Archaeolog

in Critical Technologies the making of the modern world theme

We welcome abstracts for the above-named WAC-6 session. The session is jointly organised by James Dixon (UWE Faculty of Creative Arts) and Brent Fortenberry (Boston University) and subsequent discussion will be chaired by Victor Buchli (UCL)

The modern world is replete with technical processes. Whether watching the television, listening to music, driving a car, or any number of other things, people are employing technology to make their lives easier (or harder depending on whether or not your car starts).

Two distinct ways to approach technical processes through archaeology exist. The first, derived from science and technology studies, looks at the wide range of factors that go into making and using technology; people, things, ideas, time constraints, politics and so forth. Ideas derived from ANT and other techno-science paradigms are currently enjoying wide spread use by contemporary theorists.

Building on these ideas of production and use in which individual users are invariably and inevitably lost, the second perspective highlights the embedded nature of technical objects in the production of the contemporary self. It is perhaps a mistake to think that 'the archaeological approach' to technical objects is to look beyond their everyday ('shallow' or 'unknowing') use to their wider technological contexts. Rather, as objects and processes essentialise themselves in the 21st century we can return to ideas of fetish and embodiment and look towards the experience of technical processes and objects as central to their being.

Simply put, what influence, if any, do these objects have on the experience of the everyday and the conceptualization of identity? Can things composed of metal and plastic 'make a difference' to one's worldview? Does their absence or presence become a marker for complicity or assimilation in popular culture?

For this session, we invite papers that attempt to confront technical processes through archaeological research methodologies, particularly those that aim to look at the points of contact between ANT-based research and more affective approaches to technology.

Abstracts and other expressions of interest should be sent to James Dixon at jd2430@bris.ac.uk

The deadline for paper submissions is February 22nd 2008

The recent opening of Paul Clancy’s “The Search for the Soul of a Building” in Providence, RI provided occasion for me to resurrect a languishing Archaeolog entry I had started back in the late spring and which has been annoyingly stapled to may desktop every since.

Regarding the exhibition, Clancy’s subtext is what drew my interest: “A Photo-Archaeologist Dig”. Clancy documents transformations in the urban fabric of cities like Boston and Providence. For Clancy, his photographs of derelict structures or buildings in the process of being torn down become “markers of time and place.” His ‘dig’ consisted of, among other matters, scenes of the former police and fire headquarters of Providence in various states of demolition. Clancy’s photographs experiment with the effects of age: the patina of old film stock, the worn surface of metal plate photos such as daguerreotypes. Scratched, exposed, and degraded surfaces in his photography speak to the textures of ruins, of perpetual perishing, of entropy. The works were all set in frames upon the white walls of a gallery at 17 Peck (http://www.17peck.com/). All these works are for sale.

Back in the spring we had a couple of MA students conduct ‘excavations’ of photographic materials here at Brown University. As with Clancy’s exhibition, these projects take photographs seriously as ‘markers’ of transformation, as articulations of arrested moments, as memories. This work falls under the rubric of media archaeology.

By Andrew Cochrane (Cardiff University).

On Wednesday 17 October 2007, the auspicious Council Chamber of the Glamorgan Building at Cardiff University, played host for a workshop dedicated to the skill enhancement of graduate and part-time teachers and new lectures in archaeology and classics. Rather than rely on more traditional approaches to lecturing and presentation, this day-school sought to illuminate alternative modes of teaching and mediation.

Ömür Harmansah ~ October 2, 2007 ~ Blue State cafe.

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N.B. This piece was written in the context of my graduate seminar The Rise (and Demise) of the State in the Near East taught at Brown University's Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World in Fall 2007. I am grateful to the whole group for the intriguing and heated discussions in that seminar.

Modernist architect Adolf Loos's notorious dictum "ornament is crime" continues to haunt me fourteen years after I finished architecture school. I was simply hoping to "loose" him at some point, but no. He found me again in David Wengrow's chapter on "the evolution of simplicity" (Wengrow 2006): he had surreptitiously sneaked his way into this book on the archaeology of early Egypt, parading as an eccentric character who sees "the evolution of civilization [as] tantamount to the removal of ornament from objects of use." Striking as he may sound in this context, he actually represents the central modernist discourse in architecture. For our rebellious postmodern little minds, Loos's statement was still equally forceful for us for what it represented: the functionalist view of modernist architecture that saw ornament and structure as distinct entities and sacrificed the former for the purity of the latter. This of course is not a simple and naive act: the representational surfaces of buildings have always been associated with references to the past, local identity and narrativity, with which modernism has had a sour relationship. The utopian project of modernity as the brainchild of modern European nation-state ideologies, promoted the idea of the "democratization of everyday life" which can now be read as subordination of the embodied self within the context of panoptically controlled urban landscapes of Hausmann, Mussolini and others. |

I came across an interesting article on a major German news site about the trend in the US to use door handles (common in Europe) instead of door knobs (until now common in the US).

Der knubbelige Türöffner, so ur-amerikanisch wie Apfelkuchen und das Recht, Waffen zu tragen, steht vor dem Aussterben. In US-Eigenheimen finden sich immer öfter Türgriffe, die lange Zeit als Inbegriff europäischer Dekadenz und Extravaganz galten.

Full article available here: http://www.tagesschau.de/schlusslicht/tuerknauf2.html

If anybody has seen the same report elsewhere (presumably this is based on somebody's press release), send a comment please! If you have any personal reminiscences or observations on this topic, please send a comment too!