Proyecto Nobody: Estudio de caso de una intervención artística en los espacios de Tabacalera y Matadero-Madrid. Project Nobody: Case study of an artistic intervention in Tabacalera and Matadero-Madrid spaces

La comunicación analiza las infraestructuras de un proyecto artístico, que con el título de Nobody, ha sido seleccionado por el festival InSonora VI. Se describe la intervención en el espacio Tabacalera en 2010, y el guión de trabajo para una residencia de espacios en Matadero-Madrid en el año 2011. Desarrollado en el seno del grupo de investigación Derivas Urbanas: Intervenciones artísticas en el territorio, intenta relacionar las acciones propiamente preformativas de campos como la danza, con las artes visuales, la música y la poesía desde una estrategia site-specific. The paper analyzes the infrastructures of an artistic project titled Nobody that has been selected for the InSonora VI festival. The project analyzes a spatial intervention at Tabacalera in 2010 and a residency of spaces in Matadero-Madrid in 2011. Developed amidst the investigation group Urban Drifts: artistic interventions in the territory, the project strives to relate the pre-formative actions of fields like dance with visual arts, music and poetry from a site-specific strategy

Derivas de la memoria. Una biocartografía de Madrid. Indagación en las metodologías de comprensión de la ciudad desde la experiencia subjetiva

La ciudad es ese entorno paradójico y diverso en el que discurren nuestras vidas, es la expresión de la cultura y la organización social de las personas, y es el espacio que contiene nuestras memorias individuales y las de la colectividad. El texto trata sobre la relación entre personas y su entorno vital, enfocándola desde una óptica que pretende construir una visión de la ciudad a partir de la memoria. Para ello, se proponen dos instrumentos que nos permiten dicha indagación, como son el relato autobiográfico y las cartografías personales. El primero, entendido como deriva a través de los recuerdos asociados a los espacios de la ciudad, y las segundas, como sistema de representación de una realidad subjetiva desarrollada desde la experiencia. Sobre estas bases podremos tomar una postura coherente acerca de la doble utilidad de dichos instrumentos. Por una parte, como fuente de información valiosa para proporcionar una mejor comprensión de nuestro entorno vital y, por otro lado, como sustrato capaz de inspirar propuestas creativas sobre la ciudad. En el desarrollo del trabajo se ha partido de un relato autobiográfico que guía al autor hacia diversas líneas de investigación prácticas y teóricas. Por una parte se realizan una serie de reflexiones específicas relativas a los conceptos claves que se tratan de relacionar como son: la ciudad, la deriva como práctica artística, la memoria y los mapas. Por otra parte se muestran un conjunto de planos de Madrid realizados a partir de la memoria. The city is the paradoxical and diverse environment where takes place our everyday life. It is the expression of the culture and the social organization of people, and the space that contains our individual and collective memories. This text addresses the relationship between people and their living environment, focusing on this subject form a perspective that aims to build a vision of the city from the memory. For this purpose, we will propose the tools that allow us to do such an inquiry, as it is the case of the autobiographical narratives and the personal cartographies. The first, treated as a dérive through the memories associated with the spaces of the city, and the latter, as a system of representation of the subjective realities drawn from self experience. On this basis, we can take a coherent position about the affordances of these instruments. On one hand, as a source of valuable information capable of providing a better understanding of our living environment. On the other, as a substrate capable of inspiring creative proposals about the city. The working process starts with an autobiographical story that leads the author towards several research guidelines, both concerning theory and practice. On one side, a series of specific considerations on the work´s key concepts will be undergone: city, dèrive as an artistic practice, the memory and the maps. On the other, a set of maps of Madrid related to personal memories have been drawn

Los artistas nómadas de los Balcanes. El panorama del arte contemporáneo emergente en los Balcanes y su migración hacia y desde el mundo. Nomad artists of the Balkans. The emerging contemporary art scene in the Balkans and their migration to and from the world

Esta comunicación intentará definir la ciudad como un lugar de interculturalidad, de intercambio de culturas y más concretamente definirá el lugar de los artistas de los Balcanes en la escena artística internacional, así como el grado de influencia que tiene el sistema mundial de globalización y los efectos directos e indirectos en la producción artística de la región. Nos preocupan las dificultades que han retrasado la inserción de esta región europea en el panorama artístico mundial, provocadas por las herencias históricas negativas, la inestabilidad y vulnerabilidad política, económica, religiosa y cultural, causadas por las guerras y la fragmentación geográfica e ideológica. Partimos de la idea de que los problemas religiosos y étnicos y la gran inestabilidad política interna, que han surgido después de la caída del régimen, no han permitido el desarrollo del arte contemporáneo en la zona hasta hace no mucho más de una década. Intentaremos comprender la situación de la escena artística actual en la región a través de la mirada de artistas nómadas que exportan la cultura balcánica (hacia el mundo).Por otra parte estos artistas también son importadores de culturas diferentes, de modo que se convierten en motor de desarrollo cultural y artístico para los Balcanes (desde el mundo). Nos centraremos en los artistas balcánicos exiliados hacia Europa o Estados Unidos, como Adrian Paci, Nedko Solakov, Mariana Vassileva o Ergin Çavusoglu. La acotación de los artistas escogidos en el presente estudio es espacial, no para ofrecer algún tipo de división o de estereotipos simplistas, sino para hallar los procesos culturales positivos de búsqueda de su propia identidad, pero no ya “balcánica”, sino cosmopolita y universal. Porque no se puede negar la importancia cultural e identitaria que tienen las características geoestratégicas de los Balcanes y la mezcla o la hibridación cultural, tan enriquecedora, que representa el puente entre Europa y Asia, entre Occidente y Oriente… This paper attempts to define the city as an intercultural place, a place of exchange of cultures and more specifically will try to identify where the artists from the Balkans are placed on the international art scene, as well as the degree of influence of the world globalization system and its direct and indirect effects on the Region’s artistic production. We are concerned about the difficulties that have delayed the inclusion of this European region in the world art scene, as a consequence of negative historical legacies, political, economic, religious and cultural instability and vulnerability, as well as wars caused by geographical and ideological fragmentation. We analyze the idea that due to religious and ethnical problems as well as internal political instability that have emerged after the fall of the regime, the development of contemporary art in the area had not started until only about a decade ago. We are trying to understand the situation of the current art scene in the region through the eyes of artists who export nomadic Balkan culture (to the world). Furthermore these artists also import different cultures, so that they become an engine of the cultural and artistic development in the Balkans (from the world). We will focus on the Balkan artists exiled to Europe or the United States, such as Adrian Paci, Nedko Solakov, Mariana Vassileva or Çavusoglu Ergin. The dimension of the artists chosen for this study is spatial, not aiming to offer any kind of division or simplistic stereotypes, but to find positive cultural processes of discovering one’s own identity, however not anymore as "Balkan", but as cosmopolitan and universal. Because we could not deny the identity and cultural importance of the geostrategic characteristics of the Balkans as well as the enriching mix of cultural hybridism that represents the bridge between Europe and Asia, between East and West..

Exploring the antigenic relatedness of influenza virus haemagglutinins with strain-specific polyclonal antibodies

Alternative methods to the standard haemagglutination inhibition (HI) and neutralization tests to probe the antigenic properties of the influenza virus haemagglutinin (HA) were developed in this study. Vaccinia virus recombinants expressing reference HAs were used to immunize rabbits from which polyclonal antibodies were obtained. These antibodies were subtype specific but showed limited intra-subtype strain specificity in ELISA. The discriminatory capacity of these antibodies was, however, markedly increased after adsorption to cells infected with heterologous influenza viruses, revealing antigenic differences that were otherwise undistinguishable by standard HI and neutralization tests. Furthermore, the unadsorbed antibodies could be used to select escape mutants of the reference strain, which after sequencing unveiled amino acid changes responsible of the noted antigenic differences. These procedures therefore provide alternative methods for the antigenic characterization of influenza HA and might be useful in studies of HA antigenic evolution.This work was supported by grants (JAM) GR09/0039, (IC) GR09/0040 and (JAM) SAF2012-31217.S

Selective expression of the neurexin substrate for presenilin in the adult forebrain causes deficits in associative memory and presynaptic plasticity

Presenilins (PS) form the active subunit of the gamma-secretase complex, which mediates the proteolytic clearance of a broad variety of type-I plasma membrane proteins. Loss-of-function mutations in PSEN1/2 genes are the leading cause of familial Alzheimer's disease (fAD). However, the PS/gamma-secretase substrates relevant for the neuronal deficits associated with a loss of PS function are not completely known. The members of the neurexin (Nrxn) family of presynaptic plasma membrane proteins are candidates to mediate aspects of the synaptic and memory deficits associated with a loss of PS function. Previous work has shown that fAD-linked PS mutants or inactivation of PS by genetic and pharmacological approaches failed to clear Nrxn C-terminal frag-ments (NrxnCTF), leading to its abnormal accumulation at presynaptic terminals. Here, we generated transgenic mice that selectively recreate the presynaptic accumulation of NrxnCTF in adult forebrain neurons, leaving unaltered the function of PS/gamma-secretase complex towards other substrates. Behavioral characterization identified selective impairments in NrxnCTF mice, including decreased fear-conditioning memory. Electro-physiological recordings in medial prefrontal cortex-basolateral amygdala (mPFC-BLA) of behaving mice showed normal synaptic transmission and uncovered specific defects in synaptic facilitation. These data functionally link the accumulation of NrxnCTF with defects in associative memory and short-term synaptic plasticity, pointing at impaired clearance of NrxnCTF as a new mediator in ADMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (RTI2018-101886-B-100)Junta de Andalucía (PY18-823)Junta de Andalucía (P11- CVI-7599)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (BES-2016-076579)Garantía Juvenil contract from Universidad de Sevill

Characterization of an enhanced antigenic change in the pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus haemagglutinin

Murine hybridomas producing neutralizing mAbs specific to the pandemic influenza virus A/California/07/2009 haemagglutinin (HA) were isolated. These antibodies recognized at least two different but overlapping new epitopes that were conserved in the HA of most Spanish pandemic isolates. However, one of these isolates (A/Extremadura/RR6530/2010) lacked reactivity with the mAbs and carried two unique mutations in the HA head (S88Y and K136N) that were required simultaneously to eliminate reactivity with the murine antibodies. This unusual requirement directly illustrates the phenomenon of enhanced antigenic change proposed previously for the accumulation of simultaneous amino acid substitutions at antigenic sites of the influenza A virus HA during virus evolution (Shih et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 104 , 6283-6288, 2007). The changes found in the A/Extremadura/RR6530/2010 HA were not found in escape mutants selected in vitro with one of the mAbs, which contained instead nearby single amino acid changes in the HA head. Thus, either single or double point mutations may similarly alter epitopes of the new antigenic site identified in this work in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic virus HA. Moreover, this site is relevant for the human antibody response, as shown by competition of mAbs and human post-infection sera for virus binding. The results are discussed in the context of the HA antigenic structure and challenges posed for identification of sequence changes with possible antigenic impact during virus surveillance.This work was supported in part by grants GR09/0023 (A. N.), GR09/0039 (J. A. M.) and GR09/0040 (I. C.) from Instituto de Salud Carlos III under a special research programme on pandemic flu. Additionally, the Biología Viral Unit is supported currently by grant SAF2012-31217 from Plan Nacional I+D+i.S