- An Unco Site! Symposium
Monday 9th August, Inspace, Informatics Building, 1 Crichton Street, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AB.
For directions, click here.
FREE All Welcome!
Please arrive at 11:30am for 12:00 start
Part 1: Auld Lamps for New?
Is Edinburgh a ghost city? What future awaits its ‘new‘ quarters (Quartermile, Fountainbridge, Edinburgh Waterfront) areas that have no past and that are yet to be occupied? What fate awaits older buildings that have fallen empty? An Unco Site! is focused on the way in which a fantastic neomedieval ‘history’ is routinely injected into Edinburgh’s Old Town (e.g. Auld Jock’s Pie Shoppe, Frankenstein's, Armstrongs, etc.) Is there a space for the ‘new’ in Edinburgh? As the future shuts down does the past become all that’s left to sell? ‘Zombie capitalism’ and hauntology are key themes that our panel of experts will explore here.
- Neil Cooper (Critic and Journalist, The Herald)
- Riccardo Marini (City Design Leader, City of Edinburgh Council)
- Dr Mark Jardine (Scottish Historian, Series Historian BBC A History of Scotland and researcher for the series In Search of Scotland)
Part 2: Return of The Long Now
Norman Hogg will briefly introduce some aspects of neomedievalism followed by presentations from Louise Milne and Bettina Bildhauer. Why the ‘neo’ in neomedievalism? How are the medievalisms of the post-post industrial era expressed in contradistinction to the gothic reconstructions of the Victorian era and its subsequent centurial echoes. Considered here are the perpetual oscillations between escapist, apocalyptic fantasy and rigorous philological study that destabilises the medieval as a distinct (and temporally bounded) unit of linear histiography. Why, and for what reasons, do we anticipate a future assembled from a bricolage of pre-modern components?
- Chair: Norman Hogg (Serjeant-at-Law, Confraternity of Neoflagellants)
- Dr Louise Milne (Cultural Historian, Edinburgh College of Art and Napier University)
- Dr Bettina Bildhauer (BABEL Group / University of St. Andrews)
Part 3: Premodern Futures
Neil Mulholland will field the Confraternity's neomedieval questions to Howard and introduce Yann's presentation.
