This is a commentary on a recent post on this site – A journey round my father [Link]. It’s about the features, concepts, tools and techniques of a reclaimed archaeological sensibility that help us connect with a complex world in flux. Bjørnar (Olsen) was visiting in the Spring when my father took another fall at…
deep mapping
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…
sampling and re-presentation
Sampled pigments from mine tailings. Amelia Colliery, Shankhouse, Cramlington, Northumberland UK. Closed 1938. One of many coal mines in south east Northumberland. The pit heap was notorious for its internal burning – hence the red and orange oxides. Non-representation. Post-phenomenology. Part of project Borderlands – [Link]
Thomas the Rhymer
Thomas of Ercildoune and the tower at Bemersyde. Project Borderlands – [Link]. In the wake – Walter Scott, Wizard of the North – 1831 – [Link]. Durat Opus Vatum – Thomas Percy 1765.
memory and return – Tri Bywyd (Three Lives) 1995
On the return of the past: document, memory, and archive. Katie Pearl (theatre director and professor at Wesleyan – see her extraordinary work here – [Link]) recently got in touch asking about the performance in Wales in 1995 of Tri Bywyd (translation – Three Lives), a work of theatre/archaeology by arts company Brith Gof. Specifically…