Undoing Nature: The John Muir Trust's “Journey for the Wild”, the UK,Summer 2006

Abstract: I take as a point of departure for a discussion of the idea of nature the John Muir Trust's much publicised Journey for the Wild which took place in the UK during the summer of 2006. My objective is to explore how, at the same time that the “wild” was performed as a political category through the Journey, replicating the binary nature/society, prevalent norms of nature that depend on that binary, including, ironically, those of John Muir himself, were “undone”. I work with Judith Butler's (2004, Undoing Gender) ideas of “doing” and “undoing” gender and what counts as human, and her link between the articulation of gender and the human on the one hand and, on the other, a politics of new possibilities. Taking her argument “elsewhere”—unravelling what is performed as “wild” and what counts as “nature”—and using as evidence the art of Eoin Cox, the actions of journeyers, extracts from their diaries and from Messages for the Wild delivered to the Scottish Parliament, I suggest that the idea of a working wild points towards more socially just political possibilities than a politics of nature defined through a binary.     

中国艺术考古学的奠基

艺术考古学作为一门在考古学与艺术学的边缘地带产生的交叉学科,其形成和确立顺应了考古学与艺术学学科发展的必然趋势;同样,考古学与艺术学理论的发展也为艺术考古学的建立奠定了理论和实践上的坚实基础。     

水在广西花山岩画风化病害中的作用及其防治对策

花山岩画位于广西壮族自治区宁明县,其保存环境特征是高温潮湿多雨,花山岩画受环境因素作用,岩画颜料及岩石风化明显,风化类型复杂多样,有化学风化、物理风化和生物风化,同时存在、相互影响。它们均与水分有着直接的或间接的关系,因此水的防治是治理岩画风化病害的前提。本工作在水分来源及岩画保存地区地形地貌现场调查的基础上,通过水质分析系统研究了水在岩画风化病害过程中的作用。提出了花山岩画防水治水原则,并结合地质环境和特殊的地形地貌,将整个治水区域划分为山体山顶治水、溶蚀洼地治水、岩画立壁治水三个区域。根据其不同的渗水机制,分别采用盖、堵、排、导相结合的综合防水治水方法。由于岩画病害机理极其复杂,花山岩画防水、治水的难度很大,必须采取区别对待,综合治理的方法。     

旅游表演的文化产业生产模式:深圳华侨城主题公园个案研究

旅游表演是旅游体验的重要来源。深圳华侨城主题公园已发展起以大型广场巡游、音乐舞蹈史诗演出为主,辅以景点表演、节庆活动、以及影视多媒体技术支持的旅游表演体系。大型旅游表演的生产流程包括原创和融资、主创和设计、表演场地和舞台制作、相关配套设备和服务采购、演员排练、节目中试、宣传和营销、正式公演、演出产品的后期组合和拼装、版权产品开发和销售以及演艺节目的对外输出等11个阶段,并与相关和配套服务产业共同构成庞大的旅游表演产业体系。通过艺术和商业的融合、功利和公益的兼顾、不同生产环节中本地一外地关联业务的分工、创新和变化,形成福特一后福特双重机制的文化产业生产模式。     

敦煌莫高窟第3窟壁画“新特征”

莫高窟第3窟壁画是研究莫高窟晚期壁画艺术面貌的重要遗存。这一时期出现了新的造型样式,即同一种形象有不同的造型特征,如"世俗化"的人物形象、从"神格"到"人格"的毗那夜迦神像、异样的飞天造型等艺术风格都是"佛教中国化"的重要体现,这种"中国化"突出了时代性、民族性和地域性的特点,更加说明了元代工匠不束缚于传统壁画的造型模式,艺术上进行圆融创新,同时还构建了各民族交往交流交融的繁华景象。     

Music and the Aesthetic Copernican Revolution of the Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACT

In the mid-eighteenth century music underwent a sudden and drastic revolution when composers “discovered” a new dimension to their art. This had immense repercussions on the philosophy of art, for the music created before and after this divide represents two different species of aesthetic experience, which in due course affected our understanding of the meaning and import of the other arts as well. Despite the immense aesthetic repercussions of this Copernican revolution in music, philosophers of art seem not to have taken much notice of it. This essay details the emergence of the relevant musical criteria during the eighteenth century and dwells on their long-term impacts on the philosophy of art.     

Spinoza and architectural thinking

ABSTRACT

Although Spinoza makes few remarks about architecture, his use of architectural examples, understood in the context of his metaphysics and theory of knowledge, reveal the architect to be a distinctive kind of human thinker. In this paper I explore the kind of thinking the architect does, first by demonstrating that Spinoza distinguishes the architect's adequate way of conceiving a building from inadequate ways of imagining one, and second by considering how Spinoza might have understood the architect to translate that adequate thinking into the practice of building and construction. I argue that for Spinoza, the architect integrates imaginative, rational, and intuitive thinking, and the parallel forms of bodily action, to understand and construct a building in its causal connections to its component materials, environment, and users. To understand the true idea of a building is therefore to understand its embeddedness in the world and its functional place in a network of modal relations.     

THE ROLE OF FINNISH LEFTISTS IN SOVIET–FINNISH ARTISTIC EXCHANGES DURING THE LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD

The article examines artistic exchanges between the USSR and Finland from the viewpoint of the Finnish left. After WWII, Finland was in a difficult geopolitical position; although not occupied by the USSR, it received little support from the West and so remained an independent capitalist democracy, with little foreign leverage. The Soviet influence was felt in many areas, and throughout the Cold War, Finland received many more world-class Soviet artists than any other Western country. This was in part a consequence of Finland’s proximity to the USSR, but the Finnish Communist Party, a major domestic political force, also played a role. Immediately after the war, organizations associated with the Finnish Communist Party enjoyed a virtual monopoly over such exchanges, but this began to change in the mid-1950s. Around that time, the USSR began to allow Finnish artists to train and perform at its world-class arenas, and many of those Finnish students had links with the political left. Based on interviews and supported by archival material from Finland and Russia, the article explores the role of the Finnish left in these artistic exchanges.     

Systems theory,systems art and the computer: Ernest Edmonds interviewed by Francesca Franco

ABSTRACT

This interview with Edmonds, conducted by Franco in 2016, explores how Systems art, Systems Theory, and his personal relationships with artists such as Malcolm Hughes, Kenneth Martin and Edward Ihnatowicz influenced his art practice.     

THE CREATIVE LANDSCAPE OF THEATRE–RESEARCH COOPERATION: A CASE FROM TURKU,FINLAND

This article continues the discussion on creativity in human geographical research. Drawing on Alain Badiou's writing on “two theatres”, I argue that the theatre–research cooperation as a landscape in motion can bring about creative landscapes. In this article, I discuss a collaborative project of participatory research and theatre that tested drama as a tool for urban planning. In the beginning of the project, theatre appears as a tool of inclusive exclusive politics: the research aims to deal with inter‐cultural relations in a hypothetical planning situation and, further, on theatre's potential to motivate those who usually do not participate in planning. Thus, this initial setting is the first theatre in which the elements of a constellation are seen as static. However, during the process, there were moments of doubt, dealing with the representational politics of multiculturalism. Contrary to Badiou's first theatre, in the second theatre the elements are vivid and capable of breaking the state of a situation. This rupture occurs in the second theatre w hen the spectators feel uncomfortable in their seats, or here when the participatory researcher feel their aims generate an inconvenience. It is in the event that theatre changes from being of the state to saying something about the state. This change represents a rupture in thinking, and brings forth the creative landscape of the theatre–research cooperation.