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…

Olivier – Le sombre abîme du temps

Laurent Olivier’s wonderful book Le sombre abîme du temps has just appeared in translation (as The dark abyss of time: memory and archaeology) – [Link] Laurent offers profound elaboration of the fundamental insight that the past is all around us, before us, in material traces, that presence is filled with the past, that the future…

Media aura

Bill Viola – The Passions – an Exhibition on at the National Gallery London. Lots of high definition videos of people’s faces in slow motion, displaying emotion, disposition, reaction. The technology and medium makes us look differently at the everyday. That was about it though. I couldn’t bring myself to stand in front of a…