An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr [M] Dudeck (IASH-CTPI Duncan Forrester Fellow, 2025)
NEOLITHIC TRANSMITTERS: The Megalithic Imagination in Scotland
Postmodern deconstruction of religion as a grand narrative has led many to abandon institutionalized religion for alternative modes of spiritual engagement. My work as an artist, religious scholar and queer theologian ministers to this transition, as I have spent the past fifteen years inventing and performing a queer sci-fi religion as art (http://religionvir.us.) As of late, I have become interested in megalithic sites and ruins of prehistory as conduits for experimental religiosities – using art, performance and new media as a tools to reimagine new forms of ritual and communitas in the information age. NEOLITHIC TRANSMITTERS is a five-year project that has emerged out of my fellowship at IASH, bringing artists to interface with the prehistoric past through public interventions that blend ritual, research, archaeology, new media and community building. This performative lecture will examine and approach the megalithic imagination in Scotland as a fertile “contact zone” and spiritual laboratory where new religiosities can be imagined, game-tested and performed, showcasing my long-term collaboration with The Scottish Crannog Center, a living history museum practicing experimental archaeology on the mouth of Loch Tay.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83015772676
Passcode: b1QpaAD7