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…
(past) presences
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…
Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
Yesterday The Revs Program was at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance – one of the greatest car shows in the world [Link] Some of our students attended the show as judges to award The Revs Prize for the most historically significant car in the show – a 1963 Porsche 901 prototype belonging to Don and Diane…
genuine simulation
A couple of weeks ago I took a fabulous drive on a rough Montana ranch road in a 1927 Vauxhall with Miles Collier and Murray Smith. The car was the genuine article, but could the drive, in this between-the-wars archetypically English car, be said to be authentic, in the far reaches of Montana and so far from…
matters of authenticity and simulation
Is Disneyland authentic? This is a question I have pondered for a number of years, since I visited what was Eurodisney in 1992 (and explored in my book with Mike Pearson – Theatre/Archaeology – [Link]). It is too easy to say that Disney is superficial, or fantasy, or ideology. Here are a couple of cases…
Ruin Memories
The Ruin Memories project is drawing to a close. Here is the introduction to the final portfolio: Modernity is rarely associated with ruins. In our everyday comprehension ruins rather bring to mind ancient and enchanted monumental structures; an archaeological dream world featuring celebrities such as Machu Picchu, Pompeii and Angkor Wat. Yet never have so…
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