Chris Tilley

I heard this morning that Chris Tilley died last night in Brighton UK. A shock of loss and then sadness at what has gone, and also what might have been — he had just always been there, after so much we shared when we were much younger. Intellectual and collegial companionship at its best. From…

Mike Pearson – theatre/archaeology

Mike Pearson died last week. He was a performance artist, theatre director, theorist and philosopher, scholar and teacher. And, as composer John Hardy said, Mike collaborated and connected – visual design, architectural stagecraft, poets, playwrights, composers, experimental jazz musicians, dancers, disability & gender specialists, comics, community art conveners, museum curators, traditional Japanese theatre performers, Patagonian farmers,…

Studio update – Spring 2022

This academic year I am on sabbatical leave finishing three long-running projects and planning to focus more on applications of the archaeological imagination to matters of common and pressing contemporary concern, especially through design foresight and futures literacy. This is why I have put to one side my critical commentary on all things archaeological and…

the valencies of Neo-Classical

I have been avoiding giving any attention to the last days of Trump. Jody Maxmin, however, directed me to an executive order this last weekend concerning classical architecture. Here’s the report in the New York Times: Trump Makes Classical Style the Default for Federal Buildings An executive order stopped short of banning modernist architecture, but…

William Blake – post-classicist

Recently I have been posting thoughts about the current state of Classical Studies, asking: What might be done regarding the complicity of Classical Studies in ideological standpoints, including cultural chauvinism, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism? I am much taken with dramatic techniques involving focus on characters and personae, avatars and ghosts, figuration and voices: How might we…

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…