The way things used to be? Talking heritage with Rob van der Laase [Link] – the way the past is cleaned up, filtered, extraneous matter removed – that we might more appreciate a clear narrative – that this did indeed happen here. Here – a remarkable untouched remnant of a meeting place, famously associated with…
heritage
heritage/design – theatre/archaeology
I am in Amsterdam delivering the Reinwardt Memorial Lecture at the Reinwardt Academy for Cultural Heritage in the Amsterdam School of the Arts [Link] [Link] This annual event commemorates the birthday of Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (3 June 1773 – 6 March 1854), after whom the Reinwardt Academy is named. The Academy is the foremost…
against cultural property – heritage as design – and wellbeing
My argument [Link] that heritage is a matter of creativity and design – work done with, typically, remains of the past (tangible and intangible) – involves an argument that heritage should not be conceived as cultural property. I made this point, though rather weakly, in my entry on cultural property for The Oxford Companion to…
critical heritage as design
To continue the argument from my previous posts – [Link] [Link] – that heritage, the (legacy) of the past in the present, is best conceived as a process of working on the past in the present – as a process of design. I have just returned from a trip to Göteborg, that most wonderfully open…
prehistory and performance – an experiment in site specifics
In Göteborg this week I have been returning to the work of arts company Brith Gof – site specific performance. And theatre/archaeology – the rearticulation of fragments of the past as real time event. The context is my argument that the heritage industry is just that – work performed on what is left of the…
The Archaeological Imagination
My book, The Archaeological Imagination, long in gestation, will soon be out from Mitch Allen’s Left Coast Press – [Link] This week in Götegorg, I have been sharing some of its stories. Set in the borders between England and Scotland, I explore the roots of so many of our contemporary attitudes towards the past. The…
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