Cultural Maps, Networks, and Flows: The History and Impact of the Havana Biennale 1984 to the present

Since 1984 the Havana Biennale has been known as "the Tri-continental art event," presenting artists from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It also has intensely debated the nature of recent and contemporary art from a Third World or Global South perspective. The Biennale is a product of Cuba's fruition since the Revolution of 1959. The Wifredo Lam Center, created in 1983, has organized the Biennial since its inception. This dissertation proposes that at the heart of the Biennale has been an alternative cosmopolitan modernism (that we might call "contemporary" or "post-colonial") that was envisaged by a group of local cultural agents, critics, philosophers, art historians, and also supported by a network of peers around the world. It examines the role Armando Hart Dávalos, Minister of Culture of Cuba (1976-1997), who played a key figure in the development of a solid cultural policy, one which produced the Havana Biennale as a cultural project based on an explicit "Third World" consciousness. It explores the role of critics and curators Gerardo Mosquera and Nelson Herrera Ysla, key members of the founding group of the Biennale. Subsequently, it examines how the work of Llilian Llanes, director of the Lam Center and of the Biennale (1983-1999), shaped the event in structural and conceptual terms. Finally, it examines the most recent developments and projections for the future.Using primary material, interviews, and field work research, the study focuses on the conceptual, contextual, and historical structure that supports the Biennale. It presents from several optics the views and world-view of the agents involved from the inside (curators and collaborators), as well as, from an art-world perspective through an account of the nine editions. Using the Havana Biennale as case study this work goes to disentangle and reveal the socio-political and intellectual debates taking place in the conformation of what is call today global art. In addition, recognizes the potentiality of alternative thinking and cultural subjectivity in the Global South

Indirect Structural Connectivity As a Biomarker for Stroke Motor Recovery

In this dissertation project, we demonstrated that diffusion magnetic resonance imaging and measures of indirect structural brain connectivity are sensitive to changes in fiber integrity and connectivity to remote regions in the brain after stroke. Our results revealed new insights into the effects local lesions have on global connectivity—in particular, the cerebellum—and how these changes in connectivity and integrity relate to motor impairment. We tested this methodology on two stroke groups—subacute and chronic—and were able to show that indirect connectivity is sensitive to differences in connectivity during stroke recovery. Our work can inform clinical methods for rehabilitating motor function in stroke individuals. By introducing methodology that extends local damage to remotely connected motor related areas, we can measure Wallerian degeneration in addition to providing the framework to predict improvements in motor impairment score based on structural connectivity at the subacute stage.We used diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), probabilistic tractography, and novel graph theory metrics to quantify structural connectivity and integrity after stroke. In the first aim, we improved on a measure of indirect structural connectivity in order to detect remote gray matter regions with reduced connectivity after stroke. In a region-level analysis, we found that indirect connectivity was more sensitive to remote changes in connectivity after stroke than measures of direct connectivity, in particular in cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar gray matter regions that play a central role in sensorimotor function. Adding this information to the integrity of the corticospinal tract (CST) improved our ability to predict motor impairment. In the second aim, we investigated the relationship between white matter integrity, connectivity, and motor impairment by developing a unified measure of white matter structure that extends local changes in white matter integrity along remotely connected fiber tracks. Our measure uniquely identified damaged fiber tracks outside the CST, correlated with motor impairment in the CST better than the FA, and also was able to relate white matter structure in the superior cerebellar peduncle to motor impairment. Our final aim used a novel connectome similarity metric and the measure of indirect structural connectivity in order to identify cross-sectional differences in white matter structure between subacute and chronic stroke. We found more reductions in indirect connectivity in the chronic stroke cerebellar fibers than the subacute group, Additionally, the indirect connectivity of the superior cerebellar peduncle at the subacute stage correlated with the improvement in motor impairment score for the paired participants. In conclusion, indirect connectivity is an important measure of global brain damage and motor impairment after stroke, and can be a useful metric to relate to brain function and stroke recovery

An Experimental Study on Pitch Compensation in Pedestrian-Protection Systems for Collision Avoidance and Mitigation

This paper describes an improved stereovision system for the anticipated detection of car-to-pedestrian accidents. An improvement of the previous versions of the pedestrian-detection system is achieved by compensation of the camera's pitch angle, since it results in higher accuracy in the location of the ground plane and more accurate depth measurements. The system has been mounted on two different prototype cars, and several real collision-avoidance and collision-mitigation experiments have been carried out in private circuits using actors and dummies, which represents one of the main contributions of this paper. Collision avoidance is carried out by means of deceleration strategies whenever the accident is avoidable. Likewise, collision mitigation is accomplished by triggering an active hood system

Las políticas del agua en España: bases para un desarrollo turístico equilibrado, en el contexto de la desglobalización

Economic activities related to tourism need, at different scales, a policy related to water, in our case in Spain. The main objective of the present investigation is to show the guidelines that mark, or should indicate, the path for the use of a scarce resource such as water, so that the tourist activities can be developed in a balanced way, marking and favoring the growth of the different tourist destinations, contributing to the achievement of more equanimous living conditions. Thus, when analyzing the Water policy in detail, it is determined as in Spain, since the appearance in the current democratic era, of the Water Law of 1985, until approximately the presentation of the Royal Decree that approves the regulation of Hydrological Planning, it has been denoting a progressive development in terms of the issues that have had to face the different water policies. Along these lines, the legal guidelines related to water resources have been adapting to the demands of the circumstances, mainly to the community trends embodied in the renowned Directive 2000/60/EC, which essentially required that rational water availability be guaranteed, so that the various social activities were revitalized.  Las actividades económicas relacionadas con el turismo necesitan, a diferentes escalas, de una política relacionada con el agua, en nuestro caso en España. El objetivo principal de la presente investigación es mostrar las directrices que marcan, o debieran señalar, el camino para la utilización de un recurso escaso como es el agua, para que las actividades turísticas puedan desarrollarse de forma equilibrada, marcando y favoreciendo el crecimiento de los diferentes destinos turísticos, coadyuvando al logro de unas condiciones de vida más ecuánimes. De esta forma, al analizar la política de Aguas con detenimiento, se determina como en España, desde la aparición en la época democrática actual, de la Ley de Aguas de 1985, hasta aproximadamente la presentación del Real Decreto que aprueba el reglamento de la Planificación Hidrológica, se ha ido denotando un progresivo desarrollo en cuanto a los asuntos que han tenido que ir afrontando las diferentes políticas hídricas. En esta línea, las directrices legales relativas al recurso hídrico, han ido amoldándose a las exigencias de las circunstancias, principalmente a las tendencias comunitarias encarnadas en la renombrada Directiva 2000/60/CE, que exigía esencialmente, que se garantizase una disponibilidad de aguas racional, de tal forma que se revitalizase las diversas actividades sociales

Hotel balneario urbano en Ourense

Traballo fin de grao (UDC.ETSA). Arquitectura. Curso 2015/201

Postales de un territorio excéntrico

The decolonial force, working from within the colonial/modern project, generates tensions of acceptance and resistance inside the model, which in turn bring about fights, rebellions and insurgencies, or create bizarre worlds and forms of resistance. This essay advances how a special kind of cultural activity in Colombia, namely the work of visual artist Fernando Pertuz, is becoming the corpus of these bizarre worlds and the locus of terror within culture.The text doesn’t wish to place the work of this artist in a hegemonic place, for the range of artistic and cultural tasks is wide and diverse, but rather to make a contribution to the emergence of new esthetics and forms of writing, connected to contemporary phenomena in the field of culture and the arts. The end objective is to incorporate to the critical process particular contexts and demands, which may contribute to the development of complex historical narratives and forms of re-existence that are a product of postcolonial/modern history.La fuerza decolonial trabaja desde el interior del proyecto colonial/moderno, lo cual genera tensiones de aceptación o resistencia dentro del modelo, que producen luchas, rebeliones e insurgencias, o crean mundos bizarros y formas de re-existencia. Este ensayo subraya cómo cierta producción cultural en Colombia, en especial el trabajo del artista visual Fernando Pertuz, viene estableciéndose como el corpus de esos mundos bizarros, y el locus del terror en la cultura.El texto no busca establecer esta producción como hegemónica, pues el rango del quehacer artístico y cultural es amplio y diverso, sino hacer aportes a la emergencia de nuevas estéticas y formas de escritura, vinculadas a fenómenos culturales y artísticos contemporáneos. Se pretende incorporar al proceso crítico un contexto y unas demandas particulares, que aportan a la construcción de narrativas históricas complejas, y formas de re-existencia que son producto de la historia postcolonial/moderna

De raíz, extracciones y apropiaciones

As the third part of the essay Compressions: Cultural Policy, Economy and Market, this article focuses on the cultural violence that has marginalized, exoticized, racialized and denied viewpoints of a non-Eurocentered character. Today, the latter are taken into account according to their ability of adaptation and the possibility of capture of these marginal subjectivities within the processes of globalization and the dynamics of circulation of cultural markets on a global scale. In Colombia, the multiple displacements within the national territory once again bring to the fore the debate of the cosmopolitan versus the rural, and are part of the discussions about the contemporary configuration of the nation, about its processes of inclusion and construction of unity in diversity. This section presents the case of Don Abel Rodríguez (1941), which serves as an example both of processes of adaptation and capture, and of a real relational possibility within the hyper-institutionalized space of the art world.Resumen Como tercera parte del ensayo, Compresiones: política cultural, economía y mercado, El presente artículo se enfoca en la violencia cultural que ha marginalizado, exotizado, racializado y negado ópticas de carácter no eurocentrado, estas son tenidas en cuenta hoy en medida de su capacidad de adaptación y la posibilidad de captura de esas subjetividades marginales dentro los procesos de globalización y dinámicas de circulación de mercados culturales a escala global. En Colombia, los múltiples desplazamientos al interior del territorio nacional traen a cuento una vez más el debate sobre lo cosmopolita versus lo rural y hacen parte de las discusiones sobre la configuración contemporánea de la nación, sus procesos de inclusión y construcción de unidad en diversidad. Esta sección presenta el caso de Don Abel Rodríguez (1941), el cual funciona como ejemplo, tanto de procesos de adaptación y captura, como de una posibilidad relacional real dentro del espacio híper institucionalizado del mundo del arte.Palabras ClaveArte; botánica; estéticas-de-frontera; expediciones-científicas; ontología-relacional; saberes- otro