Book review: Photography of protest and community: the radical collectives of the 1970s by Noni Stacey

In Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s, Noni Stacey shows how a 1970s network of London-based photography collectives raised fundamental questions about the politics of photography, the role and responsibilities of photographers in relation to local communities and the uses of photography in the context of social activism. This book is a welcome addition to the expanding field of research on the photography of protest, writes Mathilde Bertrand, contributing to the ongoing documentation of this strong current in British photographic history. If you are interested in this book review, you can read an LSE RB interview with author Dr Noni Stacey. The archive of the Exit Photography Group is held at LSE Library; readers can find out more about the archive and the catalogue. Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s. Noni Stacey. Lund Humphries. 2020

Interactional convergence in conversational storytelling: when reported speech is a cue of alignment and/or affiliation

International audienceThis paper investigates how and when interactional convergence is established by participants in conversation. We analyze sequences of storytelling using an original method that combines Conversation Analysis and a corpus-based approach. In storytelling, the participant in the position of " listener " is expected to produce either generic or specific responses adapted to the storyteller's narrative. The listener's behavior produced within the current activity is a cue of his/her interactional alignment. We show here that the listener can produce a specific type of (aligned) response, which we term a reported speech utterance in echo. The participant who is not telling the story is nonetheless able to animate the characters, while reversing the usual asymmetric roles of storyteller and listener. The use of this device is a way for the listener to display his/her stance toward the events told by the storyteller. If the listener's stance is congruent with that of the storyteller, this reveals a high degree of affiliation between the participants. We present seventeen excerpts from a collection of 94 instances of Echo Reported Speech (ERS) which we examined using the concepts of alignment and affiliation in order to show how different kinds of convergent sequences are constructed. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is mainly used by the listener to align and affiliate with the storyteller by means of reformulative, enumerative, or overbidding ERS. We also show that in affiliative sequences, reported speech can be used by the listener in a humorous way in order to temporarily disalign. This disalignment constitutes a potential starting point for an oblique sequence, which, if accepted and continued by the storyteller, gives rise to a highly convergent sequence

French Face-to-Face Interaction: Repetition as a Multimodal Resource

International audienceIn this chapter, after presenting the corpus as well as some of theannotations developed in the OTIM project, we then focus on the specificphenomenon of repetition. After briefly discussing this notion, we showthat different degrees of convergence can be achieved by speakersdepending on the multimodal complexity of the repetition and on thetiming in between the repeated element and the model. Although we focusmore specifically on the gestural level, we present a multimodal analysis ofgestural repetitions in which we met several issues linked to multimodalannotations of any type. This gives an overview of crucial issues in crosslevellinguistic annotation, such as the definition of a phenomenonincluding formal and/or functional categorization

Recherche automatique d'hétéro-répétitions dans un dialogue oral spontané

International audienceOther-repetitions are a device involving the reproduction by a speaker of what another speaker has just said. This paper proposes a solution to automatically detect other-repetitions in French conversational dialogue. A first step of the proposed system consists in finding all possible other-repetitions in the dialogue. A second step is used to select other-repetitions which need to be kept by combining rules with speaker statistics. This automatic detection, evaluated on a one hour dialogue, shows good results according to the expected objectives : recall is 1, and precision is about 80%.Cet article propose des critètres définitoires des hétéro-répétitions qui systématisent leur recherche dans un dialogue oral spontané

“Making the Art of Fun Freely Accessible”: Community Arts Practices and the Politics of Leisure in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s

The concept of leisure offers an interesting prism for the analysis of the community arts movement in Britain. The emergence of community arts from the late 1960s was closely related to a critique of the exclusive character of mainstream art appreciation and practice and to the struggle for people's access to the means of cultural production. As a tool, leisure was used by practioners to enable the expression of usually unheard voices, thus fostering processes of “authorisation”. Instead of being considered as a secondary claim, access to leisure, with its rich associations with play, “fun” and recreation, was given pride of place in the movement's practical and political framework. It became a political aim: that of opening alternative spaces and of harnessing the dynamic and subversive dimension of creative expression in the encouragement of collective action at a local level. In a crucial way, community arts projects asserted the equal validity of all cultural forms and signifying practices, therefore challenging classical definitions of art. The cultural pluralism advocated by community artists confronted the distinction between “high” and “low” culture and sought instead to redefine art around the concept of expression, away from the figure of the individual artist and towards the possibility of co-authorship in the production of collective meanings. The article analyses the politics of leisure produced by community arts organisations both in discourse and practice. Based on archival sources from several organisations as well as interviews with former members, the study offers a survey of different practices and identifies core principles of the movement: accessibility, collective action, empowerment, and cultural democracy. These themes were jeopardized in the 1980s, in the context of the successive Conservative governments.Le concept de loisir offre un prisme fertile pour l'analyse du mouvement community arts en Grande-Bretagne. L’émergence de ce mouvement à la fin des années soixante est étroitement liée à la critique du caractère exclusif des mondes de l’art, tant dans l'accès aux œuvres que dans la pratique artistique. Il participe d'une lutte pour l'accès démocratique aux moyens de production culturels. Le loisir peut être tout d'abord envisagé comme un outil à la disposition des animateurs, qui favorise l'expression de voix habituellement marginalisées et qui conduit à des processus d’« auteurisation ». Loin d'être considéré comme une revendication secondaire, l'accès aux loisirs, dans ses connotations riches qui incluent le jeu, le divertissement et la récréation, fut mis au premier plan dans le cadre d'action du mouvement. Il devient un projet politique : celui d’ouvrir des espaces alternatifs et d’exploiter la dimension dynamique et subversive de l'expression créative propice à l'émergence d’actions collectives au niveau local. D’une manière cruciale, les projets community arts affirment l’égale validité de toutes les formes culturelles et des pratiques signifiantes, remettant ainsi en cause les définitions dominantes de l’art. Le pluralisme culturel revendiqué par les community artists mettent en question la distinction hiérarchique qui séparent les formes nobles et populaires de la culture et cherchent au contraire à redéfinir l'art autour du concept plus ouvert d’expression créative. Ce déplacement permet de révoquer la figure de l’artiste individuel et d’évoluer vers la possibilité d'imaginer un partage de la fonction auteur dans la production de significations collectives. L’article analyse les enjeux politiques du loisir dans le contexte des organisations community arts à travers les discours et pratiques produits. Basée sur un travail dans les archives de différentes organisations ainsi que sur des entretiens avec d’anciens membres, l'étude met en lumière différentes pratiques et identifie les principes fondamentaux du mouvement : l’accessibilité, l’action collective, la mise en capacité des individus (empowerment) et la démocratie culturelle. Ces thèmes se trouvent mis à mal pendant les années 1980s, dans le contexte des gouvernements Conservateurs successifs

Photographing the Miner's Strike at Lea Hall Colliery, 1984-1987: Interview with photographer Nigel Dickinson

In the spring of 1984, a few months after the beginning of the Miner's Strike against pit closures, Nigel Dickinson joined the struggle of the miners and their families at Lea Hall colliery, a "minority pit" in Staffordshire, photographing all aspects of a dispute which went on for a year. His involvement with the community continued after the strike ended. Collectively, the Lea Hall Strike Centre used Dickinson's photographs for an exhibition shown around the country as well as a book entitled Hanging On By Your Fingernails (Spokesman Press, 1987). In this interview Nigel Dickinson talks about his personal involvement and working conditions, emphasizing the construction of a sense of collective action which the photographs contributed to sustain.Au printemps 1984, quelques mois après le début de la grève des mineurs en Grande-Bretagne, Nigel Dickinson rejoint la lutte des grévistes et de leurs familles dans le village minier de Lea Hall dans le Staffordshire. Lea Hall Colliery est l'une des exploitations où les grévistes sont minoritaires. Le photographe documente tous les aspects de ce conflit qui s'est étiré sur un an. Son implication dans la communauté se poursuit jusqu'en 1987. Au long de cette période, les membres du Lea Hall Strike Centre, organisation qui gère le quotidien de la grève, travaillent en collaboration étroite avec Nigel Dickinson sur les photographies qu'il a réalisées, et produisent une exposition ainsi qu'un ouvrage intitulé Hanging On By Your Fingernails (Spokesman Press, 1987). Dans cet entretien, Nigel Dickinson évoque son engagement personnel dans la grève ainsi que ses conditions de travail. Il insiste sur le processus de construction d'un sens de l'action collective, processus dans lequel les photographies ont joué un rôle indéniable

The Rules of Engagement : Do Microglia Seal the Fate in the Inverse Relation of Glioma and Alzheimer's Disease?

Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, play a major role in the maintenance of brain homeostasis and constantly screen the brain environment to detect any infection or damage. Once activated by a stimulus, microglial cells initiate an immune response followed by the resolution of brain inflammation. A failure or deviation in the housekeeping function of these guardian cells can lead to multiple diseases, including brain cancer and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). A small number of studies have investigated the causal relation of both diseases, thereby revealing an inverse relationship where cancer patients have a reduced risk to develop AD and vice versa. In this review, we aim to shed light on the role of microglia in the fate to develop specifically glioma as one type of cancer or AD. We will examine the common and/or opposing genetic predisposition as well as associated pathways of these diseases to unravel a possible involvement of microglia in the occurrence of either disease. Lastly, a set of guidelines will be proposed for future research and diagnostics to clarify and improve the knowledge on the role of microglia in the decision toward one pathology or another.Peer reviewe

Anode supported single chamber solid oxide fuel cells operating in exhaust gases of thermal engine

International audienceThis project deals with the development and the electrochemical characterization of anode supported single chamber SOFC in a simulated environment of thermal engine exhaust gas. In the present work, a gas mixture representative of exhaust conditions is selected. It is composed of hydrocarbons (HC: propane and propene), oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and water. Only oxygen content is varied leading to different gas mixtures characterized by three ratios R = HC/O2. Concerning the cell components, a cermet made of nickel and an electrolyte material, Ce0.9Gd0.1O1.95 (CGO) is used as anode and two cathode materials, La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3−δ (LSCF) and Pr2NiO4+δ (PNO), are evaluated. The prepared cells are investigated in the various gas mixtures for temperatures ranging from 450 °C to 600 °C. Ni-CGO/CGO/LSCF-CGO cell has delivered a maximum power density of 15 mW cm−2 at 500 °C with R = HC/O2 = 0.21, while lower power densities are obtained for the other ratios, R = 0.44 and R = 0.67. Afterwards, LSCF and PNO cathode materials are compared and LSCF is found to deliver the highest power densities. Finally, by improving the electrolyte microstructure, some cells presenting a maximum power density of 25 mW cm−2 at 550 °C are produced. Moreover, up to 17% of initial HC are eliminated in the gas mixture

Une expérience d'annotation à large échelle : le projet OTIM

Nous proposons dans cette présentation de faire le point sur une opération dannotation de grande envergure conduite dans le cadre du projet OTIM. Nous avons dans le cadre de ce projet constitué un grand corpus audio-visuel de parole spontanée comprenant 8 heures de dialogues (soit 102.457 mots correspondant à 6.611 formes différentes) totalement transcrit, aligné et richement annoté pour lensemble des domaines et des modalités. Nous avons donc été confrontés aux principaux problèmes posés par lannotation de ce type de ressource. Cette présentation décrit les recommandations et les techniques que nous avons utilisées pour parvenir à nos fins