In theory: the death of literature
An intelligent feature in The Guardian by Andrew Gallix on Tuesday 10 January. The topic – “we’ve heard it all before” – [Link]. “We come too late to say anything which has not been said already,” lamented La Bruyère at the end of the 17th century. The fact that he came too late even to [...]
Ruin memories
I have just received a copy of World Crisis in Ruin; the Archaeology of the Former Soviet Missile Sites in Cuba from Mats Burström, Anders Gustafsson and Håkan Karlsson. Another fascinating archaeology of the contemporary past. The 1962 Missile Crisis is a well-known episode in the Cold War and twentieth-century history. It is documented in [...]
Olivier – Le sombre abîme du temps
Laurent Olivier’s wonderful book Le sombre abîme du temps has just appeared in translation (as The dark abyss of time: memory and archaeology) – [Link] Laurent offers profound elaboration of the fundamental insight that the past is all around us, before us, in material traces, that presence is filled with the past, that the future [...]
looking out and looking up
To the left – oriel window, added by Richard of York, looking out over the upland estate from the Lord’s Hall. To the right – garderobe (latrine), with a finely corbeled chute. Barnard Castle, Teesdale UK, one of the great medieval fortresses of the north
landscape aesthetics – tactics (continued)
From a conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham (with Bianca Carpeneti and Chris Witmore). Topic – archaeology, ruins and the picturesque landscape. The allure, the ideology, the challenge to avoid cliché. How do we deal with archaeological landscapes today? Should I just give up photography? As a tainted medium? This is too simple a response [...]
landscape aesthetics – the politics (continued)
A conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham. To continue with the concern that I shared yesterday – the ideology of land, property and labor transformed into aesthetic form – landscape. Images that disguise history? (guilty pleasures of the sublime picturesque) [Link] It is not difficult to identify various components of this aesthetic. (I recall dealing with [...]
the aesthetic of the past
Out running – jet lag gets me up rather early – here at about 5.30 am local time. Lindisfarne, Northumberland – sixteenth century military architecture and a nineteenth century industrial facility turned into a wealthy man’s holiday home (Edward Hudson, proprietor of magazine “Country Life” commissioned Edwin Lutyens to oversee the conversion – very tasteful). [...]
petrified forest
The Petrified Forest is playing at the wonderful Stanford Theatre (1925 restored cinema showing Hollywood movies). In todays Guardian – an evocative “Country Diary” set in Borth, near Aberystwyth, west Wales, where we used to live. Another petrified forest on the coast and taking us back to the days of the Welsh epic sagas. Photo [...]
Bentley B35AE
Fuel cap. Bentley B35AE, built at the Rolls Royce Derby works in 1933. Raced by Eddie Ramsden Hall in the 1930s and then again at LeMans in 1950. Now part of the Collier Collection in Naples, Florida. My lab is working towards the launch of a new initiative at Stanford, the Revs Program, which will [...]
CILVRNVM
Fog at Heathrow has kept me in the NE. Here I am up the Tyne Valley – where the Roman bridge crossed the river, carrying Hadrian’s Wall.
Dere Street | Chew Green
In the North East of England for the Binchester excavations – Vinovium.org. Dere Street, the Roman road that passes through Binchester, here runs north across what is now the English-Scottish border. There was a medieval village – Kemblepath – up here in the wilds of Upper Coquetdale. On the site of Chew Green, the Roman [...]
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.” [...]
Walltown Crags
Checking out Hadrian’s Wall for our summer tour. Chorography – checking out the car parks!
elements of a theory of ruin
A wonderful talk this evening from Alain Schnapp in our Archaeology Center. It was about “ruin” as an intellectual artifact. Through a kaleidoscope of quotes and vignettes about ruin from antiquity to modernity, Alain reflected upon broad human experiences at the heart of our sense of history, memory practices, collection, temporality. Goethe among the ruins [...]
Boonville, Anderson Valley, California
Back in Boonville, after the field season in the UK. Standish vinyard – tasting room in an old apple barn. Testimony to the dying orchards of the valley, the fast-growing shift to wine production. Standish – the old connection with the Pilgrim Fathers. One of the Pinot Noirs is named “Mayflower”. Gallery – Link
end of industry
At the Durham Miners’ Gala 2009 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 and devastated the pit villages. Gallery – Link
SFMOMA – The Art of Participation 1950 – Now
Life Squared [link], our installation in the online world Second Life, is currently part of the exhibition The Art of Participation 1950 – Now at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Life Squared – web link and gallery link. More links – Linden Lab/Second Life and Wired magazine The exhibition, curated by Rudolf Frieling, is [...]
potsherd
Potsherd found in the ruins of the Stanford family mansion destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
end of industry
End of industry – remains of fishing on this tidal island in the borders of England/Scotland.
post mortem
Photographs taken after the death of a child were popular in the mid nineteenth century. Daguerreotype, 1850s, eastern USA.
Found photos
Fascinating website of photographs found undeveloped in old cameras – [Link - westfordcomp.com] Camera c 1947. (Thanks again to Sam (Schillace) for this link.)