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…
figure in a landscape
the limits of reason
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.
Boijmans Collections Depot – teaser
The revolutionary new collections depot for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam opens later this year. Here is en evocative glimpse of the roof top. More about this remarkable project – [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]
fictive realism – Ray Harryhausen’s model making
There’s an exhibition of the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen running at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art – [Link]. I vividly remember first seeing his magical movies in the 60s and 70s. The infamous fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963); Pegasus the winged horse in Clash of the Titans (1981). Paul Noble…
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…