Synchronicity – meaningful coincidence, where things align or connect without there being any proximate or apparent cause. A critical technique to open space for different voices – [Link]. One In a recent online lecture for Stanford Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Classics professor at Princeton, told of a conference he was attending in Florida on the…
ruins and remains
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…
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…
Dryburgh
Project : So werd ich Todten-Kopff ein Englisch Antlitz seyn – [Link] Marta Pilarska (Edinburgh) has discovered a favorite place of mine – Dryburgh Abbey, Scottish borders, a landscaped ruin. Here are a couple of headstones, mid eighteenth century, converted by Marta into 3D models. The textures are very good, as is being able to…
Heritage – actuality and performative pragmatics
Published next month – Chinese translation of my essay on heritage as actuality, with a case study from the Roman north. [Link] to 2012 version in English.
Ossian – archaeological memory
Project: Borderlands – [Link] Toscar: I shall sit in my cave in the field of the sun. The blast will rustle in my trees, and I shall think it is the voice of Culhona. Culhona: What cloud is that? It carries the ghosts of my fathers. Locale, genius loci, weather, voices on the wind, the…