Mike Pearson died last week. He was a performance artist, theatre director, theorist and philosopher, scholar and teacher. And, as composer John Hardy said, Mike collaborated and connected – visual design, architectural stagecraft, poets, playwrights, composers, experimental jazz musicians, dancers, disability & gender specialists, comics, community art conveners, museum curators, traditional Japanese theatre performers, Patagonian farmers,…
future of the past
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…
Boijmans Collections Depot – teaser
The revolutionary new collections depot for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam opens later this year. Here is en evocative glimpse of the roof top. More about this remarkable project – [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]
Futures Literacy: how to decolonize the future
December 8 – 12 2020. Tamara (Carleton) and I were at the UNESCO Futures Literacy Summit [Link] representing our research group – Foresight at Stanford [Link]. We are standing for design foresight and what we are now calling creative pragmatics (in our forthcoming book – [Link]). Competencies, tools and techniques, mindsets not for predicting the…
Palo Alto History Museum
Project: Future of the Past – [Link] This week I helped run a workshop as part of the planning and fundraising for a history museum for Palo Alto. The Board, led by Rich Green, are a very fine and dedicated group. I was a member from 2014-2016. Here’s a short video from Doug Kreitz making…
urban futures – the cultural field
For nearly ten years I have been serving on the International Advisory Board in Rotterdam [Link] – offering comment on the city’s life and plans. This year we turned to culture in the city. A group of us joined a year long process to reach out to stakeholder groups and institutions, to the people of…