A marvelous talk today at Stanford from Tim Flohr Sørensen (Copenhagen) about his project – Insignificants – [Link]. So much in a short report on such a beautifully simple experiment. Archaeologists often pride themselves on taking up what is overlooked, insignificant, discarded as irrelevant, detritus, mere traces, garbage. But what does this involve? What happens…
actuality
property, legacy, heritage, and a case for connoisseurship
Project Borderlands – [Link] More reflections on the entanglement of property and colonialism, taste and upbringing, class and inequality. [Link] [Link] [Link] In the early 1700s Admiral George Delaval, wealthy from a career in the Royal Navy, diplomatic service and from overseas investments, bought his old family estate from an impoverished cousin. He hired Sir…
decolonizing the museum
Another contribution to an ongoing discussion at Stanford around the future of Classics and the Humanities [Link]. Colonial loot In 1897 a British military force burned and looted, murdered their way through the capital city of the kingdom of Benin in west Africa. It was another dreadful act aimed at securing political and economic control…
Anselm Kiefer’s archaeological sensibility
Four new works from Anselm Kiefer go on exhibition at Gagosian Le Bourget, Paris, February 7. Marvelous manifestations of the archaeological imagination – [Link] What interests me is the transformation, not the monument. I don’t construct ruins, but I feel ruins are moments when things show themselves. A ruin is not a catastrophe. It is…
Postclassicisms? – a roundtable discussion at Stanford
What future Classics? What’s the point of Classics and Classical Studies?What is the object(ive) of such a disciplinary field?What is the value in and of studying Greek and Roman antiquity? At Stanford we have started a series of conversations around these questions under the title Reframing Classics Our focus today – Postclassicisms – a book…
resonating pasts – Alan Moore
In our exploration of historical narrative, Gary Devore and I have been looking at the work of Alan Moore, graphic novelist. Of note is his Voice of the Fire (1996), a concatenation of voices echoing over 6000 years through Northampton, England, his home town. Here are a couple of pages in From Hell (1989-1996) conveying…