Walking as Do-It-Yourself Urbansim

This article develops a series of theoretical notions arising in the context of an urban art project that took place in London in the summer of 2004 under the title “Where do you breathe?”1 As a participatory urban intervention, the project challenged the notion of authorship in public space by casting the act of walking as a transformation of urban space, and examined the potentials for a practice of photography based on interaction rather than passive representation

WHERE DO YOU BREATHE?

The project wheredoyoubreathe.net consists of three elements: a photographic essay, an urban intervention, and a website. The photographic essay forms an investigation of the city through the act of walking. As opposed to the image of the city as a dense world and a conglomerate of vibrant urban spaces full of things, the photographic essay tries to portray it as a tranquilised terrain open to contemplation, a post-industrial and uprooted, yet surprisingly bucolic landscape where one can roam and linger. By walking the landscape, open yet personal spaces get revealed alongside the city’s designated living, working or sociable spaces. They function as possible chill-out spaces for the city walker, and could be called ‘breathing spaces’. The photographic essay is as much a search for this specific urban space as it is an evocation of London as a fluid landscape of possibility

Governing through nature: camps and youth movements in interwar Germany and the United States

Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-making, nationhood, and modern governing. First, the article addresses the historiography of youth movements in relation to current debates about spatiality, nationalism, and governmentality. The main part of the article examines organized camps, in particular by the German Bünde, the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), and the American Boy Scouts, focusing on their transition from relatively spontaneous activities of particular social movements, to objects of professional design, national-scale planning and intricate management in the interwar period. This development demonstrates how in the seemingly trivial activity of camping, nationalism is interwoven with the project of conducting youth through contact with nature. Despite divergent contexts and political ideologies, youth camp development in this period constituted a set of practices in which the natural environment was deployed to improve the nation's youth, and to eventually reproduce them as governable subjects

Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice

Whether critiquing the architect’s societal position and the role of the user, conceptualising the performative dimension of the architectural object, or considering the effects of theory for architecture at large, current debates in architecture intersect in the notion of agency. As fundamental as it is often taken for granted, this notion forms the keystone of this issue, inviting contributors to rethink architecture’s specificity, its performance, and its social and political relevance. Agency in architecture inevitably entails questioning the relation between theory and practice, and what it might mean to be critical – both inside and outside architecture – today. The main proposal is to rethink contemporary criticality in architecture, by explicating the notion of agency in three major directions: first, ‘the agency of what?’ or the question of multiplicity and relationality; second, ‘how does it work?’, a question referring to location, mode and vehicle; and third, ‘to what effect?’, bringing up the notion of intentionality

Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice

Whether critiquing the architect’s societal position and the role of the user, conceptualising the performative dimension of the architectural object, or considering the effects of theory for architecture at large, current debates in architecture intersect in the notion of agency. As fundamental as it is often taken for granted, this notion forms the keystone of this issue, inviting contributors to rethink architecture’s specificity, its performance, and its social and political relevance. Agency in architecture inevitably entails questioning the relation between theory and practice, and what it might mean to be critical – both inside and outside architecture – today. The main proposal is to rethink contemporary criticality in architecture, by explicating the notion of agency in three major directions: first, ‘the agency of what?’ or the question of multiplicity and relationality; second, ‘how does it work?’, a question referring to location, mode and vehicle; and third, ‘to what effect?’, bringing up the notion of intentionality

La poética musical de Canciones, de Federico García Lorca

This paper is an analysis, from a musical-literary point of view, of Canciones (Málaga, 1927), a book by Lorca which has been largely overlooked by the critics. Our starting point is a general description that will allow us to place the book within the context of both the European Avantgarde movement and the Generation of ’27. The interartistic nature of this cultural period and the author’s musical vocation provide the initial motivation that explains our musical-literary approach. Starting with a close reading of the book, and using the methodology designed by Brown (1987) and Scher (1970), we will focus on the intrinsic musicality of the text, which is present in both the titles and most external paratexts, and in the creative core of the poems.Este trabajo analiza desde el comparatismo músico-literario Canciones (Málaga, 1927), uno de los libros lorquianos menos atendidos por la crítica. El estudio se inicia con una panorámica de conjunto que permite ubicar la obra en el contexto de creación de la Vanguardia europea y la Generación del 27. El impulso interartístico de la época unido a la vocación musical del autor son solo los acicates externos que justifican el análisis músico-literario propuesto. Partiendo de la lectura atenta de los textos y con ayuda de la metodología de Brown (1987) y Scher (1970), se quiere poner de relieve la musicalidad intrínseca del libro, que va de los títulos y paratextos más externos a la médula composicional de los poemas

Role of the AP2 β-Appendage Hub in Recruiting Partners for Clathrin-Coated Vesicle Assembly

Adaptor protein complex 2 α and β-appendage domains act as hubs for the assembly of accessory protein networks involved in clathrin-coated vesicle formation. We identify a large repertoire of β-appendage interactors by mass spectrometry. These interact with two distinct ligand interaction sites on the β-appendage (the “top” and “side” sites) that bind motifs distinct from those previously identified on the α-appendage. We solved the structure of the β-appendage with a peptide from the accessory protein Eps15 bound to the side site and with a peptide from the accessory cargo adaptor β-arrestin bound to the top site. We show that accessory proteins can bind simultaneously to multiple appendages, allowing these to cooperate in enhancing ligand avidities that appear to be irreversible in vitro. We now propose that clathrin, which interacts with the β-appendage, achieves ligand displacement in vivo by self-polymerisation as the coated pit matures. This changes the interaction environment from liquid-phase, affinity-driven interactions, to interactions driven by solid-phase stability (“matricity”). Accessory proteins that interact solely with the appendages are thereby displaced to areas of the coated pit where clathrin has not yet polymerised. However, proteins such as β-arrestin (non-visual arrestin) and autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia protein, which have direct clathrin interactions, will remain in the coated pits with their interacting receptors