Steampunk in Oakland
Jack London Square, Oakland. Waterfront/docklands development. Steam punk bar furniture in The Chop Bar [Link] Last week the BBC reported a new fund raising campaign to rebuild Babbage’s Analytical Engine – his steam powered programmable computer the size of a house – [BBC Link] – Wikipedia on Babbage – [Link] Model of the never-built Analytical [...]
VINOVIVM
Update – a revised version now appears at – http://www.mshanks.com/2011/01/archaeological-research-at-the-edge-of-empire/ We are starting to plan for our excavations next summer of Binchester Roman town in the north of England. Here is a short news item about this last summer, released yesterday. July 2010 was the second archaeological field season for the Binchester Project. We are [...]
Durham Miners Gala
Durham City UK The annual celebration of a great industry and labor movement, once a living force, now a memory, nostalgically inspiring at best, after Thatcher’s neo-liberal ideology and political spite closed all the coal mines in the UK and devastated the pit villages. More photos – [Link]
Ghost signs: BBC Viewfinder
The BBC is covering Tom Bland’s photography in the archaeological imagination – Ghost signs. “I was seeing layers of typography, paint, colour – and combined with the texture of the crumbling and flaking materials, many of them were appealing to me as contemporary pieces of design in the vein of work by Ray Gun magazine.” [...]
undecidability – the fake?
Grote Markt, Brussels. Here to explore European initiatives in cultural heritage policy – [Link]. The central (medieval) square – destroyed by French bombardment in 1695, rebuilt by 1699, sacked by revolutionaries in the late 1700s, heavily restored in the late nineteenth century. Considered something of a fake by the natives of Brugge and Antwerp, with [...]
Paris INHA
Paris, across from the Institut nationale de l’histoire de l’art (INHA), with Alain Schnapp, discussing our project on antiquarians – Bibliotheca Universalis Antiquaria
Rotterdam
Westmalle Tripel – the classic. Attending the International Advisory Board for the Mayor of Rotterdam – Link
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 [...]
A way of thinking
East End of London. Looking for a house on Princelet Street. Alessandra Lopez Y Royo puts it all this way – archaeology is a way of thinking.
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 [...]
Postmodern irony and retro culture?
Inner city regeneration? Or what? Barn Again @ The Biscuit Factory Cultural heritage gone mad I have held back on this one a while – not wanting to hammer the NE of England too much. But here goes anyway. An ART warehouse, brand new interior, in an old food factory in Newcastle-upon-Tyne UK. Urban regeneration [...]
Heritage and urban myth
Gateshead UK – Baltic Center for Contemporary Art Dinner last night with Peter and Sue MacDonald; Helen of course too. The restaurant is at the top of the old flour mill on the quayside, though it looks like a grain silo. It’s now an arts center, 46 million quids worth. Lots of other development here [...]