The Janus Maneuver Hindsight, foresight, and futures studies Everyone, it seems, is a futurist now. Here are some loosely gathered thoughts on why an archaeology of design may be a missing foundation. These are notes – so expect inaccuracies and mistakes of memory (hopefully minor). After Janus – the divine principle of looking both back…
time
A journey round my father
Life dispersed in small things forgotten Funeral We buried him in the cemetery at Blyth (in the north-east of England) overlooking the beach in the plot where my mother has lain since 1999. It was a bleak place back then. Twenty five years have seen the trees and hedges mature. The watery sunshine of that…
Update: December 2022 – slow archaeology
“Our brains aren’t designed for multitasking”, my dear friend Cliff Nass, mathematician, cognitive scientist and psychologist, warned me a good long while ago – and he’d written a book about it! “It will slow you down and cloud your reasoning.” OK — I’m still working on the same big three projects as back then. But…
Studio update – Spring 2022
This academic year I am on sabbatical leave finishing three long-running projects and planning to focus more on applications of the archaeological imagination to matters of common and pressing contemporary concern, especially through design foresight and futures literacy. This is why I have put to one side my critical commentary on all things archaeological and…
Ossian – archaeological memory
Project: Borderlands – [Link] Toscar: I shall sit in my cave in the field of the sun. The blast will rustle in my trees, and I shall think it is the voice of Culhona. Culhona: What cloud is that? It carries the ghosts of my fathers. Locale, genius loci, weather, voices on the wind, the…
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,…