Staging the past: landscape designs, cultural identity and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache

The controversies surrounding the re-establishment of a national memorial in Berlin, the Neue Wache, are examined to discuss the process of public memory. After unification, West German media continued to define public debate. ‘Established’ interest groups (politicians, victims, historical experts and citizen groups) were included in media discussions whereas others (East Germans, marginalized groups) were not. Criticisms about the function, form and ‘forgetfulness’ of the memorial reflected West German memory politics (Erinnerungspolitik) about the historical uses of: national institutions, religious (but not gendered) national symbols, and social categories of victim and perpetrator. In response to criticisms, a plaque was added to the memorial. Locally, activists created inclusive spaces to address critically the meaning of the National Socialist past in contemporary landscapes. The memorial is thus both a material object and a site of negotiation; it remains ‘entangled’ with the ongoing creation of historical narratives, official visions, local memories and cultural productions

Wounded Cities: Memory Work and a Place-Based Ethics of Care

‘Project Prometeo: Acts I & II’, downtown Bogotá, December 2002 and 2003 A man in his late thirties wearing a tuxedo walks onto a stage with a lit torch. He sits down, sentinel-like as if at a doorway stoop, and begins to light matches. We are seated outdoors at night in downtown Bogotá; candles and spotlights illuminate the figures of the performers who move across a ‘stage’ in a very large empty field. Furniture brought in or improvised by the actors suggests rooms in now empty houses that once were occupied. Around the ‘stage’, former streets are marked out with candles in white paper bags. Behind the performers, two very large screens, each more than three-storeys high, project images and sound recordings of the neighborhood that once existed here, known locally as El Cartucho, as well as images of Project Prometeo: Act II as it is being performed (Fig. 1). The videos and sounds of El Cartucho include on-site interviews with residents, historical images, maps, and scenes of destruction

Staging the past: landscape designs, cultural identity and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache

The controversies surrounding the re-establishment of a national memorial in Berlin, the Neue Wache, are examined to discuss the process of public memory. After unification, West German media continued to define public debate. ‘Established’ interest groups (politicians, victims, historical experts and citizen groups) were included in media discussions whereas others (East Germans, marginalized groups) were not. Criticisms about the function, form and ‘forgetfulness’ of the memorial reflected West German memory politics (Erinnerungspolitik) about the historical uses of: national institutions, religious (but not gendered) national symbols, and social categories of victim and perpetrator. In response to criticisms, a plaque was added to the memorial. Locally, activists created inclusive spaces to address critically the meaning of the National Socialist past in contemporary landscapes. The memorial is thus both a material object and a site of negotiation; it remains ‘entangled’ with the ongoing creation of historical narratives, official visions, local memories and cultural productions

Walls, Borders, Boundaries

Walls are built and then fall, borders are fortified and then shift, boundaries are demarcated and then transgressed. And then they are constructed all over again. As (post)moderns living in an age of globalization, we weary of our seemingly old-fashioned political and market-oriented boundaries: walls and fences are a nuisance to build and maintain, they invite vandalism and intrusion (rather than guarantee privacy or protection), and public surveys often reveal disapproval of national boundaries for moral, aesthetic, and economic reasons. Indeed, recently erected walls and borders intended to sever communities or fortify political and economic boundaries between neighboring countries rarely solve the underlying political problems; more often they result in increased criminal activity, violence, and alienation

Waiting ‘For the City to Remember’: Archive and Repertoire in ANU’s These Rooms

Walking from North King Street in Dublin's inner city, we arrived on Upper Dorset Street at the performance venue, the historic birthplace of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. We bumped into Louise Lowe and 0wen Boss, artistic directors of ANU Productions who, in collaboration with artistic director of CoisCeim Dance Theatre, David Bolger, created These Rooms, the performance we had come to see. As the production was about to start, we headed to the fiont door to collect our tickets

Troubling national commemoration in Dublin, London and Liverpool: ANU Production and CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s These Rooms

The cultural production These Rooms challenged traditional nationalistic commemorations of war and rebellion during the ‘Decade of the Centenaries’. Created by the Dublin-based ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre, and funded by the Irish and UK governments, this series of theatre/dance performances, installations and public outreach projects in unconventional urban venues ran from 2016 to 2019 in Dublin, London and Liverpool, cities with mixed British and Irish populations. Fragmentary, embodied stories about the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin communicated the perspectives of working-class Irish civilian women and confused young British soldiers through intimate domestic encounters that productively disrupted heroic narratives. Audiences were instead invited to create temporary communities of encounter and ‘unlearn’ dominant concepts supporting colonial, imperial and national spaces–times. As a critical agonistic artistic intervention, These Rooms offered more inclusive ‘potential histories’ and forms of belonging across political, social and temporal borders during the geopolitically uncertain times associated with Brexit

Embodied Geographies of the Nation

How do artistic practices and knowledges enhance scholarly interrogations of Irish pasts and presents, and contribute to more publicly-minded ways to remember possible futures? This special issue of The Irish Rcuicw, edited and \Vritten by Irish Studies scholars, artists and cultural geographers, builds upon recent work calling attention to the significance of place-based and embodied creative practices that imagine and perform alternative Irelands

A molecular clone of Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV) causes mortality in honey bee pupae (Apis mellifera)

: Among the many diseases compromising the well-being of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) the chronic paralysis syndrome of adult honey bees is one of the best described. The causative agent, chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV), is a positive sense, single-stranded RNA virus with a segmented genome. Segment 1 encodes three putative open reading frames (ORFs), including the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and other non-structural protein coding regions. Segment 2 encodes four putative ORFs, which contain the genes of supposed structural proteins. In this study, we established a reverse genetic system for CBPV by molecular cloning of DNA copies of both genome segments. CBPV rescue was studied in imago and honey bee pupae infection models. Virus replication and progeny virus production was only initiated when capped RNAs of both genome segments were injected in honey bees. As injection of these clonal RNAs caused clinical symptoms similar to wild-type CBPV infection, we conclude that the novel molecular clone fulfilled Koch's postulates. Our virus clone will enable in-depth analysis of CBPV pathogenesis and help to increase knowledge about this important honey bee disease

Reduced structural connectivity in non-motor networks in children born preterm and the influence of early postnatal human cytomegalovirus infection.

INTRODUCTION Preterm birth is increasingly recognized to cause lifelong functional deficits, which often show no correlate in conventional MRI. In addition, early postnatal infection with human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) is being discussed as a possible cause for further impairments. In the present work, we used fixel-based analysis of diffusion-weighted MRI to assess long-term white matter alterations associated with preterm birth and/or early postnatal hCMV infection. MATERIALS AND METHODS 36 former preterms (PT, median age 14.8 years, median gestational age 28 weeks) and 18 healthy term-born controls (HC, median age 11.1 years) underwent high angular resolution DWI scans (1.5 T, b = 2 000 s/mm2, 60 directions) as well as clinical assessment. All subjects showed normal conventional MRI and normal motor function. Early postnatal hCMV infection status (CMV+ and CMV-) had been determined from repeated screening, ruling out congenital infections. Whole-brain analysis was performed, yielding fixel-wise metrics for fiber density (FD), fiber cross-section (FC), and fiber density and cross-section (FDC). Group differences were identified in a whole-brain analysis, followed by an analysis of tract-averaged metrics within a priori selected tracts associated with cognitive function. Both analyses were repeated while differentiating for postnatal hCMV infection status. RESULTS PT showed significant reductions of fixel metrics bilaterally in the cingulum, the genu corporis callosum and forceps minor, the capsula externa, and cerebellar and pontine structures. After including intracranial volume as a covariate, reductions remained significant in the cingulum. The tract-specific investigation revealed further reductions bilaterally in the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the uncinate fasciculus. When differentiating for hCMV infection status, no significant differences were found between CMV+ and CMV-. However, comparing CMV+ against HC, fixel metric reductions were of higher magnitude and of larger spatial extent than in CMV- against HC. CONCLUSION Preterm birth can lead to long-lasting alterations of WM micro- and macrostructure, not visible on conventional MRI. Alterations are located predominantly in WM structures associated with cognitive function, likely underlying the cognitive deficits observed in our cohort. These observed structural alterations were more pronounced in preterms who suffered from early postnatal hCMV infection, in line with previous studies suggesting an additive effect