-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion List for Contemporary and Historical Archaeology on behalf of James Dixon
Sent: Wed 21/12/2005 06:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Contemporary Archaeology in Practice

i think that it's more interesting to think about
structures than about buildings. i've done work in
sheffield recently highlighting a piece of
scaffolding. in london, we work with such docs as the
London Views Management Framework which (forgetting
the flaws of the particular views it aims to preserve)
ignores the fact that any view over London is
dominated by cranes and scaffolding. The rate of
development is such that i can't see the 'ideal
skyline' existing any time soon.

so in a sense, the london skyline is 'world famous'
yet dominated by ephemera.

how do we deal with this?

jim
pca

--- "FAIRCLOUGH, Graham"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> But if a building that's intended to be temporary
> (as, eg, surely most
> medieval urban buildings?( survives to become
> heritage, it's no longer
> ephemeral....
>
> 
>
> Of course, financial speculation and manipulation
> (not marxist at all),
> and other forms of power: but we don't often
> recognise that heritage and
> conservation are also manifestations of power and
> causes in their own
> right.
>
> But I really must go (today is an ephemeral presence
> in the office).
>
> G
>
> 
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion List for Contemporary and
> Historical Archaeology
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of Chris Cumberpatch
> Sent: 19 December 2005 13:25
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CHA] Contemporary Archaeology in
> Practice
>
> 
>
> Graham Fairclough writes:  Ephemerality is perhaps
> attributed not
> intrinsic. In some case, being ephemeral is an
> important part of
> character (or meaning) so we can't capture that in
> our monumentalising
> type of conservation.
>
> 
>
>     Surely ephemerality is intrinsic if the
> intention is to demolish the
> buildings within a generation or two and replace
> them with more
> 'contemporary' designs, thus erasing utterly any
> sense of place that
> might have developed amongst the users of the
> spaces.  There are issues
> of power and control of and over space here as well
> as of perception and
> inhabitation (is this unfashionably Marxist?) and it
> would seem to be
> unwise to treat contemporary cityscapes as purely
> experiential spaces
> rather than as the objects of financial speculation
> and manipulation.
>
> 
>
> Chris Cumberpatch
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>       ----- Original Message -----
>
>       From: FAIRCLOUGH, Graham
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
>
>       To: 
>
>       Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 1:16 PM
>
>       Subject: Re: [CHA] Contemporary Archaeology in
> Practice
>
>       
>
>       Folk say that airports are non-places, but I don't
> know. But you
> are right about built in (deliberately or not) built
> in temporary-ness.
> But part of the problem is that if something has
> survived
> /millennia/centuries/decades (or at least long
> enough to be valued and
> accepted, we tend to think it was meant to be
> permanent in the first
> place.  (But we'll make people cross soon).
>
>       
>
>       By the way, I though it was Hamlet (more or less)?
>
>       
>
>       Regards
>
>       G
>
>       
>
>       
>
>       
>
>       -----Original Message-----
>       From: Discussion List for Contemporary and
> Historical
> Archaeology
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of
> lineone
>       Sent: 19 December 2005 12:56
>       To: [log in to unmask]
>       Subject: Re: [CHA] Contemporary Archaeology in
> Practice
>
>       
>
>       FAIRCLOUGH, Graham wrote:
>
>       Dear All or Any
>
>       I would not claim to know all of what lies behind
> Cornelius's
> comments, but the 'right' to read meaning into
> something (especially in
> the form of words, tricky things that they are)
> passes almost
> immediately away from the creator to the consumer,
> and one thing that I
> take out of C's second point is a thought about
> 'our'  response to
> change and to future archaeologies (the creation and
> passing on of the
> legibility of a future past). Is it possible to
> remove something from a
> site's 'narrative', official or not, once it has
> been put there (eg by
> recording)?  Physical material survival is not the
> same as survival
> within a narrative (ask any religion, especially at
> this time of year).
> How do you preserve ephemerality?
>
>       Ive been thinking quite a bit about ephemerality
> recently,
> especially along the lines of the marx/engels/berman
> quote "all that is
> solid melts into air" - Having done a study of our
> local out of town
> shopping centre for the first CHAT Ive been
> following its quite rapid
> evolution, as many of the features I talked about
> have already been
> destroyed. The point being that many modern
> structures, even quite
> substantial ones, dont seem to last very long. I
> suspect that such
> places as Trostre park dont have much of a narrative
> per see because no
> one takes them seriously as places in the first
> place. Unlike town
> centres which do get invested with a depth of
> cultural pattina, shopping
> centres are more or less non-places to begin with
> and no one cares what
> happens to them
>      
>       p g-b
>
>



               
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