property, legacy, heritage, and a case for connoisseurship

Project Borderlands – [Link] More reflections on the entanglement of property and colonialism, taste and upbringing, class and inequality. [Link] [Link] [Link] In the early 1700s Admiral George Delaval, wealthy from a career in the Royal Navy, diplomatic service and from overseas investments, bought his old family estate from an impoverished cousin. He hired Sir…

synchronicity – through a glass

Recent post about ATARAXIA – [Link] Return and revenance. My current exploration of synchronicity [Link] has taken me back. To a post in April 2015 [Link]. Instrumentalities. April 2006 Boonville California – Hasselblad 503CW camera (2000), Zeiss 120mm lens (2000), Hasselblad CFV digital back (2006) April 2015 Boonville California – Leica 90mm macro lens (2015)…

ataraxia 1

Ataraxia (Epicurus) – a state of being in balance and one with lifeworld, between what is conventionally distinguished as nature and culture. Ataraxia is fraught with the same tension that pervades the self-gathered serenity of gardens, namely the tension between order and entropy … … anxiety is not so much overcome as transfigured by the…

Reconstructing Classics – voice

Part 2 of a review of Confronting Classics, by Mary Beard [Link]. Some tactics for challenging the orthodox monologue of academic Classical Studies and opening space to hear other voices. What is Classical Studies about? Mary Beard argues that Classics is not about ancient Greece and Rome at all, but about what happens in the…

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…