103 research outputs found
‘Dark Tourism’ and the ‘Kitschification’ of 9/11
This paper aims to interrogate the framing of New York’s Ground Zero as a ‘dark tourist’ destination, with particular reference to the entanglement of notions of kitsch in academic discussions of the events of September 11th 2001. What makes Ground Zero contentious, even scandalous, for many scholars is the presence of a conspicuous commodity culture around the site in the form of tourist souvenirs, leading to accusations of kitschification of memory and the constitution of visitors as ‘tourists of history’. Drawing upon theoretical ideas of Jacques Ranciere, Bruno Latour and W. J. T. Mitchell around image politics, the alignment of kitsch with the figure of the tourist will be questioned, along with the conviction that the so-called ‘teddy-bearification’ of 9/11 threatens the formation of dangerous political subjectivities. In attempting to rid the debates of their default settings, and reliance on essentialist notions of kitsch, it is hoped that that the way will be cleared for the sociological, ethnographic and empirical work necessary to considering the cultural and political significance of the Ground Zero souvenir economy
SUPREMATISMO Y REVOLUCIÓN. ARTE MODERNO Y POLÍTICA CONTEMPORÁNEA
RESUMEN Este artículo examina la estética suprematista en relación con teorías políticas contemporáneas sobre la revolución y la transformación social. El punto de partida del suprematismo es la destrucción de la realidad objetiva como acto liberador. Aunque diversos autores contemporáneos del campo de la teoría política conciben el arte tcomo producción de sentimientos que actúan como puntos de partida de la acción y el compromiso. Ambas perspectivas se entrelazan en el concepto de 'revolución': la liberación de la representación totalitaria y la creación de una nueva sociedad
An NLO QCD analysis of inclusive cross-section and jet-production data from the ZEUS experiment
The ZEUS inclusive differential cross-section data from HERA, for charged and
neutral current processes taken with e+ and e- beams, together with
differential cross-section data on inclusive jet production in e+ p scattering
and dijet production in \gamma p scattering, have been used in a new NLO QCD
analysis to extract the parton distribution functions of the proton. The input
of jet data constrains the gluon and allows an accurate extraction of
\alpha_s(M_Z) at NLO;
\alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1183 \pm 0.0028(exp.) \pm 0.0008(model)
An additional uncertainty from the choice of scales is estimated as \pm
0.005. This is the first extraction of \alpha_s(M_Z) from HERA data alone.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures, to be submitted to EPJC. PDFs available at
http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/hepdata in LHAPDFv
Dissociation of virtual photons in events with a leading proton at HERA
The ZEUS detector has been used to study dissociation of virtual photons in
events with a leading proton, gamma^* p -> X p, in e^+p collisions at HERA. The
data cover photon virtualities in two ranges, 0.03<Q^2<0.60 GeV^2 and 2<Q^2<100
GeV^2, with M_X>1.5 GeV, where M_X is the mass of the hadronic final state, X.
Events were required to have a leading proton, detected in the ZEUS leading
proton spectrometer, carrying at least 90% of the incoming proton energy. The
cross section is presented as a function of t, the squared four-momentum
transfer at the proton vertex, Phi, the azimuthal angle between the positron
scattering plane and the proton scattering plane, and Q^2. The data are
presented in terms of the diffractive structure function, F_2^D(3). A
next-to-leading-order QCD fit to the higher-Q^2 data set and to previously
published diffractive charm production data is presented
Erosion and illegibility of images: ‘beyond the immediacy of the present’
The focus of this special journal issue ‘Erosion and Illegibility of Images’ is to explore the relationship of erosion and visibility through contemporary artistic practices at a moment when everything, as Latour suggests, is smashed to pieces. The essays in this issue deploy the notion of erosion as a conceptual tool in order to explore the shifting and depositing of materials, which is observed both on a formal visual level (the breaking up of the image surface) and a critical revaluation of memory, visibility and artistic tools. From an instrumentalist understanding of tools and material, I set out to explore the impact of a radical restriction and limitation of traditional skills and craftsmanship on the artistic process. While recent research has focused predominantly on art theoretical understandings of ruins, the articles collected here aim to interrogate the relationship between artists, artistic tools and the materials of production in contemporary artistic practice by putting them in conversation with each other and scrutinizing interventions such as ‘preservation’, remaking, retro-recuperations and nostalgia work of several kinds
The dawn of the dead : (improbable) art after aI-zombie apocalypse
In recent years there has been growing interest in artificial neural networks (ANNs) which are quickly becoming the primary device for machine learning. Used for finding patterns in large data sets, ANNs were also recently employed in many artistic contexts: as tools for artists, semi-independent creators of content, and even as invisible "critics" which / who predict our aesthetic preferences. The aim of this paper is to speculate about the disruptive effect of these ‘alien agencies’ on the (modernist) aesthetic regime of art centred around the notion of autonomy. The author examines how neural networks and connectionist epistemologies may potentially affect the most common ways of producing, circulating, and valorising art. He claims that the possibility of automatizing creativity and art criticism may lead to the emergence of a new aesthetic regime based on forms of dynamic, distributed and probabilistic governance
Uncommon worlds: toward an ecological aesthetics of childhood in the Anthropocene
In addressing the need for a more robust engagement with aesthetics in posthumanist studies of childhood and nature, this chapter makes some tentative steps towards an ecological aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. In doing so, the chapter takes an alternative theoretical approach from much of the ‘common worlds’ scholarship that has emerged in recent years, while making the case for a new aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to the accelerating social, technological, and environmental changes of the Anthropocene epoch. Our approach foregrounds the singularity of children’s aesthetic experiences as relational-qualitative ‘intensities’ that alter the fabric of nature as an extensive continuum held in common. We therefore argue that every moment in the life of a child is an uncommon and unrepeatable occasion through which the common world of nature is felt, perceived, and experienced differently. This eco-aesthetic approach is developed further through the analysis of photographs taken by children as part of the Climate Change and Me project, which has mapped children and young people’s affective responses to climate change over a period of three years in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than working with images as representations or analogic signifiers for children’s experience, we analyse how each photograph co-implicates children’s bodies and environments through affective vectors of feeling, or ‘prehensions’. This leads us to reframe aesthetic notions of image, sensibility, perception, and causality in relational terms, while also acknowledging the individuation of childhood experiences as ‘creaturely becomings’ that produce new potentials for environmental thought and behaviour
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