Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public talk, debate, discussion
Mud-huts made of mud-bricks made of fired earth made of ceramics. GLORIOUS MUD Civilisation began on the floodplains of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus. The first cities grew up in their fertile mud. The word 'human' derives from 'hum-' meaning earth. Adam is named after 'adamah' the Hebrew word for soil. Our flesh is 'clay'. It is our cradle and, at the same time, it is filth. It sticks. Mud is the epitome of everything unclean. It lies at the margins, just because we cannot build on it. To coincide with Tana West's exhibition 'Land + Water', being held in Royal Fort House from 14-18 March, the Institute for Advanced Studies invites you to come and see, listen and discuss the muddy, ambiguous world we move in, with stones cast into the water by Peter Coates (Professor of American and Environmental History), Tamsin Badcoe (Lecturer in English), Marianna Dudley (Lecturer in Environmental Humanities) and David Richards (Senior Lecturer in Geographical Sciences).