Cultural physiognomy

Visiting Alan Campbell, House of Commons, London. Prime Minister’s Question Time and a debate calling for a judicial inquiry into the Iraq war. The look and feel of the corridors and chambers together with the look of the inmates (MPs, visitors and staff) are so familiar. Not because we have all seen it on TV…

The perfume of garbage

Beginning work with Bill Rathje and David Platt on a paper for a special issue on archaeology and modernism for the journal Modernism/Modernity This is how we begin with the World Trade Center There is something profoundly archaeological about the experience of 9/11 and its aftermath. Less than a month after the attack a meeting…

Materialities of Media

Onomy Labs Over at Anne Balsamo’s place. Tilty table – tilt the table and the picture projected on it moves. Wonderful. As Joe Adler pointed out – a new way of scrolling, of flying across a picture or document – and it could be the size of a football field. New physical and embodied interfaces…

the anarchaeological

Abram just sent me this picture by Juan Carlos Castro of Reistertown, MD. It appeared in Adbusters. Hygienic. Contrast the photographs I posted last month, and remember the archaeological fascination with the constitution of place. I recall the anthropologist Marc Augé is into this kind of non-place.