Beltane – the Wicker Man burns again

Beltane at Butser Ancient Farm, UK It is May 1 – Beltane. Beltain is the spring festival of the Celtic religion and, like other major Celtic events, was a fire festival: the ‘good fire’ was burnt for purification, for healing, for light, for growth. According to Caesar, the Iron Age Britons would construct huge wicker…

trauma and the past

Lunch with Jonathan Greenberg today – Stanford Law School. He specializes in conflict resolution and has a particular interest in national partition in the wake of the withdrawal of imperial powers and decolonisation – Korea, India, Palestine, Vietnam, and, of course, Iran and Iraq. He sees partition and the narratives and feelings it generates as…

more archaeological remediation

– Aperture Magazine It is quite a week for archaeological photography. [Link] [Link] The latest issue of Aperture [Spring 2004] has three photographers who work with remediated, digitally reworked imagery. Bringing together past and present with all sorts of tensions and layerings. Loretta Lux does spooky portraits, very mannered, in an old painterly style of…