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…
ruins and remains
ruins – thoughts on the aesthetic
An exhibition currently at the Tate in London is exploring British images of ruin since the 18th century. Ruin Lust, an exhibition at Tate Britain from 4 March 2014, offers a guide to the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition is…
theory of ruin – hylography
– the clouds take on shapes almost recognizable – the waves on the shore offer smooth gestures in the sand – the gravestone inscription weathers such that it appears to have lost all form … but not quite This is hylography – the process of emergence and disappearance, intentional or unintentional, of graphical form out…
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…
political engagement, contemporary art, archaeology
Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art has just closed at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [Link] [Link] The topic of the exhibition – contemporary art in six “far-flung” cities not typically defined as traditional centers of the art world: Beirut, Cali, Cluj-Napoca, Ho Chi Minh City, San Francisco, Tangier. Ostensibly this is…
Ben Cullen
On the anniversary of the untimely and sudden death of Ben Cullen in 1995. [Link] [Link] [Link] I dedicated my book, The Archaeological Imagination [Link], published in April, to Ben. It is seventeen years today since he died. Uncanny. I wonder what I would say to him about the book, that might reveal how much…
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