Pragmatology

Things. And people. Assemblages of materials, making, consumption, discard. People-and-things. Our modes of existence. In spite of how central things are to being human, there is no word that encompasses the connection, and certainly no discipline of things. I suggest Pragmatology: the theory and practice of pragmata (because I am fascinated by etymology and all…

Mike Pearson – theatre/archaeology

Mike Pearson died last week. He was a performance artist, theatre director, theorist and philosopher, scholar and teacher. And, as composer John Hardy said, Mike collaborated and connected – visual design, architectural stagecraft, poets, playwrights, composers, experimental jazz musicians, dancers, disability & gender specialists, comics, community art conveners, museum curators, traditional Japanese theatre performers, Patagonian farmers,…

Update – the actuality of the archaeological past

I have contributed little to this site Since 2016. I have been writing (Greece and Rome: a new model of antiquity [Link]), running experiments in fieldwork (Project Borderlands [Link]), exploring applied archaeology (with a host of organizations and corporations), asking questions of the proper role of the academic, the researcher, the scholar. In this contemporary…

Update – Summer 2017

July 2017. While over the last few months I’ve neglected posting my ideas, thoughts, news and commentary here at mshanks.com, I’ve had a fascinating series of encounters with some wonderful people, organizations and businesses. And I am preparing some posts – I greatly value the process of logging this learning journey I am so lucky…

Theatre/Archaeology

In the early 90s I started working with Mike Pearson*, performance artist, founder and artistic director, with Cliff McLucas, of theatre company Brith Gof. Our common interests: forms of (re)collection, the gatherings of memory practices; and site and locale – where different events and times endure and come together in the material forms of inhabited…

Links

to come Archaeography Archaeolog Archaeographer Thinking-through-things CDR Metamedia/Pragmatology Academia.edu Research Gate Google Scholar various Stanford sites various archives