Topic – how to be interdisciplinary – and more Quick recap. For some time I have been interested in the notion of the “T character” – an attitude or disposition, a skill set, that facilitates the kind of interdisciplinary practice that is the heart of good design, bridging the different expertise and interests in a…
cultural politics
landscape aesthetics – tactics (continued)
From a conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham (with Bianca Carpeneti and Chris Witmore). Topic – archaeology, ruins and the picturesque landscape. The allure, the ideology, the challenge to avoid cliché. How do we deal with archaeological landscapes today? Should I just give up photography? As a tainted medium? This is too simple a response…
landscape aesthetics – the politics (continued)
A conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham. To continue with the concern that I shared yesterday – the ideology of land, property and labor transformed into aesthetic form – landscape. Images that disguise history? (guilty pleasures of the sublime picturesque) [Link] It is not difficult to identify various components of this aesthetic. (I recall dealing with…
landscape aesthetics and the ideology of pleasure
The Dun Cow, Durham. Early evening. In conversation with Bianca (Carpeneti). My early morning runs are troubling me deeply … these encounters with a sublime picturesque [Link] [Link] [Link] Photo – dawn on Holy Island. Watercolor – J.M.W. Turner (exhibited 1829) (the castle in the background) Turner’s figures in the landscape (they are on the…
writing ancient Egypt
I have just received a copy of Toby Wilkinson’s Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The cover endorsements are enthusiastic; the blurb is packed with hyperbole and the promise of a roller-coaster soap-opera of pomp and ceremony, corruption and decadence, rulers with all-too-recognizable human emotions, in a book that will, we are told, become the…
Olmec Art
“Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico”, an exhibition of Olmec artifacts, is running at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Extraordinary pieces. Extraordinary presence. It was the first time we had come across them first hand. Here the monumental heads, zoomorphic basalt thrones, engobe ceramics, jadeite celts, are gently spotlit in that subdued ambient lighting…
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