Mark Dion

I attended the Mark Dion lecture apart of PSU’s Monday night lecture series. I found his lecture to be very interesting and I really enjoyed his use of pictures throughout his talk. I find his line of work fascinating. I never realized that his kind of art was considered, well art. I love how he has art pieces around the world, and has done excavation places outside the US such as Italy and England.
When I first got to the lecture I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have never been to a Monday night lecture so I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a boring class lecture or what. It was in fact quite the opposite. My friend and I were very surprised about how enthralling he was and how well his pictures went with his speaking. His lecture was more of a series of stories rather than a professor rambling.
I found his most interesting work to be the excavations of the themes and the river in Venice, Italy. I used to live in London so I was very fascinated with this. I had no idea there was a bank that you could walk on along the themes. The artifacts that he discovered and the way that he conducted the research I found very intriguing. Who knows what a person could find on the bottom of a river. The Venice one was also very intriguing. For centuries people have been dumping in that river so the amount of artifacts a person could find could be endless. This idea of goin through a river I feel is a very ingenious one.
Overall, I enjoyed the lecture greatly. I look forward to maybe one day visiting the tree in Seattle and maybe seeing him talk again. I also hope to return to a PSU Monday night lecture.