Ataraxia (Epicurus) – a state of being in balance and one with lifeworld, between what is conventionally distinguished as nature and culture. Ataraxia is fraught with the same tension that pervades the self-gathered serenity of gardens, namely the tension between order and entropy … … anxiety is not so much overcome as transfigured by the…
archaeological imagination
three synchronicities – different voices
Synchronicity – meaningful coincidence, where things align or connect without there being any proximate or apparent cause. A critical technique to open space for different voices – [Link]. One In a recent online lecture for Stanford Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Classics professor at Princeton, told of a conference he was attending in Florida on the…
Reconstructing Classics – voice
Part 2 of a review of Confronting Classics, by Mary Beard [Link]. Some tactics for challenging the orthodox monologue of academic Classical Studies and opening space to hear other voices. What is Classical Studies about? Mary Beard argues that Classics is not about ancient Greece and Rome at all, but about what happens in the…
the archaeological circuit
Archaeologists work with what remains. Here’s a new version of my diagram that aims to grasp the components of this process, this field, this circuit (I like all the connotations of field and circuit, involving energy flows, connections of roots and branches, rhizomatic webs and pathways). Read moreArchaeology – [Link]The archaeological imagination – [Link]
Ruins – Josef Koudelka
Thoughts on the universality and valency of ruination. With a comment about the toppling of statues of erstwhile heroes. A couple of months ago Alain Schnapp was talking with me about his new book, a universal history of ruins, an exploration of an archaeological sensibility that takes us back to antiquity [Link]. I have just…
et in Arcadia ego (3)
Project concept: et in Arcadia ego – [Link] Ravens’ Pike, Boonville, California. (Thanks to Rich Green for the loan of his remarkable Leica Monochrom)