the importance of scale as well as epistemic and political valuations of permanence.

Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, the network seeks to broaden understandings of what counts as transient and to relativize disciplinary standpoints. It interrogates academic and archival practices that privilege permanence and control, contributing to the decolonization of knowledge infrastructures and to the revaluation of impermanent modes of knowing and creating.