A Late Performance: Intimate Distance (Yingmei Duan)

A written account of a performance by Yingmei Duan translated to video. How does this attempted return relate to that which Lyotard termed the affect-phrase, anamnesis, gesture

Acconci’s Pied-à-terre: Taking the archive for a walk

To kick the habit of conventional scholarship this article appeals to the affective draw of the archive via an imaginative pedestrian peregrination. It takes a walk through the uneasy spaces of Vito Acconci's 1972 work Anchors and listens to the dialogue of conflicting voices which still demand to be heard, forty years after their construction. It becomes unclear who is initiating the dialogue; the text is hard to read and perverse. The resulting disorientation of Anchors is matched by a later, larger, exhibition in Paris: Les Immatériaux, co-organised by French Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Here the labyrinthine confusion of spaces, sounds, smells and sights acts out an excess of information, echoing the affective intensity of Acconci's Anchors. However, the parallel between Acconci and Lyotard comes through a stumbling manner: eager to avoid the foot-fall that forms a well-trodden path the aim is to keep moving. We cannot dust off these archives whilst reclining in a recumbent posture; we must leap to our feet and become participants in their performance. Neither must we aim to decode the unarticulated voices which grunt and girn their way into our reading. Such bodily emissions were termed the ‘affect-phrase’ by Lyotard, not in order to decipher their meaning, but to acknowledge their effect in leaving conventions of communication provocatively unfulfilled. Let us proceed on foot

Permo-Triassic fossil woods from the South African Karoo Basin

The Karoo Basin extends over more than half of the South African land surface and incorporates sediments deposited over a period of more than 100 million years, from the Upper Carboniferous to the Lower Jurassic. Biozones have been established on the basis of the abundant vertebrate fauna. Fossil plant deposits are numerous but best represented by the Lower Permian Glossopteris floras and Middle to Upper Triassic Dicroidium floras. Fossil woods occur throughout the sequence. In this paper previously described woods are discussed, newly collected woods are described and an attempt is made to correlate the woods with the Formations and vertebrate biozones. Prototaxoxylon africanum (Walton) Krausel and Dolianiti is common but restricted to the Permian (Ecca and Lower Beaufort Groups). Prototaxoxylon uniseriale Prasad has the same distribution but is rare. Australoxylon teixeirae Marguerier extends from the Ecca to the middle Beaufort. Araucarioxylon occurs throughout the Karoo but there are several species that have different ranges. Araucarioxylon africanum Bamford sp. nov. occurs throughout the Beaufort and into younger deposits. Araucarioxylon karooensis Bamford sp. nov. occurs in the Normandien Formation of the Beaufort Group. Woods with podocarpacean affinities, recognized as Mesembrioxylon, first occur in the uppermost Beaufort and extend into the Cretaceous. The woods can, therefore, be used as broadscale biostratigraphic indicators but further data need to be collected.The Council's Research Committe, University of the Witwatersrand; National Science Foundatio

Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment

We analyse a z<0.1 galaxy sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey focusing on the variation of the galaxy colour bimodality with stellar mass and projected neighbour density Sigma, and on measurements of the galaxy stellar mass functions. The characteristic mass increases with environmental density from about 10^10.6 Msun to 10^10.9 Msun (Kroupa IMF, H_0=70) for Sigma in the range 0.1--10 per Mpc^2. The galaxy population naturally divides into a red and blue sequence with the locus of the sequences in colour-mass and colour-concentration index not varying strongly with environment. The fraction of galaxies on the red sequence is determined in bins of 0.2 in log Sigma and log mass (12 x 13 bins). The red fraction f_r generally increases continuously in both Sigma and mass such that there is a unified relation: f_r = F(Sigma,mass). Two simple functions are proposed which provide good fits to the data. These data are compared with analogous quantities in semi-analytical models based on the Millennium N-body simulation: the Bower et al. (2006) and Croton et al. (2006) models that incorporate AGN feedback. Both models predict a strong dependence of the red fraction on stellar mass and environment that is qualitatively similar to the observations. However, a quantitative comparison shows that the Bower et al. model is a significantly better match; this appears to be due to the different treatment of feedback in central galaxies.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures; accepted by MNRAS, minor change

A new genus of ovuliferous glossopterid fructifications from South Africa

Main articleA new genus of Early Permian glossopterid fructifications, Gladiopomum, is established to accommodate pedicellate, capitate fructifications with narrow receptacles, apical spines, and very broad wings. Two species recognized within this genus were previously assigned to Scutum Plumstead and Hirsutum Plumstead, viz., G. dutoitides (Plumstead) comb. nov. and G. acadarense (Anderson & Anderson) comb. nov. An additional species, G. elongatum sp. nov. is established based on material from a new fossil locality at Rietspruit Colliery in the northern Karoo Basin. All species of Gladiopomum are confined to the Vryheid Formation; the genus may constitute a useful biostratigraphic index taxon for Artinskian strata throughout the Karoo Basin.Palaeo-Anthropology Scientific Trust; French Embassy in South Africa; Co-operation and Cultural Service

More fossil wood from the Namaqualand coast, South Africa; onshore material.

Main articleFossil wood was collected from a palaeo-beach sequence on the farms Sandkop, Oubeep and adjacent State land, on the Namaqualand (west) coast of South Africa. Of the 14 samples sectioned only 5 were well enough preserved to describe and identify to species level. The woods are podocarpaceous and have been assigned to the taxa Podocarpoxylon cf. umzambense, Mesembrioxylon woburnense, M. stokesi and Mesembrioxylon sp. The samples are Lower Cretaceous in age and were most probably reworked a number of times into successively younger palaeoshoreline deposits. The same species occurred in the offshore sediments, therefore indicating a wider area of "woodland" and further evidence of extensive shelf erosion by subsequent marine transgressions and regressions.Non