conflict-time-photography

Tate Modern, London – I have just been to the exhibition Conflict – Time – Photography [Link] The topic is how photographs connect with traumatic events and experiences, how they document such events. Here’s the review in Time Out by Freire Barnes – [Link] As we look back over 100 years since the end of…

hylography – terra sigillata

Hylography – the process of emergence and disappearance, intentional or unintentional, of graphical form out of matter – [Link] Here in a work by Helen (Shanks). The technique is terra sigillata – employing a fine slip applied to the surface and manipulated in firing to various effect. In antiquity the results were fine and very…

Elevate Ensemble – presence and absence

Wonderful performance from Elevate Ensemble last night at San Francisco Conservatory. Superbly introduced and conducted by Chad Goodman. Highlight for me – a  joint work “Bethlehem” by composer Danny Clay and photographer/urban archaeologist Jeremy Blakeslee Ambience and presence – in the old Bethlehem shipyards in San Francisco. Or rather absence – got me thinking again…

forty years on – restaging – return – nostos

I have just received the wonderful photo book of Mike Pearson’s new work – The Lesson of Anatomy 1974/2014. On 5 and 6 July 1974, the newly founded Cardiff Laboratory for Theatrical Research (later Cardiff Laboratory Theatre) presented The Lesson of Anatomy: The Life, Obsessions and Fantasies of Antonin Artaud in the Sherman Arena Theater,…

in design there’s never a clean slate

A thoughtful piece recently from Vlad Savov in The Verge – Retrovolution: mining the past to make the future. Anders Warming doesn’t like the word “retro.” Ever since taking over as Mini’s chief of design in 2010, Warming has had to wrestle with the term’s meaning and its application to his company’s cars. Because it…

Flodden Field

Today is the 500th anniversary of Flodden Field – the battle near the village of Branxton in Northumberland, just south of the Scottish border. Here is what I wrote about the site on a visit back in 2007 [Link] In the tracks of northern antiquaries, summer 2007 September 9 1513: in the low rolling hills…