car collection – connoisseurship and archaeology

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] The symposia at the Revs Institute bring together people passionate about collecting cars, passionate about thinking deeply around questions of conservation and…

data snooping – what is really going on

I am back at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam for Design Column #6 – [Link] [Link] Previous Design Columns – [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link] Ideas that make a difference Every three months the Design Column at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen focuses on a news item in the form of a small exhibition. The column…

third (creative) spaces

I have always been fascinated by places like railway stations, hotel rooms, bars and cafés, airport lounges, onboard a long-haul flight, looking out of the window. Some of them anyway. Neither here nor there. Interstitial. Liminal. Transitional. Conduit. They can offer permission to step to the side, think, imagine, to interrogate complacency. They are the…

Autosuggestion – rough cuts

Mike and I have edited the script of last week’s presentation of Autosuggestion – our new work of Theatre/Archaeology. Autosuggestion – the script There’s still some fact checking to do – mainly on the details of car history (and any suggestions will be very welcome – use the comment form at the end of the…

Pearson|Shanks – Autosuggestion

Mike Pearson and I have a new work of theatre/archaeology, to be premiered next week – Friday 28 June. Here’s how we describe it: Just what is an automobile? In this new work of theatre/archaeology — the rearticulation of fragments of the past as real-time event — Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks reflect on an…

Pearson|Shanks – theatre|archaeology

A decade after our book Theatre/Archaeology (Routledge – [Link]), Mike Pearson and I have started a new series of collaborative works. Here is a prospectus: Pearson|Shanks – theatre|archaeology – return and prospect Twenty years ago Mike Pearson, performance artist, and Michael Shanks, archaeologist, opened a dialogue and collaboration through the theatre company Brith Gof, of…