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Beneath the Surface of Abandonment
Fragments of collage ruins (Ewa Fornal) Abandonment art is routinely lamented for its literal and metaphorical focus on aesthetic surfaces; that is, abandonment art risks reducing the weathered,...
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Bike Helmets and the Culture of Driving
Bikes lined up in Copenhagen (image PradaDearest). A host of observers argue that cycling is saddled by a “culture of fear”: apparently terrified by warnings about the dangers of cycling, many people...
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Authenticity and Authority on Yelp
The Guadalajara Grill’s authentic decor (image zachary_o on yelp) No compliment on the online review site Yelp is as highly esteemed as being dubbed “authentic,” and that authenticity is routinely...
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Seeing the Elgin Marbles: Photography, Gaze, and Artifacts
Few archaeological artifacts are better known than the Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum, which are commonly referred to as the Elgin Marbles. Lord Elgin removed the sculptures from the...
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The Allure of Pastness: Watching Televised History
The new Dracula has a significantly different look than Bela Lugosi and Nosferatu (image NBC) It seems like a uniquely rich moment for history: a host of gangsters, Vikings, and royals have stepped out...
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Irrationality and Frenzy: Desire and Shopping on Black Friday
Black Friday at the New York City Apple Store in 2006 (image from jardenberg). This year even Apple appears poised to join the host of American retailers offering dramatic sales in the early morning or...
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Blogging as Public Archaeology
Last week’s American Anthropological Association conference perhaps once more confirmed that archaeology is a thoroughly public scholarship as the halls resounded with scholars theorizing activism and...
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Renovating Ruins: Ruination, Consumption, and Art
Karl Bitter’s 1898 installation The Races of Mankind was placed on pillars when it came to Holliday Park (image from Donna Cazadd). At the heart of Indianapolis, Indiana’s Holliday Park sit the...
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Archaeological Blogging: Beyond Stones-and-Bones and Pseudo-Knowledge
Last week the House Science, Space and Technology Committee convened to debate the existence of alien life. This is perhaps a compelling scientific question (formally the hearing was titled...
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Saving Doctor Who: Transience, Canon, and the Missing Episodes
A 16 MM film canister from “The Evil of the Daleks” (image from wikimedia). Geekdom has spent much of this year celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, which is one of the most prominent and...
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Ruins and Race in a World War II Ghost Town
A water tower still rises above the vacant Elko tract (image Ben Swenson). Perhaps the most distinctive ruins of the Cold War lie east of Richmond, Virginia. In 1943 a decoy airfield was constructed...
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Race and Global Subcultures: Materiality, Style, and Metal Fans in Botswana
A Botswana metal fan performs (image Frank Marshall) Some observers suggest that mass culture has homogenized once-clear lines of difference, with the marketplace reducing difference to a rich range of...
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Branding Urban Decline: Style and the Imagined City at Urban Outfitters
Repaired denim overalls from the Urban Renewal line (image Urban Outfitters). Observers who doubt marketers’ capacity to package nearly any concept may be impressed by the ambition of Urban Outfitters’...
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The Time Capsule Effect: Pristine Abandonment and the Ideal Ruin
Stepping into the 1960s shoe store “time capsule” (image from tadaw). Sometime in the late-1960s the proprietors of a modest shoe store closed its doors, leaving the stock neatly stacked along its...
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Roadside Desperation and the Aesthetics of Panhandling
A roadside panhandler in the midst of winter (image from J. Ronald Lee). In the past decade a host of panhandlers have stationed themselves along American roadsides, off-ramps and street corners...
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American Apparel and the Politics of “Natural Beauty”
The unshorn mannequins in Soho’s American Apparel window (image from American Apparel NYC). This week an American Apparel store in New York secured a flurry of attention after it installed female...
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The Final Choice: The Materiality of Last Meals
In 2012 Gary Carl Simmons sat down for an enormous meal including a Pizza Hut Super Supreme Deep Dish pizza; 10 8-oz. packs of Parmesan cheese; 10 8-oz. packs of ranch dressing; one family size bag of...
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Domesticating Dissent: Consuming Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash at San Quentin in 1969, with Carl Perkins right (image from Field Trip South). In 1957 Johnny Cash played a concert at Huntsville State Prison in Texas, the first of Cash’s roughly 30...
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Unapologetic Defiance: the Post-Feminist Barbie
Barbie graces the 2014 Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie has been greeted by exceptionally zealous defenses as well as fevered attacks on the doll’s...
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The Anxious Enchantment of Poverty
The Emoya Shantytown Hotel Westerners have long been fascinated by poverty, simultaneously enchanted by human resolve in the face of hardship and anxious about gross human injustices in the midst of...
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