Synchronicity – meaningful coincidence, where things align or connect without there being any proximate or apparent cause. A critical technique to open space for different voices – [Link]. One In a recent online lecture for Stanford Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Classics professor at Princeton, told of a conference he was attending in Florida on the…
nostos – the return
Reconstructing Classics – voice
Part 2 of a review of Confronting Classics, by Mary Beard [Link]. Some tactics for challenging the orthodox monologue of academic Classical Studies and opening space to hear other voices. What is Classical Studies about? Mary Beard argues that Classics is not about ancient Greece and Rome at all, but about what happens in the…
reenactment – dealing with pandemic
Responses to pandemic then and now! From the Ever After project at National Theatre Wales – Mike Pearson and Zoe Laughlin. Zoe [Link] is also Director of the marvelous Institute of Making at University College London [Link]. Mike: I thought you might appreciate the attached images. Following the death of her aunt, Zoe Laughlin spent…
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…
Ruins – Josef Koudelka
Thoughts on the universality and valency of ruination. With a comment about the toppling of statues of erstwhile heroes. A couple of months ago Alain Schnapp was talking with me about his new book, a universal history of ruins, an exploration of an archaeological sensibility that takes us back to antiquity [Link]. I have just…
materiality of the invisible
Yesterday I had the great honor to open a remarkable exhibition of artworks at the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht – multiform institute for fine art, design and reflection Curators: Lex ter Braak, Director of Van Eyck and Huib Haye van der Werf, Head of Artistic Program. The exhibition runs through The Van Eyck Academie, Marres,…