Archaeology/Heritage/Art

Spring Talks: AHA × West Dean (Online) This spring, we’re pleased to share a collaborative programme between the Archaeology–Heritage–Art Research Network (AHA) and West Dean College. A series of online talks bringing together artists, academics, and writers working across archaeology, critical heritage, contemporary art, and craft—engaging with, and at times subverting, their practices and politics. AHA explores how material culture shapes the contemporary world, approaching these fields as sites of productive friction—where different methods, epistemologies, and publics meet. First event Stephen Cornford & Annie Goh 📅 Wednesday 13 May 🕔 17:00–18:30 (online) Stephen Cornford is a media artist exploring relationships between media systems and planetary systems, working with scientific images, data, and infrastructures. Dr Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working across sound, performance, and writing, engaging with digital technologies, cyberfeminism, and the politics of knowledge production. 🔗 Register: link in @aha_network bio Save the dates 27 May — Mercedes Baptiste Halliday & Dima Srouji 3 June — Nicola Guastamacchia & Baratto & Mouravas 10 June — Emii Alrai & Beverley Butler #WestDean #OnlineTalk #ContemporaryArt #Heritage #Archaeology

UROBÒRI Fondazione Elpis, Milan / Friday 20 – Sunday 22, March 2026 curated by Nicola Guastamacchia, Nicola Nitido and Maria Luigia Gioffrè In-ruins’ first program dedicated to the theoretical exploration of the encounter between contemporary art and archaeology. UROBÒRI emerges as an ideal extension of rasotèrra, the theme of the public presentation of the In-ruins 2025 residency in Canosa di Puglia, which concluded last October and was organized in collaboration with Fondazione Elpis. Rasotèrra explored the threshold between what surfaces and what remains hidden: a territory where what was once the seabed has become roof, floor, hypogeum; a place marked by instability, where time compresses between descents and ascents. Moving through this slanted landscape of quarries, roads and construction sites, the artists turned their gaze into an instrument of excavation, creating site-specific interventions and narrative, filmic and sonic crossings. @inruins____ @fondazioneelpis

ESPEJOS HUMEANTES EN FLORA-FLOTACIÓN Troncos de olivo, espejos de obsidiana y plumas de paloma recolectadas de las calles de Canosa di Puglia. Italia 🇮🇹 2025 Las esculturas fueron expuestas dentro del hipogeo Lagrasta, el complejo funerario más importante de Canosa, del siglo 3 AC, gracias a la gestión de @inruins____ y la Fondazione Archeologica Canosina @fac_canusium Mi propuesta reconsidera lo arqueológico como una disciplina que evalúa no sólo los vestigios humanos, también la memoria de la materia viva no humana, como es la fauna y flora que han atestiguado el breve tránsito que la humanidad ha tenido por el mundo. Fotografía de la obra en sitio: @danielenotaristefano

RASOTÈRRA 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀, 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘀𝗮 𝗱𝗶 𝗣𝘂𝗴𝗹𝗶𝗮. This year In-ruins unrolled in Apulia for the first time. Moving between archaeological sites, hypogea, and urban spaces, the residency unfolded within a city where archaeology is part of everyday life - scattered through streets, courtyards, caves, and domestic walls. The final programme, Rasoterra, brings together a series of diffused actions and interventions, tracing a collective path through Canosa as a landscape to be rediscovered. 🗓️ 10–11 October 2025 📍 Canosa di Puglia (BT) Between the Necropolis of Pietra Caduta, the Domus of Montescupolo, the Cinema Strippoli, and the Lagrasta Hypogea. with: Balam Bartolomé 🇲🇽 @balam_b Steffi Stouri 🇬🇷 @steffi.stouri (with @jephvanger ) Benedetta Fioravanti 🇮🇹 @benedetta_fioravanti (with @ch.mantuano ) Giuseppe Di Liberto 🇮🇹 @giuseppediliber (with @_felix_unseld_ ) Xenia Benivolski 🇨🇦 @xeniab.vlsk Curated by @nicola_guastamacchia & @neetido In-ruins residency 2025 is hosted by @soprintendenzabatfoggia and the Municipality of Canosa di Puglia, organised in collaboration with @fondazioneelpis , under the patronage of @fac_canusium and @italiapatriadellabellezza , and in academic synergy with @ucl , @aha_network and @ssba_uniba.unifg . Media partner: @salgemmaproject Design: @studio_co_co Special thanks to all the local partners and people who made this edition possible, among which: @melodicamente_canosa / @prolococanosa / @fonderia_magnifico ❤️

LEAKY TRANSMISSIONS SAT 6th SEPTEMBER 9:30–21:30 A gathering hosted at the Othona Community, Essex. Rather than a formal symposium, this event considers the Blackwater Estuary as a site of encounter to create space together for poetic, theoretical, personal, critical, and challenging exchange. With a specific focus on the intersection of artistic and archaeological thought, practices and methods, this event foregrounds experimental and interdisciplinary approaches to reflect on changing land-use, environmental media, industrial afterlives and natural and cultural heritage in the present. Tides ebb and flow. Emerging from the Dengie Peninsula, the Blackwater Estuary’s composition and relationships are multitemporal, with implications reaching far beyond the coast. These include the seventh century Chapel of St. Peter on the Wall built upon the remains of the Roman Othona Fort; sacrifice zones, exclusion zones and the feral effects of colonial uranium extraction from Namibia to Kakadu for UK reactors; the long half-life of irradiated graphite exceeding the human lifespan of a power-plant worker; barely visible remnants of Saxon fish-traps and heavy metal accumulation in cockles; the 2,500 mile migration of dark-bellied brent geese from Siberia to the sucking mudflats of Essex; the transmission of pathogenic avian influenza; the commodity price of wheat and the sustainable practices of the Othona Community. From its beginning in 1946 as a summer camp in tents on the Essex marshes, Othona has been a meeting place for people from different countries and backgrounds. In 2018 ‘Bradwell A’ was the first UK Magnox nuclear power station to enter ‘Care and Maintenance’, a dormant phase of a long decommissioning process. Public consultation for new nuclear infrastructure on the same site in 2020, brought into focus the Estuary’s ongoing involvement in the nuclear military-industrial complex, and with it questions of power and uncertainty. If you would like to attend as a guest, you can book a day ticket directly through @othona_community_essex before Wednesday 3rd September. £26 inc meals. (Cont in comments.)

OPEN CALL!!! Applications for In-ruins Residency 2025 are now open! Please read and download the full call from @inruins____ website before applying. Good luck! 🗓 Deadline: Wednesday, July 2 – 12 PM CET 📍 Residency: September 8 – October 12, 2025 Hosted by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Foggia and BAT and the Municipality of Canosa. Organized in collaboration with @fondazioneelpis , under the patronage of @fac_canosium , and with the support of @ucl and @aha_network . Media partner: @salgemmaproject Design: @studio_co_co 📩 Questions or technical issues? Write to: [email protected] — IT Le candidature per In-ruins Residency 2025 sono aperte! Si raccomanda di leggere e scaricare il bando completo dal sito prima di presentare la propria domanda. Buona fortuna! 🗓 Scadenza: Mercoledì 2 luglio – ore 12:00 CET 📍 Date residenza: 8 settembre – 12 ottobre 2025 Ospitata dalla Soprintendenza ABAP per le province di Foggia e BAT e dal Comune di Canosa. Organizzata in collaborazione con @fondazioneelpis , con il patrocinio di @fac_canusium e il supporto di @ucl e @aha_network . In-ruins is part of @stare_in_residenza - the association of Italian art residencies. 📩 Domande o problemi tecnici? Scrivici: [email protected]

🌙AHA #24 TUESDAY 20th MAY🌙 with Leonie Brandner ( @brandner.leonie ) 🔗 LINK in bio 🔗 Moonhorns (transl. from German ‘Mondhorn’ ) are late bronze age ceramic objects found particularly in Switzerland. They look like crescent moons or bull horns, hence their German name - Mondhorn. Moonhorns are a mystery in archaeology. Virtually nothing is known about them, except their rough age and location in which they must have held some relevance and purpose. Some archaeologists speculate that moonhors could be altar objects, neck supports, fire blocks or perhaps early instruments for recognising star constellations. Some connect them to fertility rituals, believing they could have held importance for women in particular. Many speculations exist, but nobody actually knows what the moonhorns were used for or the context in which they once existed. Rather than finding answers Leonie Brandner wants to use moonhorns as tools to speculate. How do we deal with an object that defies logic and interpretation? And how do we deal with having no answers? Leonie is seeking to have an open conversation, speculation, association around moonhorns, to learn to understand them (more or maybe less) in a wider context of archeological artefacts and discourse. How does archeology as a field of knowledge categories objects that throw up more questions than they answer? What is the relevance of objects whose purpose is unidentifiable? And where do these objects live in archeological discourse? Leonie Brandner is interested in the potential relevance of moonhorns in a contemporary conversation as much as in past times. She is also intrigued about the symbolism moonhorns undoubtedly evoke, reverberating both of celestial and animal bodies. @uclarchaeology @sladeschool

*WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL* 16:30 - 18:00 GMT / 17.30 - 19:00 CET (online 🔗 in bio) 'Returning to a Home that isn’t There: An Auto-archaeology of My Childhood Summerhouse' This talk is a work in progress for a presentation that Anatolijs Venovcevs will present later in May in Madrid at a conference – “Writing with Ruins: Embodied Encounter & Creative Narratives.” The talk is about his grandparents’ summerhouse in a remote corner of western Latvia. Leaving it behind with his parents’ emigration to the United States and his grandparents’ emigration to Germany was one of the most traumatic experiences of his childhood. Anatolijs returned there after 22 years to find it abandoned – his grandfather’s books still lay on the floor, his great-aunt’s coat hung on the coat rack, a plastic Lego bag – his Lego bag – lay by the rodent-eaten bed where he fondly remembered waking up to the smell of the morning dew and the sound of my grandfather chopping wood in the woodshed. Realizing that the place offered an unparalleled opportunity for auto-archaeology as well as much-needed healing, he undertook two surveys there in 2023 and 2024. Drawing on new materialist approaches, family archaeology, surface survey, and his own phenomenological reactions to the place – especially the altered smells and sounds that called out for his attention on returning to the house - he photographed and GPS recorded the summerhouse, overlaid old family photos with its new material realities, spent a night in the tent in the yard, and interviewed the only other surviving family member who once lived there – his grandmother, now 85 years old and practically housebound. Anatolijs ( @kale__seitan ) is a Russian-speaking Latvian currently employed as the world’s northernmost research archaeologist at the Svalbard Museum in Longyearbyen, Norway. Previously, he held a postdoctoral research position at the University of Oulu where he looked at the unique mushroom ecologies that grow within modern ruins – his love for mushrooms stemming from the summers he spent in the forests with his grandmother at their summerhouse in Latvia. He received his PhD from UiT: The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø.

THIS WEDNESDAY 16th April - Online 15:00 - 16.30 BST / 16:00 - 17:30 CET (🔗 in bio) AHA EVENT #22 : Laurent Olivier ‘Entering the Age of Devastation : Archaeology in the Time of the Anthropocene’ “Archaeology”, wrote David Clarke in the very first lines of Analytical Archaeology, “is an undisciplined empirical discipline (which is) lacking a scheme of systematic and ordered study based upon declared and clearly defined models and rules of procedures”. Fifty-five years later, we must admit that the situation of the archaeological discipline hasn’t really evolved, since the object of archaeology is still quite undefined. Is it really the past and the elucidation of past collective behaviours? Or is it rather the memory of the past, as it is materially preserved within the present – meaning that the past cannot be reached in itself, but only through its “post-history”, as some ever moving reinterpretation? In other words, is the Present the peculiar field of archaeology, as the only place where the Past is laying? The time of archaeology, that of the material memory of the present, is by no means the time of History. This diachronic time, fundamentally cumulative, is now unfolding under the effect of the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene, which crushes both past and future into a dead-end present. In these new conditions, archaeology, which restores the memory of people and places, becomes a tool of resistance against the erasure of this memory; it is the weak force opposing the age of devastation introduced by the advent of the Anthropocene, which is destroying humanly habitable landscapes. Laurent Olivier is Historian and general heritage curator in charge of the Celtic and Gallic archaeology collections at the National Archaeology Museum (Saint-Germain-en-Laye). His research interests include history and theory of the archaeological discipline, as well as the archaeology of the contemporary Past. @uclarchaeology @ucl @sladeschool

AHA EVENT #21 : Antonia Thomas ‘Art and Archaeology in Orkney: Past, Present and Future’ Wednesday 26th March 16:30 - 18:00 GMT (🔗 in bio) The archaeological imagination looms large in Orkney, and the islands’ ancient landscapes, monuments and artefacts have inspired artists since the 18th century. But Orkney is a place as much aware of its contemporary identity, and its future direction, as it is of its ancient history. It is a world leader in renewable energy innovation, and the islands’ hills and seas are home to large wind turbines and marine renewable devices, contemporary archaeological monuments which are inspiring a new generation of interdisciplinary art-archaeology practitioners. This rich setting provides the ideal environment for UHI Orkney’s MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology, a unique postgraduate degree which encourages the blurring of distinctions between artistic and archaeological practice. Developed and directed by archaeologists and visual artists based in Orkney, it is the only course of its kind in the world. Students are encouraged to take a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to research-led creative practice, informed by critical engagements with archaeology. Uniquely this teaching is delivered largely online and through video conference, challenging traditional pedagogic models for such ‘hands-on’ subject areas, and allowing participatory and conceptual art-archaeology practice in the digital realm. In this talk, Antonia will discuss how the past, present, and future of art and archaeology in Orkney have influenced creative research-led teaching at UHI. Antonia will then use the MA in Contemporary Art and Archaeology as a case study for examining the wider challenges and opportunities of integrating art and archaeology, in teaching, research, and practice. Dr Antonia Thomas @art.archaeology.orkney , is the Programme Leader for the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology, and Lecturer in Archaeology, based at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the relationship between Art and Archaeology, using these as reference points from which to explore wider creative engagements.

Wednesday 5th March 4.30 – 6pm The Slade Art Research Centre This talk reflects an engaged, creative, political exploration of digital methods for archaeological worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a concept that has been used to describe the creation of immersive landscapes in fiction and games and is deeply resonant with archaeological knowledge construction. I argue for worldbuilding in archaeology as a creative intervention that encourages an exploration of archaeological data throughout the process of creation, interpretation and dissemination to create past worlds, shaped through community storytelling. Through the examples of Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Other Eyes and the Avebury Papers projects, I explore a playful practice that closely interrogates reuse of archaeological data and encourages lateral thinking amongst students and other archaeological storytellers. Colleen is the Senior Lecturer in Digital Archaeology and Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She is the Director of the Wolfson Digital Archaeology and Heritage Lab, the MSc in Digital Archaeology and the MSc in Digital Heritage. Colleen has an established international reputation as a leading scholar in critical digital archaeology and heritage. Her research contributions fall in three main areas: 1) bringing digital archaeology into conversation with current theory drawn from feminist, queer, posthuman, and anarchist approaches 2) multisensorial interventions and digital embodiment, with a focus on avatars of past people created from bioarchaeological data 3) issues surrounding craft, enskillment and pedagogy in analogue and digital methods in field archaeology, including photography, videography, and drawing. The talk is free and open to all. Refreshments will be provided, to register please email: [email protected] ADDRESS: Slade Art Research Centre Woburn Square London WC1H 0AB WHAT THREE WORDS: feels.react.lifted DIRECTIONS AND ACCESS This space is on Floor 5 of the building which also houses The Warburg Institute. Once you arrive, there are steps leading up to the UCL entrance of the building and inside is a lift to the 5th floor.

AHA EVENT #18 : David Blandy | ‘Other Worlds’ Wednesday 29 January, 16:30 - 18:00, Online 🔗 in bio. Other Worlds - This talk will explore the potential for exploring archives, sites and ideas through tabletop roleplay techniques. @david_blandy_ will talk through his use of worlding, speculative fiction and games in his artistic practice, and the collaborative creation of works such as The World After and Lost Eons. David Blandy (1976, Lives & works in Brighton) He is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. His films are distributed by LUX, London. David Blandy is an artist that makes work that slips between performance and video, digital and analogue, investigating the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our lives. Collaboration is central to his practice, examining communal and personal heritage and interdependence. With research spanning multiple forms of archive, from historic texts to academic archives, archaeology and ecological theory, twitch streams and film archives, Blandy weaves poetic works that explore the complexities of the contemporary subject. This talk is free and open to all. We will be hosting the event via zoom. To register for the zoom link please see Linktree in bio. Following the talk, there will be an in-person workshop on Wednesday 26th February in London. To register for the workshop please see Linktree in bio or email. [email protected].