Tony Harrison — poet, playwright, radical Classicist

Poet and playwright, inspiration and colleague, Tony Harrison died yesterday. Widely acknowledged for his extraordinary poetic and dramatic verse, for his daring translation, he might also be remembered as an archaeological poet of classical antiquity — someone who habitually dug into the strata of Graeco-Roman (and medieval) remains and reworked them not as past history, as…

Deep Mapping

I’m in a workshop about Deep Mapping, delivering the opening keynote. A fascinating gathering (Venice and online), organized by Cristina Manzetti (University of Cyprus), and Valentina Mignosa (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH). The topic is an old favorite of mine, developed in my theatre/archaeology with Cliff McLucas and Mike Pearson…

A journey round my father: methodological notes on an archaeological sensibility

This is a commentary on a recent post on this site – A journey round my father [Link]. It’s about the features, concepts, tools and techniques of a reclaimed archaeological sensibility that help us connect with a complex world in flux. Bjørnar (Olsen) was visiting in the Spring when my father took another fall at…

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…

theory of ruin – hylography

– the clouds take on shapes almost recognizable – the waves on the shore offer smooth gestures in the sand – the gravestone inscription weathers such that it appears to have lost all form … but not quite This is hylography – the process of emergence and disappearance, intentional or unintentional, of graphical form out…

hylography

I am preparing with Paul Noble a guide to his work, as part of an upcoming exhibition at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Paul’s vast drawn world (as well as sculpted material forms) – a place called Nobson Newtown (though it questions just what we mean by place) – has at its heart a kind of fontography…