Journal articles on the topic 'Israeli Painting'

Flowers of Galilee breaks new ground in modern political discourse. Thisbook recommends a democratic one-state solution in all of historicalPalestine and the return of the Palestinians to rebuild their villages. Thebeautiful front cover painting by Suleiman Mansour of Jerusalem lovinglydepicts a Palestinian family, children seated on a donkey, walking past a hillcovered with olive trees. Similarly, Israel Shamir’s essays portray the peaceful,pastoral landscape of the Holy Land and the humanity of its inhabitants,juxtaposed against the ugliness and inhumanity of Jewish racism.These thought-provoking essays, written in Jaffa during the al-AqsaIntifada in 2001-02, call for Jews to leave their sense of exclusivity andplead for human equality. The author, a Russian immigrant to Israel in 1969,followed his meditations to their inevitable conclusion, renounced Judaism,and was baptized in the Palestinian Orthodox Christian Church ofJerusalem. A brilliant storyteller with a vast knowledge of history, he discussescurrent events and their global implications with brutal honesty andtenderness. His clear insights and lyrical use of language to illustrate social,religious, and political complexities make him the Khalil Gibran of our time.An important chapter, “The Last Action Heroes,” memorializes theSpring 2002 siege of Bethlehem. The Israeli army surrounded 40 monksand priests and 200 Palestinians seeking refuge in the Church of Nativity.For a month, “people starved ... Stench of corpses and of infected woundsfilled the old church” (p. 63). The UN did nothing, but a few InternationalSolidarity Movement activists from America and Europe, including theauthor’s son, broke the siege. One group distracted the soldiers while theothers rushed into the church’s gates, brought food and water, and helpednegotiate a surrender.Shamir deconstructs the legal fictions of the state of Israel and the elusivePalestinian state: “Israelis who would like to live in peace with theirPalestinian neighbors ... cannot counteract the raw muscle of the AmericanJewish leadership” (p.179). He further dissects the Jewish Holocaust cultand other Zionist public relations tactics. He exposes the two-state solutionas a political bluff, calls on the world to cut off aid to Israel, and admonishesthe Muslim world for indulging in usury ...

This paper explores the developments and trends in higher education from a pedagogical perspective (specifically, multidisciplinary curricula) and research perspective (the interdisciplinary approach), and traces them from a last resort option to their recognition as a legitimate development with added value. The paper focuses on a case study that integrates two disciplines, art and literature, based on the poem by the Israeli poet Rachel entitled My Book of Poems and the painting The Scream by Norwegian artist Eduard Munch. The interdisciplinary approach opens up possibilities of enriching, expanding horizons, and breaking boundaries, and can grant graduates of the higher education system a cultural perspective suitable for the current generation of students, who typically use multiple interactive media and platforms, often simultaneously. This paper may shed light on teaching and learning of many diverse fields. The case study illustrates the joy of interdisciplinary learning and its academic benefits, despite the fact that for years, higher education institutions have tended to refer to researchers’ specializations in specific academic disciplines. This case study may serve as a model or source of inspiration for multidisciplinary learning involving motifs and topics that traditionally represent specific disciplines.

This article focuses on the work Seven Private Skies (initiated in 2009) by the Israeli artist, Tsipy Amos Goldstein. This is a series of large panels on which the artist has been painting and embroidering for fourteen years as her main occupation. The aim of the study was to establish the meanings inherent in the work, which is a kind of multi-layered cryptograph, while characterizing it in terms of creativity. The research method combined visual-interpretive analysis with both a narrative-feminist paradigm and with theories from the field of creativity studies. The findings showed that the series “tells” through artistic means the artist’s personal story in a way that matches two definitions: creativity as an experience and creativity as a complexity. The article will discuss the characteristics of the artist and artwork as an experience and then will present the paradoxes distinguishing the work as complex: 1. Order versus chaos; 2. Love and home in the face of disintegration; 3. Cuts versus connections and male versus female; 4. Understandable communication in the face of conflicting messages; 5. Star of David versus the Jewish yellow badge.

Dorot Ruth, Mosaic of Israel’s landscapes as an expression of geographical, cultural, and religious diversity. “Images” vol. XXV, no. 34. Poznań 2019. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 87–113. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2019.34.06. Israel is tiny in its dimensions, yet huge in the spectrum of its landscapes. It is ancient in its history, yet young as a state. In honor of the 70th independence day of the State of Israel, celebrated in 2018, this paper presents a mosaic of 12 landscape paintings, from the country’s most southern point to the most northern one, by Israeli artists who represent, in diverse styles, the state’s geographic and historic wealth in a visual-artistic sense.

Abstract While numerous scholars have analyzed the influence of immigration on Jewish visual culture, few have focused on the Hungarian-Israeli scene. This article seeks to resolve some of the lacunae surrounding expressions of Hungarian immigrant experiences in Israeli art by analyzing the Annunciation theme in Hedi Tarjan’s series Homage to Fra Angelico, which was painted in the 1980s and the 2000s. A woman artist with a complex Christian-Jewish identity, Tarjan expressed her cross-cultural and interfaith experiences in her paintings and can be regarded as a “Jewish Diasporist” in the sense elaborated in American artist R. B. Kitaj’s manifestos. The article concludes by arguing that Tarjan, as a Jewish artist who emigrated from Hungary to Israel, faced unique professional, cultural, and religious challenges.

This essay reflects on works chosen from the Sonnenfeld Collection at the Katzen Gallery at American University in Washington, DC—it originally accompanied an exhibition at that gallery in early 2021—to comment on the observations of several generations of Israeli artists on the land and its meaning for the culture and politics of Israel’s coming into existence and evolution during the first 70 years of its existence. Beginning with a pair of photographs of pioneers in the land in the fifteen years before statehood—and conceptually re-purposed by a contemporary Israeli artist in 2008—and moving through decade after decade of engagement with the landscape of Israel in both figurative and abstract modes, with and without humans present within these contexts, veering from brightly colored to virtually colorless images, including paintings and photographs, the essay traces a distance between earlier assertions of presence and the gradual emergence of questions regarding presence, absence, and identity. Israel, in its internal development, is both visually and thus verbally interwoven with the issue of its external relationship with its immediate neighbors and to the shifts between what comprises “internal” and “external”—”this” and “other”—as the context has metamorphosized from the 1930s to the 1950s to 1967 to 1993 to 2000 and to the present.

Abstract. In 2008, excavations at Herodium revealed magnificent secco wall paintings and stucco decorations adorning the central chamber at the top of the royal theatre. The wall paintings, dated to the first century B.C.E., have been preserved up to a height of 6 meters. However, shortly after the discovery, salts weathering and structural faults caused severe damages to the decorations. The conservation process to restore the wall paintings lasted almost a decade. These efforts helped stabilize the state of wall painting, but in a very fragile manner, while the deterioration factors are still present, any slight change in the condition of the enclosure, could damage the paintings. This study is aimed at assisting the conservators in developing a tool that will offer a glance to the hidden threats at the subsurface, and by that help protect historic monuments from salt weathering. This paper will describe an innovative methodology with particular emphasis on novel multimodal convolutional neural networks (CNNs) technologies to process data of non-destructive testing (NDT) for detection and mapping soluble salts at the subsurface of ancient wall paintings. Prior to preforming the system protocol in situ, a laboratory simulation was carried out to study thermochemical behaviour of soluble salts, chlorides and sulphates, within different subsets. The preliminary results of the simulation will be presented in this paper.

AbstractIn 1906, on the occasion of the Rembrandt jubilee, Jozef Israels bore witness to his lifelong admiration of Rembrandt and his art, conjuring up a picture of the master working on the Night Watch. The vision he evoked was of a painter in the throes of creation, 'dipping his broadest brushes deep into the paint of his large palette' in order to give more power and relief to certain areas of the painting. The author contends that this description is not consistent with what really went on in 17th-century studios. Numerous arguments support the hypothesis that up into the 19th century palettes were not only much smaller than the 19th-century ones envisioned by Jozef Israels, but that they did not usually carry the complete range of available oil-based pigments. On thc contrary, painters adhered to the diehard tradition of loading their palettes with a limited number of tints suitable for painting a certain passage. Support for this proposition comes from various directions. The most important sources are paintings of studio scenes and self-portraits of painters with their palettes. Examination of the depicted palettes, an examination conducted on the actual paintings, has yielded plausible grounds for assuming that painters strove for verisimilitude in their renderings of palettes. This is borne out by the surprising consistency of the examined material. On certain 15 th and 16th-century representations of St. Luke painting the Madonna, his palette is seen to contain only a few shades of blue, with occasionally white and black. Other palettes on which a greater variety of colours are depicted are incomplete, representing the range needed for the parts of the painting which were the most important and most diflicult to paint - the human skin. Texts by De Mayerne and Beurs gave rise to this assumption. One of the chief duties of the apprentice was to prepare his master's palettes. According to a dialogue in the late 17th-century Volpato manuscript, the master's mere indication of which part of the painting he was going to work on sufficed for the apprentice to prepare the palette. This implies that a specific number of pigments were necessary for the depiction of a particular element of reality. The idea is supported by the countless recipes for the depiction of every part of the visible world which have been handed down to us, notably in Willem Beurs' book but in other sources too. The implication is that the method of a 17th-century artist differed fundamentally from that of artists of the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century. Whereas there are substantial grounds for assuming that painters of the latter period tended to work up an entire painting more or less evenly, painters of earlier centuries executed their work - over an underdrawing or an underpainting in sections, on a manner which is best compared with the 'giornate' in fresco painting. This kind of method does not necessarily mean that a painter did not proceed from a tonal conception of an entire painting. Indeed, Rembrandt's manner of underpainting shows that his aims did not differ all that much from, say, Jozef Israels. Technical and economic circumstances are more likely the reason why painters continued to work in sections in the Baroque. With regard to the economic aspect: grinding pigments was a lengthy operation and the resulting paint dried fast. Consequently, no more pigments were prepared than necessary, so as to avoid waste. With regard to the technical aspect: before the development of compatible tube paints, whose uniformity of substance and behaviour are guaranteed by all manner of means, painters had to take into account the fact that every pigment had its own characteristics and properties; some pigments were not amenable to mixing, others were transparent by nature, other opaque, etc. This is best illustrated by paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. However, the tradition persisted into the 17th century and was also carried on by Rembrandt, as scientific research has shown. Neutron-activating radiographic examination reveals that certain pigments only occur in isolated areas (as far as these pigments were not used in the monochrome undcrpainting). Scrutiny of paint samples has moreover revealed that a layer of paint does not as a rule contain more than two to five, or in very exceptional cases six, pigments. Having been made aware of this procedure, however, we can also observe it in stylistic characteristics of the painting, and we realize that for the aforesaid reasons a late Rembrandt is more akin to a Raphael than to a Jozef Israels. In the 19th-century discussion of the relationship of style and technique, figures like Semper contended that this relationship was an extremely close one. Riegl, proceeding from the concept of 'Kunstwollen', regarded technique as far less important, more as the 'frictional coefficient' in the realization of a style; while not denying technique's effect on style, Riegl did not consider its influence to be as crucial as Semper did. Paul Taylor's recent research into the concept of 'Houditng' have demonstrated the extent to which aspects as tone and colour served to create an illusion of space in the 17th century, the chief priority being the painting as a tonal and colouristic entity. If we assume that the working principles of a 15th and a 17th-century painter did not fundamentally differ, it becomes clear that the pictorial 'management' involved in attuning tones and colours so convincingly as to produce the tonal unity so typical of Baroque painting, was quite an achievement. The technical and economic limitations mentioned above in connection with the palette may thus be seen as exemplifying Riegl's view of technique as a frictional coefficient in achieving pictorial ends.

In this contribution the author goes deeper into the life, the oeuvre and the network of the all but forgotten artist Bramine Hubrecht (1855-1913). At the centre is one of her paintings – four veiled young girls entirely dressed in white in a church interior. This work is now in Museum Catharijneconvent. The painting was previously attributed to Isaac Israels (1865-1934) on the basis of two false signatures. New information has meant that it can now be identified as a work by the painter Bramine Hubrecht. One of her sketchbooks in the Rijksmuseum and a watercolour in the Pulchri Cabinet, a unique artists’ initiative in The Hague, helped in unravelling the story. These two works, which show exactly the same girls, can beattributed to Hubrecht with absolute certainty. New biographical information has reinforced this new attribution and also sheds light on the meaning of the subject. These ‘brides’ prove to be part of the Processione dei Misteri del Venerdì Santo,which is still held every year on the evening of Good Friday in Taormina, the little village in Sicily where Hubrecht lived at the beginning of the twentieth century. The new attribution has also prompted research into Hubrecht’s life and works – research which has not been carried out until now.

The art of Palestine, especially painting, has focused in recent decades on symbolism with value concepts, although it has experienced indirect effects of Western modernism. Palestinian painting symbols, which include a wide range of elements and phenomena, are, in some cases, consistent with common themes and sometimes are for Palestinian artists due to specific circumstances, as well as political and religious conditions. Meanwhile, some motifs have a special expressive capacity. Researches on the art of Palestine show that since the birth of Israel, some of the motifs have exerted a role and even beyond a painting as a symbol and dynamic expression of Palestinian art, and the Palestinians found them a model of national ownership expropriation and confiscation of their property. The specific conditions of Palestine have led to the emergence of resistance culture and art; and in the present paper, it is attempted to refer to the contemporary Palestinian painting to examine the element of resistance and its symbols, especially the key symbol in the contemporary Palestine art.

Abstract My article examines various artworks from Europe and Israel that portray and are inspired by the Book of Ruth. While in Jewish sources such as the Talmud (Yevamot 47b) Ruth is seen as an immigrant and a convert to Judaism, European artists since the seventeenth century highlighted different episodes and aspects of the biblical story that suited their social, political, and religious worldviews. Notably, the expansion of colonialism during the nineteenth century transformed the depictions of Ruth. While in the canvases of painters such as Pieter Lastman and Jan Victors Ruth is depicted as a model of religious identification, in the paintings of Joseph Anton Koch and Francesco Hayez she epitomises “oriental” otherness. Furthermore, while early European painters underscore the immigration of Ruth, Hayez represents Ruth as a dweller of the “East.” Zionist artists were influenced by European traditions of depicting the Book of Ruth but developed a unique fusion between strategies of identification and differentiation. Artists such as Ze’ev Raban (1890–1970) portrayed the story of Ruth as both ancient and contemporary, while imitating and appropriating Palestinian tropes in order to imagine the Zionist narrative of homecoming. The contemporary Israeli artist Leor Grady (b. 1966), on the other hand, addresses questions of immigration and homecoming while exploring the Book of Ruth in his solo exhibition Bethlehem (2019, Tel Aviv). While Raban’s illustrations ignore the Jewish experience of exile, Grady’s oeuvre epitomises what the Israeli historian Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin sees as “exile within sovereignty.” Instead of recounting a linear historical narrative that begins with exile and culminates with the return to the Promised Land, Grady underscores that every return is also a departure and every departure a return. In this manner, Grady foregrounds the voices silenced by Zionist historiography and challenges the exclusion of the Palestinian narrative.

Abstract In societies experiencing intractable conflicts, civil society may seek conflict-management solutions that are not necessarily political or institutional. Israel, with a century-old conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, has various NGOs trying to bring both sides together in different ways. The present study focuses on four such NGOs: Merchavim, Hand in Hand, Abraham Initiatives, and Sikkuy-Aufoq. Drawing on their websites and publications as well as interviews with their Jewish and Palestinian directors, it offers a comparative analysis of their goals, strategies, collaborations, evaluation methods, difficulties, and aspirations. The findings point to similarities and differences between the organizations’ agendas, painting a picture of the key issues confronting efforts to build a shared society in Israel.

This paper claims the heraldry of the twelve tribes of Israel as a distinct iconographic invention in post-Reformation England. It is argued that the theme became popular during the reign of King James, a period usually regarded as iconophobic. Little-studied examples of church wall-painting are understood in relation to analogous bible illustrations and writings which have been ignored by historians of this period. The depictions of the twelve patriarchs themselves, part of a ‘Laudian’ beautification of Burton Latimer church in the 1630s, during the incumbency of Robert Sibthorpe allows exploration of the shifting meanings of this Reformation subject.

The Holocaust and Rebirth in the Works of Sara Gliksman-Fajtlowicz, a Painter From Łódź, 1909–2005 Sara Gliksman-Fajtlowicz, a painter, came from a well-off family of Majerowiczs, the owners of opticians’ shops in Łódź. She studied at private painting and drawing schools in Łódźand Warsaw. Before the outbreak of World War II, she was active in the Polish art milieu. In 1933, she became a member of the Trade Union of Polish Artists (Związek Zawodowy Polskich Artystów Plastyków, ZZPAP) and participated in its exhibitions in Łódź, Warsaw, Kraków,and Lviv. She painted mainly landscapes, still lifes, and—less frequently—portraits. She published her works in the union magazine Forma. In 1940, she was displaced to the Łódźghetto where she worked as a graphic artist at the Statistics Department. Thanks to this she could obtain art materials. Her clandestine activity was documenting life in the ghetto in paintings and drawings. She survived the liquidation of the ghetto and then was forced to work on cleaning that area. Liberated on 19 January 1945, she returned to her house where some of her prewar works had survived. After 1945 she continued her artistic career and exhibited with the ZZPAP, as well as with the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. In 1957, she emigrated to Israel. Gliksman died in Tel Aviv in 2005. The aim of this article is to verify and describe Sara Gliksman’s biography, to present her activities in the Polish-Jewish artistic community of postwar Poland, as well as to place her works in the context of issues concerning survivors’ memory and artistic attitudes toward the Holocaust, and art as a manifestation of hope for the rebirth of Jewish life and culture in postwar Poland in the second half of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s.

The article is devoted to the biography of Justine Frank (1900-1943), a marginalized member of the surrealist movement, a painter and writer who combined Judaism with pornography, a critic of the Zionist project who tragically died in Palestine. Written by an Israeli artist and an expert on the interwar avant-garde, Roee Rosen, it is not only an artistic provocation – a part of a larger experiment in the field of the so-called parafiction also including editions of Frank’s novel Sweet Sweat and exhibitions of her paintings – but also an interesting statement in the discussion on the possibilities and limitations of feminist criticism, as it points out the problem of fabrication of the indispensable precursors.

This semblance is a post mortem tribute that the Mexican Society of Soil Science A. C. (SMCS), concedes to Dr. Yoav Bashan, one of the most prominent researches of soil microorganisms. Dr. Bashan was born on October 12, 1951 in Haifa, Israel and died on September 19, 2018 in Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. He was an active researcher of the interaction among plant growth promoting bacteria, plants of anthropogenic importance and the environment. Due to his hard work, in 2013, he was awarded by the SMCS, A.C. with the “Award for Merit in Soil Biology Dr. Jesús Caballero Mellado”. Two little-known facets of Dr. Bashan were his passion for painting and the hobby for collecting handicrafts. His scientific legacy is recorded in the annals of the Terra Latinoamericana journal, the official magazine of scientific outreach of the SMCS, A. C., as well as many journals around the world (Figure 1).

Abstract Robinet Testard, the court illuminator from 1484 to 1531 for Count Charles of Angoulême (d. 1496) and Louise of Savoie (d. 1531), had an artistic career extending from the era of the handwritten book into the age of printing and graphic media. His embrace of these new technologies included pasting in and coloring the twelve single-leaf Large Passion cycle engravings of Israel van Meckenem into a manuscript book of hours (Paris, BnF, lat. 1173) that he was illustrating for Charles, a practice that allows us to see how he chose to enhance certain details and even add new ones that radically altered the meaning of the scene. In many of his illuminations done for the Valois couple, Testard had enjoyed adding dogs to scenes both to appeal generally to the contemporary fashion for dogs in scenes of courtly domestic life and to express his own moral and religious convictions on the topics of sexual license or marital fidelity. In the BnF hours of Charles of Angoulême, however, we see these dogs put to a new use. In Testard’s reworking of the Apostle Peter’s denial of Jesus in the Interrogation before Annas print and in the Crowning with Thorns print (with a subtext of the biblical Malchus’ failure to acknowledge Jesus’ miraculous healing of his severed ear), we can see how Testard brilliantly reworks existing dogs though color, expression, and body language to express his disapproval of religious ingratitude.

When in 1714 the artist Israel ben Mordecai Liśnicki from Jaryczów painted the interior of the wooden synagogue of Chodorów, today in the L'viv (Polish, Lwów) region of western Ukraine, he did not know that one of his paintings would be the subject of divergent interpretations by art historians some three hundred years later. The controversy centers around the depiction of an eagle grasping in its talons two hares trying to escape outward. The hares are grasped by the neck (fig. 1). This depiction, located in the center of the ceiling, is surrounded by a decorative medallion inscribed with the verse “Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young, so did He spread His wings and take him, bear him along on His talons” (Deuteronomy 32:11). In the background are the twelve signs of the zodiac.

Abstract The article highlights the added value with which the scene of David with the head of Goliath has accumulated in the seventeenth century. During this period these paintings were intended to represent the young David as a penitent saint atoning for his sins rather than the divinely supported triumph of the young shepherd over Goliath, the skilled and talented military hero. What is emphasized is the a-temporal nature of this iconography, using David, the boy who killed Goliath as atoning for his most grievous sin that he committed many years later when he was already king of Israel toward Uriah the Hittite. In what follows I would like to characterize the unique iconography developed in the early seventeenth century, which represents the young David as a penitent while Goliath’s head signals the memento mori. Goliath’s severed head stands for the skulls appearing in other visual representations of penitent saints.

AbstractThe sparse literature on Dutch collectors around 1900 makes no mention of Hendrik Spaan (1851-1915; ill. I), a rather unfair omission. A baker of the Hague who lived at Korte Beestenmarkt 2, Spaan concentrated almost exclusively on the work of contemporary artists of The Hague, whether established or not. He was on good and even friendly terms with many of them. The younger ones regarded him as a kind of patron, not only because he purchased work at a time when it was extremely hard to find buyers, but also because he quite literally provided their daily bread when times were hard. One of his closest and longest contacts was undoubtedly with Jozef IsraelS. Interesting evidence of their relationship takes the form of a number of drawings, now scattered, which Israels dedicated to Spaan in gratitude for the pastries which the baker sent to Israels on St. Nicholas' Day for seventeen years (ills. 3a-f). Spaan owned some 1 14 paintings and watercolours, all described in detail in the 19 12 sale calalogue - the only source at our disposal, incidentally. No correspondence pertaining to his purchases exists, nor have any photographs or detailed visitors' descriptions surfaced which might hav e told us something about the hanging of the pictures and the growth of the collection. We do know that Spaan started to collect relatively late, in the early eighteen-eighties. He tended to buy fairly recent work, meaning early work by young artists and late work by such established masters as Israels, Bosboom or Weissenbruch. Judging by his personal contacts and undoubtedly limited funds - certainly in comparison with well-known collectors like Mesdag or Hidde Nijland - we may assume that he often bought pictures directly from artists' studios, avoiding accredited art-dealers whenever possible. Perhaps this accounts for the relatively large number of watercolours in his collection, and for the modest formats of many paintings, especially those by more established artists. Another reason for the latter circumstance may well have been the size of his house, which had to accommodate not only the bakery but his family of five children too. Since the much of the work cannot be traced with any certainty, it is difficult to assess the quality of the collection. Spaan exhibited a marked preference, though, for more or less 'impressionistic' work by representatives of the Hague School and younger artists closely connected with it: Arntzenius, for instance, and notably Willem de Zwart, with eighteen works by far the most generously represented artist in the collection. A striking feature of Spaan's collection, in comparison with others that focused on the Hague School, is the absence of its French precursors, the like-minded artists of the Barbizon School. Spaan was interested solely in Dutch art, preferably from his home-town of The Hague. In this, his collection is 'narrow' rather than specialized: work by younger artists who pursued a different, more audacious or more experimental path - figures such as Breitner, Witsen, Verster or Suze Robertson, not to mention the symbolist movement - is almost totally absent. Although his collection displayed a great variety of themes, he was not concerned with representative surveys either. Nor was he interested in medium or technique: his collection does not contain any drawings or the etchings that were so popular in his day. What remained was nonetheless a good and certainly representative cross-section of Hague, or Hague-oriented, art of the period of the Marises and Israels, pictures which fetched enormous prices on Spaan's death. Willem Maris' 'Morgenstond' ('Daybreak', ill. 12), which went for 12,000 guilders, beat them all. 'Together with portraits of Spaan and his wife (ill. 2), it was bequeathed in 1977 to the Haags Cemeentemuseum.

Abstract In the last few years there has been a world wide increase in the incidence of multiple myeloma (MM). Epidemiologic studies have suggested that certain occupational and chemical exposures are likely to increase the risk for MM. We performed a retrospective clinical and epidemiological study of MM on 110 cases diagnosed during 2000–2005 in our area, which is a rural and agricultural zone of approximately 400000 people. The incidence of MM in our population was 5.5 new cases /100000 people / year. 43% were females (n= 48) and 57 % males (n = 63). 22% of the patients were younger than 60. 58 patients were of European descent (52%), the vast majority of them from the former USSR (including people from near-Chernobyl); 40 from Asia (36%) and 16 patients (14%) from Africa. We separated the population into three categories: non exposed (physician, teacher, housekeeper, secretary, shop assistant, employee, scientific), suspected (painting, cleaning, microbiology, engineer, aviation, building-worker), and exposed: (petroleum, agriculture, plastic manufacture, textile, ammoniac, asphalt, Chernobyl). 65 % did not have any evidence of toxic exposure, in 23% we could document a significant exposure and in 12% there was a possible such exposure. 57% of the patients were in ISS stage I (b2m< 3.5 and albumin > 3.5), 33%- ISS stage II (b2m < 3.5 and albumin< 3.5) and 10% -ISS stage III (b2m > 3.5). Only 13% displayed lytic lesions at the time of survey. Fifty five patients requiring treatment received conventional therapy including APSCT and thalidomide for residual disease. In a cohort of 10 patients thal/dex was given as second line after achievement of a plateau with MP. This oral treatment allows a convenient ambulatory management and does not hamper stem cell harvesting made several months after discontinuation of MP. New clinical trials allowed us to include six patients for treatment with bortezomib. In conclusion: the high incidence of MM in our area is in accordance with the world wide trend, possibly with a relationship with occupational and environmental risk factors. The heterogeneity of the population of Israel including arabs and new immigrants as well as additional data from others centers of Israel will help us to create a larger data base and to gain a better knowledge of MM in Israel.

The multifaceted culture of the Volyn land is distinguished by a colorful palette of prominent figures in the field of art, including fine art, and their creative achievements. A Volyn artist Oleksandr Valenta (1944–1997), was well-known far beyond our country. He was a master of the still life and landscape genre, which combined features of post-impressionism, cubism, pointillism. At the same time, the artist had highly distinct, specifically Ukrainian, namely Volyn individual handwriting, marked by folklore motifs, decorative motifs, ornamental construction of the composition, which are still not studied by art critics and are still waiting for their scientific understanding. This article is the first to introduce factual and analytical materials into scientific circulation, the authors cataloged the creative works of the master, which will help in further scientific practice of research of little-known creative heritage, and highlighting his creative methods and techniques. The authors proved that the peculiarity of O. Valenta’s paintings is a peculiar image of space composed of small particles. They are painted lush, colorful, full of light and freshness. The Ukrainian color of his paintings is revealed by the peculiarities of the image and color palette. The artist often painted his canvases using different variations of one shade, striking the bold combination of colors, conciseness, decorativeness, and symbolism of the image. As a result of the research, it was established that a significant number of the artist’s works are the property of private collections (collectors) of Poland, Germany, Israel, some are in the collection of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore, and the study revealed the artist’s appeal to the historical genre in particular, attention is focused on the theme of glorifying the work of Lesya Ukrainka.

The article focuses on both theoretical and artistic activities of Bracha L. Ettinger, an Israeli artist, author of the matrixial theory, psychoanalyst, feminist, and daughter of Holocaust survivors. It endeavours to prove that Ettinger’s artistic gesture – on the one hand – stands for almost-borderless closeness to traumatic events and – on the other hand – may occasion the viewer’s suspension between such notions as now and then or presence and absence. To specify, it attempts to demonstrate that gesture can move the viewer towards the traumatic experience of the Other. As Ettinger herself admits that in her case art and theory are strongly interconnected, this article follows a similar path, trying to show how these two instances affect each other in a productive way. The article begins with an introduction to Ettinger’s artistic technique, the notion of trauma(s) in her oeuvre, and the matrixial take on memory. It moves on to the interpretation of chosen paintings from Ettinger’s most famous series, Eurydice, based on the 1942 picture of the execution of naked women in the Mizocz ghetto, and of selected works of art with a mother theme; these artworks are read through the prism of, among others, the trauma of the World and the fort/da game. Lastly, the article hints at ethical implications of chosen Ettingerian concepts that apply to the aesthetic practice.

AbstractFor more than a century the only eyewitness account of Rembrandt's Portrait of an old woman (fig. 1) was a description made by Wilhelm Bode in 1883. At the time, he was unable to decipher the date, 1632; nor did he know anything about Aeltje Uylenburgh or the history of the panel. However, the painting's provenance has since been revealed, and it can be traced back in an almost unbroken line to its commission, a rare occurrence in Rembrandt's oeuvre. A pendant portrait, now lost, featured the preacher Johannes Sylvius, who is also the subject of an etching by Rembrandt dating from 1633 (fig. 2). Rembrandt had a close relationship with the Sylvius couple and he married their cousin Saskia Uylenburgh in 1634. After Aeltje's death in 1644, the couple's son Cornelis Sylvius inherited the portraits. We know that Cornelis moved to Haarlem in 1647, and that in 1681 he made a will bequeathing the pendants to his son Johannes Sylvius Junior. For the most part of a century they remained in the family. We lose track of the portrait of Johannes Sylvius when, in 1721, Cornelis II Sylvius refurbishes a house on the Kruisstraat in Haarlem. However, thanks to a handful of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century copies, it has been possible to reconstruct the trail followed by Aeltje. In 1778, a copy from Dessau turned up at auction in Frankfurt. It was bought under the name of Johann Heinrich Roos by Henriette Amalie von Anhalt-Dessau. There is a copy of this copy in the museum of Marseilles, attributed Ferdinand Bol (fig. 3). In 2000 an article in the Tribune de Genève revealed that the original had belonged to the Burlamacchi Collection in the eighteenth century, and was then thought to be a portrait of Rembrandt's mother. Jean-Jacques Burlamacchi (1694-1748), a prominent Geneva collector, acquired major works of art, including probably the Rembrandt portrait, while travelling in Holland and Britain around 1720. It was the heirs of Burlamacchi, the Misses de Chapeaurouge, who opened the famous collection to the public. In 1790 or thereabouts, the Swiss portrait painter Marc-Louis Arlaud produced a copy, now in the museum at Lausanne (fig. 4), which for many years was thought to be an autograph work by Rembrandt. The painter Georges Chaix also made a copy, which he exhibited in Geneva in 1823. This work still belongs to the artist's family; unfortunately it has not been possible to obtain an image. After the Burlamacchi Collection was sold in about 1825, the painting was referred to somewhat nostalgically as 'Un Rembrandt "genevois"'. It was bought for 18,000 francs by the Paris art dealer Dubois, who sold it to the London banker William Coesvelt. In 1828, Coesvelt in turn sold the portrait through the London dealer John Smith, who described it as 'the painter's mother, at the age of 62'. We know that the picture was subsequently acquired from Albertus Brondgeest by the banker James de Rothschild (1792-1868) for his country house at Boulogne, as this is mentioned in the 1864 description of Rothschild's collection by Charles Blanc. Baron James's widow, Betty de Rothschild, inherited the portrait in 1868 and it was in Paris that the Berlin museum director Wilhelm Bode (fig. 5) first saw the painting. In his description of 1883 he states that the woman was not, in his opinion, Rembrandt's mother. In 1886 the portrait fell to Betty's son, Baron Alphonse (1827-1905). Bode published a heliogravure of the work in 1897, which remained for many years the only available reproduction (fig. 6). Rembrandt's portrait of a woman was a showpiece in Baron Alphonse's Paris smoking room (fig. 7). Few art historians came to the Rothschild residence and neither Valentiner nor Bredius, who published catalogues of Rembrandt in 1909 and 1935, respectively, had seen the painting. Alphonse's heir was Baron Edouard de Rothschild, who in 1940 fled to America with his daughter Bethsabée. The Germans looted the painting, but immediately after the war it was exhibited, undamaged, in a frame carrying the (deliberately?) misleading name 'Romney' (fig. 8). In 1949, Bethsabée de Rothschild became the rightful owner of the portrait. She took it with her when she moved to Israel in 1962, where under the name of Bathsheva de Rothschild she became a well-known patron of modern dance. In 1978, J. Bruyn en S. Levie of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) travelled to Tel Aviv to examine the painting. Although the surface was covered with a thick nicotine film, they were impressed by its condition. Bruyn and Levie were doubtful, however, that the panel's oval format was original, as emerges from the 'Rembrandt-Corpus' report of 1986. Not having seen the copies mentioned earlier, they were unaware that one nineteenth-century replica was also oval (fig. 9). Their important discovery that the woman's age was 62 was not further investigated at the time. Baroness Bathsheva de Rothschild died childless in 1999. On 13 December 2000 the painting was sold by Christie's, London, after a surprising new identity for the elderly sitter had been put forward. It had long been known that Rembrandt painted portraits of Aeltje Uylenburgh and her husband, the minister Cornelis Sylvius. Aeltje, who was a first cousin of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia Uylenburgh, would have been about 60 years old at the time. Given that the age of the woman in the portrait was now known to be 62, it was suggested that she could be Aeltje. The portrait was acquired for more than 28 million US dollars by the art dealer Robert Noortman, who put it on the market as 'Aeltje' with a question mark. In 2005, Noortman sold the portrait for 36.5 million to the American-Dutch collectors Mr and Mrs De Mol van Otterloo. At the time, the Mauritshuis in The Hague felt that trying to buy the portrait would be too extravagant, while the Rijksmuseum was more interested in acquiring a female portrait from Rembrandt's later period. Aeltje was thus destined to leave the Netherlands for good. A chronicle of the Sylvius family published in 2006 shows that Aeltje Uylenburgh would have been born in 1570 (fig. 10), demonstrating that she could indeed be the 62-year-old woman depicted by Rembrandt in 1632. We know that Aeltje was godmother to Rembrandt's children and that Saskia was godmother to Aeltje's granddaughter. Further evidence of the close ties between the two families is provided by Rembrandt's etching of Aeltje's son Petrus, produced in 1637. It is now generally accepted that the woman in the portrait is Aeltje. She was last shown in the Netherlands at the 'Dutch Portraits' exhibition in The Hague. In February 2008 the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston announced that it had received on long-term loan one the finest Rembrandts still in private ownership.

In this series, entitled home/land, documentary photographs by Christopher Cowperthwaite provide the foundation for works that are meditations on the disruptions – cultural, political, and ecological – that result from conflict and crisis. The paintings present fragmentary images of the construction of the Israel-Palestine separation wall (and its concomitant fragmentation of the land), which are fused with collaged images from other conflicts and other times, asking the viewer to consider how an ever-deepening palimpsest of conflicts has become etched in our collective memory and on the surface of the earth since the World Wars. I created this series as an attempt engage my artistic practice with the complex history and contemporary reality of globalized conflict, which, via globalized media, has become imbricated with the flow of our daily lives and thoughts. As a Canadian artist and educator, I have no direct contact with the daily crises occurring in conflict zones, yet I am impelled to respond creatively, to translate my affective response to these global catastrophes into a visual elegy and a plea for awareness of the human and ecological impacts of warfare.

TPS466 Background: Many cancer patients, especially those with pancreatic cancer, suffer from severe back/epigastric pain. Contemporary approaches (opioids, celiac blocks, systemic chemotherapy) are often inadequate. This clinical trial investigates a new approach in which high-dose radiation (radiosurgery) is focused on the retroperitoneal celiac plexus nerve bundle. Preliminary results from a single institution pilot trial NCT02356406 are promising: pain relief is substantial and side effects minimal. The main aim of the trial is to establish safety/efficacy in the setting of an international multicenter study. Exploratory analyses will examine the relationship between pain reduction and subjects’ quality-of-life, functionality, and caregiver burden. Methods: Eligibility criteria include a diagnosis of metastatic/unresectable malignancy, uncontrolled pain defined as ≥ 5 on 11-point BPI-SF scale despite analgesic use, typical retroperitoneal pain syndrome, prognosis > 8 weeks, ECOG 0-2, anatomical involvement of the celiac plexus (e.g. any pancreatic cancer, or any other cancer involving the celiac trunk). Exclusion criteria include previous upper abdo. radiation. The intervention consists of a single 25 Gy radiation fraction delivered to the celiac plexus, using anterolateral aspect of the aorta from the 12th thoracic to 2nd lumbar vertebral body as a surrogate structure. The primary tumour may be irradiated at physicians’ discretion. Dose-painting technique limits dose to organs at risk. Pain intensity will be measured using Brief Pain Inventory Short Form (BPI-SF), and quality of life with FACT-Hep. The primary endpoint is complete or partial pain response, defined as a decrease between the score immediately before treatment and 3 weeks’ post-treatment. A change of two or more on the BPI 11-point pain scale is defined as clinically significant. Secondary endpoints include other BPI pain endpoints, pain at 6 weeks, analgesic use, toxicity (CTCAE v4.03), quality of life and functional measures. Analgesia is not restricted. Expected accrual is 100 subjects over three years. Supported by Gateway for Cancer Research, additional support from Israel Cancer Association. Clinical trial information: NCT03323489.

В статье освещаются малоизвестные аспекты творчества Якова Авербуха (1922–1998), художника своеобразного дарования и пластической культуры, который обучался профессиональному искусству в королевской Румынии, совершенствовал свое мастерство в Советской Молдавии, а в последний период работал в Израиле, нередко используя театральный псевдоним отца — Аш. На республиканских и зарубежных выставках 1950–1970-х годов он получил признание как оформитель и иллюстратор книг, автор плакатов и линогравюр. Однако он не экспонировал и почти никому не показывал работы камерного звучания — этюды, выполненные маслом, акварели и пастели, отмеченные остротой взгляда и свежестью палитры, что было редким явлением в искусстве Молдавии в первые послевоенные десятилетия. Эти произведения с несложными мотивами — окраины Кишинёва, молдавские села, берега Днестра — воссоздают атмосферу будничной жизни минувших лет и передают непосредственность эмоций тонкого колориста. Долгие годы они не были известны в культурной среде. Многогранное творчество Якова Авербуха включает также медальерные работы и монументальные панно из керамики, оформление интерьеров стенной росписью и резьбой по дереву. Но его труд не освещен во всей полноте. Попыткой восполнить пробел в изучении станковых произведений художника является монографический альбом «Yakov Averbuch Ash = Яков Авербух Аш», изданный в Кишинёве в 2022 году, к столетию со дня рождения художника. Презентация книги, включающей значительный ряд репродукций эстетически ценных и ранее неизвестных работ, состоялась в Тель-Авиве (в Представительстве Республики Молдова в Израиле) и в Кишинёве (в Национальном художественном музее Молдовы). Однако небольшой тираж издания доступен немногим читателям. Автор надеется, что избранные произведения станковой графики и живописи Якова Авербуха, иллюстрирующие данную статью, привлекут внимание специалистов и оценки творческих достижений этого художника будут введены в широкий искусствоведческий оборот. The article reveals the less-known aspects of the creative activity of Yakov Averbukh (1922–1998). An artist of distinctive gift and plastic culture, he was trained as a professional artist in royal Romania, perfected his skills in Soviet Moldova and, during the latter period, worked in Israel, often using his father’s theatrical pseudonym — Ash. In the 1950s – 1970s he presented his works at national and foreign exhibitions, being recognized as a book designer, illustrator, and author of posters and linocuts. Nevertheless, he hadn’t exhibited and almost never displayed his chamber works — oil sketches, watercolours and pastels, marked by witticism and palette freshness, which was a rare phenomenon in the art of Moldavia in the first post-war decades. These works with simple motifs — the countryside of Chisinau, Moldovan villages, and the banks of the Nistru River ─ recreate the atmosphere of everyday life of bygone years and convey the unpretentiousness of emotions of a refined colourist. For many years, they were unknown in the cultural milieu. Yakov Averbukh's versatile artistic work includes medallic art, monumental ceramics panels and interior decorations with murals and wood carvings. Yet his creativity is not covered in its entirety. The monographic album “Yakov Averbukh Ash = Yakov Averbukh”, which was published in Chisinau in 2022 on the occasion of the centenary of the artist's birth, attempts to fill the gap in the study of the artist's easel works. The launch of the book, which includes a significant number of reproductions of aesthetically important and previously unknown works, took place in Tel Aviv (at the Mission of the Republic of Moldova in Israel) and in Chisinau (at the National Art Museum of Moldova). Nonetheless, the publication's limited print run is accessible to a small number of readers. The author hopes that the selected works of easel graphics and paintings by Yakov Averbukh illustrating this article will attract the attention of experts and the evaluation of the artist's creative achievements will be commissioned into wider art studies.

This edition is the first issue of Dewa Ruci’s Journal, in which all articles are in English. We deliberately changed the language of publication to English to facilitate information delivery to a wider audience. We realize that English is the official language for many countries rather than other languages in this world. The number of people who have literacy awareness and need scientific information about visual and performing arts regarding the archipelago’s cultural arts is also quite large.The decision to change the language of publication to English does not mean that we do not have nationalism or are not in love with the Indonesian language. This change is necessary to foster the intensity of scientific interaction among writers who are not limited to Indonesia’s territory alone. We desire that the scientific ideas outlined in Dewa Ruci’s Journal are read by intellectual circles of the arts internationally. We also want to express our scientific greetings to art experts from countries in New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Europe, especially Britain, and other English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada. Of course, a change in English will also benefit intellectuals from countries that have acquired English as a second language, such as Malaysia, Brunei, Israel, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In essence, Dewa Ruci’s Journal editor wants to invite writers to greet the scientific community at large.We are grateful that six writers can greet the international community through their articles. The first is Tunjung Atmadi and Ika Yuni Purnama, who wrote an article entitled “Material Ergonomics on Application of Wooden Floors in the Interior of the Workspace Office.” This article discusses office interiors that are devoted to workspaces. The purpose of this study is to share knowledge about how to take advantage of space-forming elements in the interior design of a workspace by utilizing wooden floors like parquet. The focus is on choosing the use of wood by paying attention to the elements in its application. This research result has a significant meaning in the aesthetics, comfort, and safety of wooden floors in the workspace’s interior and its advantages and disadvantages.The second writer who had the opportunity to greet the Dewa Ruci Journal audience was intellectuals with diverse expertise, namely Taufiq Akbar, Dendi Pratama, Sarwanto, and Sunardi. Together they wrote an article entitled “Visual Adaptation: From Comics to Superhero Creation of Wayang.” This article discusses the fusion and mixing of wayang as a traditional culture with comics and films as contemporary culture products. This melting and mixing have given birth to new wayang creations with sources adapted from the superhero character “Avenger,” which they now call the Avenger Wayang Kreasi. According to them, Wayang Kreasi Avenger’s making maintains technical knowledge of the art of wayang kulit. It introduces young people who are not familiar with wayang kulit about the technique of carving sungging by displaying the attributes in the purwa skin for Wayang Kreasi Avenger. This creativity is an attempt to stimulate and show people’s love for the potential influence of traditional cultural heritage and its interaction with the potential of contemporary culture.The next authors are Sriyadi and RM Pramutomo, with an article entitled “Presentation Style of Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun Dance in Pura Mangkunegaran.” This article reveals a repertoire of Yogyakarta-style dance in Mangkunegaran, Surakarta, namely the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun. The presence of this dance in Mangkunegaran occurred during the reign of Mangkunegara VII. However, the basic character of the Mangkunegaran style dance has a significant difference from the Yogyakarta style. This paper aims to examine the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance’s presentation style in Mangkunegaran to determine the formation of its presentation technique. The shape of the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance style in Mangkunegaran did not occur in an event but was a process. The presentation style’s formation is due to a problem in the inheritance system that has undergone significant changes. These problems arise from social, political, cultural, and economic conditions. The responses to these problems have shaped the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance's distinctive features in Mangkunegaran, although not all of them have been positive.Hasbi wrote an article entitled “Sappo: Sulapa Eppa Walasuji as the Ideas of Creation Three Dimensional Painting.” This article reveals Hasbi’s creative process design in creating three-dimensional works of art, named Sappo. He got his inspiration from the ancient manuscripts written in Lontara, namely the manuscripts written in the traditional script of the Bugis-Makassar people on palm leaves, which they still keep until now. Sappo for the Bugis community is a fence that limits (surrounds, isolates) the land and houses. Sappo’s function is to protect herself, her family, and her people. Sulapa Eppa means four sides, is a mystical manifestation, the classical belief of the Bugis-Makassar people, which symbolizes the composition of the universe, wind-fire-water-earth. Walasuji is a kind of bamboo fence in rhombus rituals. Eppa Walasuji’s Sulapa is Hasbi’s concept in creating Sappo in the form of three-dimensional paintings. The idea is a symbolic expression borrowing the Lontara tradition's idiom to create a symbolic effect called Sappo.Mahdi Bahar and his friends wrote an article entitled “Transformation of Krinok to Bungo Krinok Music: The Innovation Certainty and Digital-Virtual Contribution for Cultural Advancement.” Together, they have made innovations to preserve Krinok music, one of Jambi’s traditional music themes, into new music that they call Bungo Krinok. He said that innovation is a necessity for the development of folk music. In innovating, they take advantage of digital technology. They realize this music’s existence as a cultural wealth that has great potential for developing and advancing art. The musical system, melodic contours, musical grammar, and distinctive interval patterns have formed krinok music’s character. This innovation has given birth to new music as a transformation from Jambi folk music called “Bungo Krinok” music.Finally, Luqman Wahyudi and Sri Hesti Heriwati. They both wrote an article entitled “Social Criticism About the 2019 Election Campaign on the Comic Strip Gump n Hell.” They explained that in 2019 there was an interesting phenomenon regarding the use of comic strips as a means of social criticism, especially in the Indonesian Presidential Election Campaign. The title of the comic is Gump n Hell by Errik Irwan Wibowo. The comic strip was published and viral on social media, describing the political events that took place. In this study, they took three samples of the comic strip Gump n Hell related to the moment of the 2019 election to analyze their meaning. From the results of this study, there is an implicit meaning in the comic strip of pop culture icons' use to represent political figures in the form of parodies.That is the essence of the issue of Volume 16 Number 1 (April Edition), 2021. Hopefully, the knowledge that has been present in this publication can spur the growth of visual and performing art science in international networks, both in the science of art creation and in scientific research of art in general. We hope that the development of visual and performing art science can reveal the various meanings behind various facts and phenomena of art life. Therefore, the growth of international networks is an indispensable need.Thank you.

AbstractThe study aimed to evaluate the Couples' Closeness–Distance Scale (CCDS), an observational assessment reflecting couples' relational dynamics; based on joint‐drawing, it offers measurable dimensions. Forty cohabiting Israeli couples participated in the joint‐drawing task and answered self‐report questionnaires for attachment, differentiation of self, and relationship satisfaction. The paintings were assessed by trained observers on the CCDS scales (too distant, too close, autonomy, engagement) for both the women's and men's experiences. A two‐level‐dyadic model showed that differentiation and relationship satisfaction predicted the CCDS and revealed a “pursue–withdraw cycle”: Women sensed the men as too distant, while men sensed the women as too close. Participants' sense of discomfort from their partners' distance related to less autonomy and engagement during the painting, with a greater effect on the women. The pilot implies that the CCDS enables observing dyadic‐systemic aspects of couple dynamics and may enrich clinical evaluation.

Published each issue, this section strives to capture the tenor and content of popular conversations related to the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which are held on dynamic platforms unbound by traditional media. Therefore, items presented in this section are from a variety of sources and have been selected because they either have gone viral or represent a significant cultural moment or trend. A version of Palestine Unbound is also published on Palestine Square (palestinesquare.com), a blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies. Stories from this quarter (16 August–15 November) include the Palestinian hip-hop documentary Palestine Underground; the viral spread of one Great March of Return protester's photo, which was extensively compared to the famous French painting Liberty Leading the People; and Palestinian celebration over the resignation of Avigdor Lieberman as Irael's defense minister, which generated the hastag #Gaza_tantasir (Gaza_victorious).

In accordance with the idea of mise en abyme, Mieke Bal and Harold Fisch identify aspects in the Book of Ruth that allude to earlier episodes in the Old Testament. As well as building the House of Israel and Ruth's role in it, there are textual references to the laws of family (Levirate Law) and land (Redemption). While Fisch sees moral progression through the allusions to Ruth's foremothers, Walter Benjamin does not countenance the notion of progression in the domain of history. Instead, Benjamin extracts the details of history from the detritus of the past to explain the present and forecast the future. With Fisch and Bal, I am learning to live with loss by removing the linearity of time that mise en abyme affords. From Benjamin, I am collecting fragments of family stories by ploughing into the past in order to understand the present.

A previously unknown painting of Christ’s face, recently discovered at the Byzantine site of Shivta in the Negev Desert of southern Israel, represents the first pre-iconoclastic baptism-of-Christ scene to be found in the Holy Land.

Abstract The study transcends borders to challenge conventional narratives about religious tolerance and fundamentalism. Leveraging a Fuzzy-Hybrid Approach, we delve into the multifaceted realities of eight diverse nations: Germany, Cyprus, the United States, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Kenya. Our innovative analysis unveils surprising complexities, shattering stereotypes and painting a nuanced picture of religious beliefs. Germany emerges as a beacon of tolerance, boasting the highest tolerance levels with the lowest fundamentalism. However, the stark reality for citizens of Lebanon, Kenya, and Palestine reveals a landscape of lower tolerance and higher fundamentalism. This study delves deeper, using quantile regression models to expose the intricate interplay between religious tolerance, individual socioeconomic factors like education and religious discrimination, and even views on the death penalty. Our findings challenge simplistic assumptions, revealing intricate relationships between tolerance and fundamentalism across diverse contexts.

AbstractThe iconography of the biblical story of Balaam and the she-ass, told in Numbers 22-24, dates right back to the early Christian era. It depicts the confrontation of Balaam with the angel, whom he did not see blocking his way until his donkey opened his eyes by speaking to him. The simple scene, composed of a donkey rider beating his mount with raised club opposite an angel with raised sword, never before included a pouch containing papers and a kind of stick. From the fact that Rembrandt added this motif to the traditional image and gave it a prominent place in his composition (fig. 1) one may conclude that he meant to convey by this something very significant.Balak, king of Moab, induced the famous magician Balaam to come and curse the Israelites who had entered the plains of Moab. God, using Balaam as his temporary prophet, allowed him to go, provided that he would speak His words and bless Israel instead of cursing it. It was to this stringent condition that the angel reminded him halfway his journey. Upon his arrival Balaam blessed Israel three times. Beside himself with anger Balak sent him home without paying him. Before he went the prophet cursed the king, speaking the famous words: "I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth" (Numbers 24:17). This enunciation has always been taken as a Messianic prophecy.During the middle ages the sheer image of Balaam and the she-ass sufficed to evoke the Messianic prophecy. However, in some versions of the fifteenth-century Speculum Humanae Salvationis and Biblia Pauperum a star is added to the scene (fig. 2), obviously in order to remind one of the true meaning of the image.Depictions of Balaam and the she-ass had always been statical and emotionless but in the sixteenth century the dramatic potential of the story was recognized and fully exploited (fig. 3). At the same time the meaning of the scene was confined to the miracle of the speaking donkey, like any other miracle a sign of God's omnipotence. Moralistic interpretations were also possible. Maerten van Heemskerck, for instance, focussed on Balaam's reputation as being a miser (fig. 5). By the time Pieter Lastman painted Balaam and the she-ass (fig. 4) in 1622, the subject had become polyinterpretable.By adding a pouch with papers and a kind of stick Rembrandt indicated how his Balaam picture had to be understood. The leather pouch is an interesting object in itself, which Rembrandt and some of his contemporaries used several times in their work between 1615 and 1635 (figs. 7 and 8a-g). The papers with illegible writing in quasi-Hebrew letters represent Balaam's prophecies, one may assume, and the stick, in point of fact a commander's baton (figs. 9-11), metaphorically indicates which prophecy exactly is at issue. Unquestionably the Messianic one about the star coming out of Jacob and the sceptre rising out of Israel. In the late middle ages the star had been used occasionally as reference mark but this was no option for Rembrandt, because Balaam travelled by day. The alternative was the sceptre. The fact that Rembrandt depicted a commander's baton instead of a sceptre proves that he did not use a reformatory bible translation but either a catholic one or the Vulgata itself. Reformatory translations (all based on Luther's translation in German, which has 'Zepter') have 'scepter' (sceptre), whereas catholic translations (based on the Vulgata) have 'roede' (baton). The Vulgata has not 'sceptrum' but 'virga', i.e. verge, baton.Why did Rembrandt revive the Messianic meaning of the Balaam story? Most probably because his commissioner wanted him to do so. For Alfonso López, up to now known only as the first owner of the painting and who is supposed to have purchased it directly from Rembrandt, may very well have ordered it from him. Recent research has shown that he, a financial agent of Richelieu in Holland, was a 'morisco', a Spanish Muslim converted to Christianity. A convert may be interested in speaking donkeys but certainly more so in the coming of Christ.

When we think of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers, the first image that is conjured in our mind is of an individual sporting a blue helmet or a blue beret (fig. 1). While simple and uncomplicated, these blue accessories represent an expression and an embodiment resembling that of a warrior, sent to bring peace to conflict-torn communities. UN peacekeeping first conceptually emerged in 1948 in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war that ensued following the United Kingdom’s relinquishing of its mandate over Palestine, and the proclamation of the State of Israel. “Forged in the crucible of practical diplomacy” (Rubinstein 16), unarmed military observers were deployed to Palestine to monitor the hostilities and mediate armistice agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbours. This operation, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), significantly exemplified the diplomatic and observational capabilities of military men, in line with the UN Charter’s objectives of international peace and security, setting henceforth a basic archetype for international peacekeeping. It was only in 1956, however, that peacekeeping formally emerged when armed UN forces deployed to Egypt to supervise the withdrawal of forces occupying the Suez Canal (informally known as the ‘Second Arab-Israeli’ war). Here, the formation of UN peacekeeping represented an international pacifying mechanism comprised of multiple third-party intermediaries whereby peaceful resolution would be achieved by transcending realist instincts of violence for political attainment in favour of applying a less-destructive liberal model of persuasion, compromise, and perseverance (Howard). ‘Blue helmet’ peacekeeping operations continue to be regarded by the UN as an integral subsidiary instrument of its organisation. At present, there are 12 active peacekeeping operations led by the UN Department of Peacekeeping across the world (United Nations Peacekeeping). Fig. 1: United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) sporting blue berets (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-troops-awarded-un-medals-for-south-sudan-peacekeeping-mission) But where did the blue helmets and berets originate from? Rubinstein details a surprisingly mundane account of the origins of the political accessory that is now a widely recognised symbol for UN peacekeepers’ uniforms. Peacekeepers’ uniforms initially emerged from the ad hoc need to distinguish UN troops from those of the armed forces in a distinctive dress during the 1947 UNTSO mission by any means and material readily available, such as armbands and helmets (Henry). The era of early peacekeeping operations also saw ‘observers’ carry UN flags and paint their vehicle white with ‘UN’ written in large black letters in order to distinguish themselves. The blue helmets specifically came to be adorned during the first peacekeeping operation in 1956 during the Suez crisis. At this time, Canada supplied a large number of non-combatant troops whose uniform was the same as the belligerent British forces, party to the conflict. An effort to thus distinguish the peacekeepers was made by spray-painting surplus World War II American plastic helmet-liners, which were available in quantity in Europe, blue (Urquhart; Rubenstein). The two official colours of the UN are ‘light blue’ and ‘white’. The unique light “UN” blue colour, in particular, was approved as the background for the UN flag in the 1947 General Assembly Resolution 167(II), alongside a white emblem depicting a map of the world surrounded by two olive branches. While the UN’s use of the colour was chosen as a “practical effect of identifying the Organization in areas of trouble and conflict, to any and all parties concerned”, the colour blue was also specifically chosen at this time as “an integral part of the visual identity of the organisation” representing “peace in opposition to red, for war” (United Nations). Blue is seen to be placed in antithesis to the colour red across several fields including popular culture, and even within politics, as a way to typically indicate conflict between two warring groups. Within popular culture, for example, many films in the science fiction, fantasy, or horror genres, use a clearly demarcated, dichotomous ‘red vs. blue’ colour scheme in their posters (fig. 2). This is also commonly seen in political campaign posters, for example during the 2021 US presidential election (fig. 3). Fig. 2: Blue and red colour schemes in film posters (left to right: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Captain Marvel (2019), and The Dead Don’t Die (2019)) Fig. 3: Biden (Democratic party) vs. Trump (Republican party) US presidential election (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-15/us-election-political-parties-explained-democrats-vs-republicans/12708296) This dichotomy can be traced back to the high Middle Ages between the fourteenth and seventeenth century where the colour blue became a colour associated with “moral implications”, rivalling both the colours black and red which were extremely popular in clothing during the eras of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (Pastoureau 85). This ‘moral metamorphosis’ in European society was largely influenced by the views of Christian Protestant reformers concerning the social, religious, and artistic use of the colour blue (Pastoureau). A shift in the use of blue and its symbolic connotations may also be seen, for example, in early Christian art and iconography, specifically those deriving from depictions of the Virgin Mary; according to Pastoureau (50), this provides the “clearest illustration of the social, religious, and artistic consequences of blue's new status”. Up until the eighteenth century, the colour blue, specifically ‘sky blue’ or light blue tones resemblant of the “UN” shade of blue, had minimal symbolic or aesthetic value, particularly in European culture and certainly amongst nobility and the upper levels of society. Historically, light blue was typically associated with peasants’ clothing. This was due to the fact that peasants would often dye their clothes using the pigment of the woad herb; however, the woad would poorly penetrate cloth fibres and inevitably fade under the effects of sunlight and soap, thereby resulting in a ‘bland’ colour (Pastoureau). Although the blue hues worn by the nobility and wealthy were typically denser and more solid, a “new fashion” for light blue tones gradually took hold at the courts of the wealthy and the bourgeoisie, inevitably becoming deeply anchored in Western European counties (Pastoureau). Here, the reorganisation of the colour hierarchy and reformulation of blue certainly resembles Pastoureau’s (10) assertion that “any history of colour is, above all, a social history”. Within the humanities, colour represents a social phenomenon and construction. Colour thus provides insights into the ways society assigns meaning to it, “constructs its codes and values, establishes its uses, and determines whether it is acceptable or not” (Pastoureau, 10). In this way, although colour is a naturally occurring phenomenon, it is also a complex cultural construct. That the UN and its subsidiary bodies, including the Department of Peacekeeping, deliberately assigned light blue as its official organisational colour therefore usefully illustrates a significant social process of meaning-making and cultural sociology. The historical transition of light blue’s association from one of poverty in and around the eighteenth century to one of wealth in the nineteenth century may perhaps also be indicative of the next transitional era for light blue in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, representative of the amalgamation or unity between the two classes. Representing the ambitions not only of the organisation, but rather of the 193 member-states, of attaining worldwide peace, light blue may be seen as a colour of peace, as well as one of the people, for the people. This may be traced back, according to Pastoureau, as early as the Middle Ages where the colour blue was seen a colour of ‘peace’. Colours, however, do not solely determine social and cultural relevance in a given historical event. Rather, fabrics and clothing too offer “the richest and most diverse source of artifacts” in understanding history and culture. Artifacts such as UN peacekeepers’ blue berets and helmets necessarily incorporate economic, social, ideological, aesthetic, and symbolic aspects of both colour and material into the one complete uniform (Pastoureau). While the ‘UN blue’ is associated with peace, the beret, on the other hand, has been described as “an ally in the battlefield” (Kliest). The history of the beret is largely rooted in the armed forces – institutions typically associated with conflict and violence – and it continues to be a vital aspect of military uniforms worn by personnel from countries all around the globe. Given that the large majority of UN peacekeeping forces are made up of military personnel, peacekeeping, as both an action and an institution, thus adds a layer of complexity when discussing artifact symbolism. Here, a peacekeeper’s uniform uniquely represents the embodiment of an amalgamation of two traditionally juxtaposing concepts: peace, nurture, and diplomacy (often associated with ‘feminine’ qualities) versus conflict, strength, and discipline (often associated with ‘masculine’ qualities). A peacekeeper’s uniform thus represents the UN’s institutionalisation of “soldiers for peace” (Howard) who are, as former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold proclaimed, “the front line of a moral force” (BBC cited in Howard). Aside from its association with the armed forces, the beret has also been used as a fashion symbol by political revolutionaries, such as members of the ‘Black Panther Party’ (BPP) founded in the 1960s during the US Civil Rights Movement, as well as Che Guevara, prominent Leftist figure in the Cuban Revolution (see fig. 4). For, Rosabelle Forzy, CEO of beret and headwear fashion manufacturing company ‘Laulhère’, the beret is “emblematic of non-conformism … worn by people who create, commit, militate, and resist” (Kliest). Fig. 4: Berets worn by political revolutionaries (Left to right: Black Panthers Party (BPP) protesting outside of a New York courthouse (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2988897/Black-Panther-double-cop-killer-sues-freedom-plays-FLUTE-Murderer-demands-parole-changed-fury-victim-s-widow.html), and portrait of Che Guevara) In a way, the UN’s ‘blue beret’ too bears a ‘non-conformist’ visage as its peacekeepers neither fit categorisations as ‘revolutionaries’ nor as traditional ‘soldiers’. Peacekeepers personify a cultural phenomenon that operates in a complex environment (Rubinstein). While peacekeepers retain their national military (usually camouflage) uniforms during missions, the UN headwear is a symbol of non-conformity in response to sociological preconceptions regarding military culture. In the case of peacekeeping, the implementation and longevity of peacekeepers’ uniforms has occurred through a process of what Rubinstein (50) refers to as ‘cultural’ or ‘symbolic inversion’ wherein traditional notions of military rituals and symbolism have been appropriated or ‘inverted’ and given a new meaning by the UN. In other words, the UN promotes the image of soldiers acting without the use of force in service of peace in order to encode an image of a “world transformed” through the contribution of peacekeeping toward the “elaboration of an image of an international community acting in a neutral, consensual manner” (Rubinstein, 50). Cultural inversion therefore creates a socio-political space wherein normative representations are reconfigured and conditioned as acceptable. Rubinstein argues, however, that the UN’s need to integrate individuals with such diverse backgrounds and perceptions into a collective peacekeeper identity can be problematic. Rubinstein (72) adds that the blue beret is the “most obvious evidence” of an ordinary symbol investing ‘legitimacy’ in peacekeeping through ritual repetition which still holds its cultural relevance to the present day. Arguably, institutional uniforms are symbols which profoundly shape human experience, validating contextual action according to the symbol’s meanings relevant to those wearing it. In this way, uniform symbolism not only allows us to make sense of our daily experiences, but allows us to construct and understand our identities and our interactions with others who are also part of the symbolic culture we are situated in. Consider, for example, a police officer. A police officer’s uniform not only grants them membership to the policing institution but also necessarily grants them certain powers, privileges, and jurisdictions within society which thereby impact on the way they see the world and interact with it. Necessarily, the social and cultural identity one acquires from wearing a specific uniform only effectively functions by “investing differences”, however large or small, into these symbols that “distinguish us from others” (Rubinstein, 74). For example, a policeman’s badge is a signifier that they are, in fact, part of an exclusive group that the majority of the citizenry are not. To this extent, the use of uniforms is not without its controversies or without the capacity to be misused as a tool of discrimination in a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ scenario. Referring to case regarding the beret, for example, in 2000 then US Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shineski, announced that the black beret – traditionally worn exclusively by specialised US Army units such as ‘Rangers’ – would become a standardised part of the US Army uniform for all soldiers and would denote a “symbol of unity”. General Shineski’s decision for the new headgear symbolised “the half-million-strong army’s transition to a lighter, more agile force that can respond more rapidly to distant trouble spots” (Borger). This was, however, met with angry backlash particularly from the Rangers who stated that they “were being robbed of a badge of pride” as “the beret is a symbol of excellence … that is not to be worn by everybody” (Borger). Responses to the proposition pointed to the problem of ‘low morale’ that the military faced, which could not be fixed just by “changing hats” (Borger). In this case, the beret was identified and isolated as a tool for coordinating perceptions (Rubinstein, 78). Here, the use of uniforms is as much about being external identifiers and designating a group from another as it is about sustaining a group by means of perpetuating what Rubinstein conceptualises as ‘self-legitimation’. This occurs in order to ensure the survival of a group and is similarly seen as occurring within UN peacekeeping (Joseph & Alex). Within peacekeeping the blue beret is an effective symbol used to perpetuate self-legitimacy across various levels of the UN which construct systems, or a ‘community’, of reinforcement largely rooted on organisational models of virtue and diplomacy. In the broadest sense, the UN promotes “a unique responsibility to set a global standard” in service to creating a unified and pacific world order (Guterres). As an integral instrument of international action, peacekeeping is, by extension, necessarily conditioned and supported by this cultural model whereby the actions of individual peacekeepers are strategically linked to the symbolic capital at the broadest levels of the organisation to manage the organisation’s power and legitimacy. The image of the peacekeeper, however, is fraught with problems and, as such, UN peacekeepers’ uniforms represent discrepancies and contradictions in the UN’s mission and organisational culture, particularly with relation to the UN’s symbolic construction of community and cooperation amongst peacekeepers. Given that peacekeeping troops are made up of individuals from different ethnic, cultural, and professional backgrounds, conditions for cultural interaction become challenging, if not problematic, and may necessarily lead to cross-cultural misunderstandings, miscommunication, and conflict. This applies to the context of peacekeeper deployment to host nations amongst local communities with whom they are also culturally unfamiliar (Rubinstein, "Intervention"). According to Rubinstein ("Intervention", 528), such operations may “create the conditions under which criminal activities or the institution of neo-colonial relationships can emerge”. Moncrief adds to this by also suggesting that a breakdown in conduct and discipline during missions may also contribute to peacekeepers engaging in violence during missions. Consequently, multiple cases of misdemeanour by UN peacekeepers have been reported across the years including peacekeeper involvement in bribery, weapons trading, and gold smuggling (Escobales). One of the most notorious acts of misconduct and violence that continues to be reported in the present day, however, is of peacekeepers perpetrating sexual exploitation and abuse against host women and children. Between 2004 and 2016, for example, “the UN received almost 2,000 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse” (Essa). According to former chief of operations at the UN’s Emergency Co-ordination Centre, Andrew Macleod, this figure may be, however, much more disturbing, estimating in general that approximately “60,000 rapes had been carried out by UN staff in the past decade” (Zeffman). An article in the Guardian reported that a 12-year-old girl had been hiding in a bathroom during a house search in a Muslim enclave of the capital, Bangui [in the Central African Republic] … . A man allegedly wearing the blue helmet and vest of the UN peacekeeping forces took her outside and raped her behind a truck. (Smith & Lewis) In the article, the assailant’s uniform (“the blue helmet and vest”) is not only described as literal imagery to contextualise the grave crime that was committed against the child. In evoking the image of the blue helmet and vest, the author highlights the uniform as a symbolic tool of power which was misused to perpetuate harm against the vulnerable civilian ‘other’. In this scenario, like many others, rather than representing peace and hope, the blue helmet (or beret) instead illustrates the contradictions of the UN peacekeeper’s uniform. Here, the uniform has consequently come to be associated as a symbol of violence, fear, and most significantly, betrayal, for the victim(s) of the abuse, as well as for much of the victim’s community. This discrepancy was also highlighted in a speech presented by former Ambassador of the UK Mission to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, who stated that “when a girl looks up to a blue helmet, she should do so not in fear, but in hope”. For many peacekeepers perpetrating sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly transactional sex, however, they “do not see themselves as abusing women”. This is largely to do with the power and privileges peacekeepers are afforded, such as ‘immunity’ – that is, a peacekeeper is granted immunity from trial or prosecution for criminal misconduct by the host nation’s judicial system. Over the years, scholarly research regarding peacekeepers’ immunity has highlighted a plethora of organisational problems within the UN, including lack of perpetrator accountability, and internal investigation or follow-up. More so, it has undoubtedly “contributed to a culture of individuals committing sexual violence knowing that they will get away with it” (Freedman). When a peacekeeper wears their uniform, they are thus imbued with the power and charged with the responsibility to properly embody and represent the values of the UN; “if [peacekeepers] don’t understand how powerful a position they are in, they will never understand what they do is actually wrong” (Elks). As such, unlike other traditional institutional uniforms, such as that of a soldier or a police officer, a peacekeeper’s uniform stands out as an enigma. One the one hand, peacekeepers channel the peaceful and passive organisational values of the UN by wearing the blue beret or helmet, whilst at the same time, they continue to sport the national military body uniform of their home country. Questions pertaining to the peacekeeper’s uniform arise and require further exploration: how can peacekeepers disassociate from their disciplined military personas and learnt combat skills if they continue to wear military camouflage during peacekeeping missions? Is the addition of the blue beret or helmet enough to reconfigure the body of the peacekeeper from one of violence, masculinity, and offence to that of peace, nurture, and diplomacy? Certainly, a range of factors are pertinent to an understanding of peacekeepers’ behaviour and group culture. But whether these two opposing identities can cohesively create or reconstitute a third identity using the positive skills and attributes of both juxtaposing institutions remains elusive. Nonetheless, the blue beret is a symbol of international hope, not only for vulnerable populations, but also for the world population collectively, as it represents neutral third-party member states working together to rebuild the world through non-combative means. References Borger, Julian. “Elite Forces Fear the Coming of the Egalitarian Beret.” The Guardian 19 Oct. 2000. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/oct/19/julianborger>. Elks, Sonia. “Haitians Say Underaged Girls Were Abused by U.N. Peacekeepers.” Reuters 19 Dec. 2019. <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-haiti-women-peacekeepers-idUSKBN1YM27W>. Escobales, Roxanne. “UN Peacekeepers 'Traded Gold and Guns with Congolese rebels'.” The Guardian 28 Apr. 2008. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/28/congo.unitednations>. Essa, Azad. “Why Do Some Peacekeepers Rape? The Full Report.” Al Jazeera 10 Aug. 2017. <https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/8/10/why-do-some-peacekeepers-rape-the-full-report>. Freedman, Rosa. “Why Do peacekeepers Have Immunity in Sex Abuse Cases?” CNN 25 May 2015. <https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/22/opinions/freedman-un-peacekeepers-immunity/index.html>. Guterres, António. Address to High-Level Meeting on the United Nations Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. United Nations. 18 Sep. 2017. <https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2017-09-18/secretary-generals-sea-address-high-level-meeting>. Henry, Charles P. Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other? New York: New York UP, 1999. Howard, Lise Morjé. Power in Peacekeeping. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019. Joseph, Nathan, and Nicholas Alex. "The Uniform: A Sociological Perspective." American Journal of Sociology 77.4 (1972): 719-730. Kliest, Nicole. “Why the Beret Never Goes Out of Style.” TZR 6 April 2021. <https://www.thezoereport.com/fashion/history-berets-hat-trend>. Rubinstein, Robert A. "Intervention and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Peace Operations." Security Dialogue 36.4 (2005): 527-544. DOI: 10.1177/0967010605060454. ———. Peacekeeping under Fire: Culture and Intervention. Routledge, 2015. Rycroft, Matthew. "When a Girl Looks Up to a Blue Helmet, She Should Do So Not in Fear, But in Hope." 10 Mar. 2016. <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/when-a-girl-looks-up-to-a-blue-helmet-she-should-do-so-not-in-fear-but-in-hope>. Smith, David, and Paul Lewis. "UN Peacekeepers Accused of Killing and Rape in Central African Republic." The Guardian 12 Aug. 2015. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/11/un-peacekeepers-accused-killing-rape-central-african-republic>. United Nations. :United Nations Emblem and Flag." N.d. <https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-emblem-and-flag>. United Nations Peacekeeping. “Where We Operate.” N.d. <https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-we-operate>. Urquhart, Brian. Ralph Bunche: An American Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1993. Zeffman, Henry. “Charity Sex Scandal: UN Staff ‘Responsible for 60,000 rapes in a Decade’.” The Times 14 Feb. 2018. <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/un-staff-responsible-for-60-000-rapes-in-a-decade-c627rx239>.

At the start of the twentieth century, many young Australian artists travelled abroad to expand their art education and to gain exposure to the modern art movements of Europe. Most of these artists were active members of artist associations such as the Victorian Artists Society or the New South Wales Society of Artists. Male artists from Victoria were generally also members of the Melbourne Savage Club, a club with a strong association with the arts.This paper investigates the dual function of the club, as a space where the artists felt “at home” in the familiar environment that the club offered whilst they were abroad and, at the same time, a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London would have a significant impact on male Australian artists, as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world, which enhanced their experience whilst abroad.Artists were seldom members of Australia’s early gentlemen’s clubs, however, in the late nineteenth century Melbourne, artists formed less formal social groupings with exotic names such as the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, the Buonarotti Club, and the Ishmael Club (Mead). Melbourne artists congregated in these clubs until the Melbourne Savage Club, modelled on the London Savage Club (1857)—a club whose membership was restricted to practitioners in the performing and visual arts—opened its doors in 1894.The Melbourne Savage Club had its origins in the Metropolitan Music Club, established in the late 1880s by a group of professional and amateur musicians and music lovers. The club initially admitted musicians and people from the dramatic professions free-of-charge, however, author Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) and artist Alf Vincent (1874–1915) were not content to be treated on a different basis to the musicians and actors, and two months after Vincent joined the club, at a Special General Meeting, the club resolved to vary Rule 6, “to admit landscape or portrait painters and sculptors without entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club). At another Special General Meeting, a year later, the rule was altered to admit “recognised members of the musical, dramatic and artistic professions and sculptors without payment of entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club).This resulted in an immediate influx of prominent Victorian male artists (Williams) and the Melbourne Savage Club became their place of choice to gather and enjoy the fellowship the club offered and to share ideas in a convivial atmosphere. When the opportunity arose for them to travel to London in the early twentieth century, they met in London’s famous art clubs. Membership of the Melbourne Savage Club not only conferred rights to visit reciprocal clubs whilst in London, but also facilitated introductions to potential patrons. The London clubs were the venue of choice for visiting artists to meet their fellow artist expatriates and to share experiences and, importantly, to meet with their British counterparts, exhibit their works, and establish valuable contacts.The London Savage Club attracted many Australian expatriates. Not only is it the grandfather of London’s bohemian clubs but also it was the model for arts clubs the world over. Founded in 1857, the qualification for admission was (and still is) to be, “a working man in literature or art, and a good fellow” (Halliday vii). If a candidate met these requirements, he would be cordially received “come whence he may.” This was embodied in the club’s first rules which required applicants for membership to be from a restricted range of pursuits relating to the arts thought to be commensurate with its bohemian ideals, namely art, literature, drama, or music.The second London arts club that attracted expatriate Australian artists was the New English Arts Club, founded in 1886 by young English artists returning from studying art in Paris. Members of The New English Arts Club were influenced by the Impressionist style as opposed to the academic art shown at the Royal Academy. As a meeting place for Australia’s expatriate artists, the New English Arts Club had a particular influence, as it exposed them to significant early Modern artist members such as John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Walter Sickert (1860–1942), William Orpen (1878–1931) and Augustus John (1878–1961) (Corbett and Perry; Thornton; Melbourne Savage Club).The third, and arguably the most popular with the expatriate Australian artists’ club, was the Chelsea Arts Club, a bohemian club formed in 1891 by local working artists looking for a place to go to “meet, talk, eat and drink” (Cross).Apart from the American-born founding member, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), amongst the biggest Chelsea names at the time of the influx of travelling young Australian artists were modernists Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, and John Sargent. The opportunity to mix with these leading British contemporary artists was irresistible to these antipodean artists (55).When Melbourne artist, Miles Evergood (1871–1939) arrived in London from America in 1910, he had been an active exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club, a New York artists’ club. Almost immediately he joined the New English Arts Club and the Chelsea Arts Club. Hammer tells of him associating with “writer Israel Zangwill, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and anti-academic artists including Walter Sickert, Augustus John, John Lavery, John Singer Sargent and C.R.W. Nevison, who challenged art values in Britain at the beginning of the century” (Hammer 41).Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the Chelsea Arts Club as his postal address, as did many expatriate artists. The Melbourne Savage Club archives contain letters and greetings, with news from abroad, written from artist members back to their “Brother Savages” (Various).In late 1902, Streeton wrote to fellow artist and Savage Club member Tom Roberts (1856–1931) from London:I belong to the Chelsea Arts Club now, & meet the artists – MacKennel says it’s about the most artistic club (speaking in the real sense) in England. … They all seem to be here – McKennal, Longstaff, Mahony, Fullwood, Norman, Minns, Fox, Plataganet Tudor St. George Tucker, Quinn, Coates, Bunny, Alston, K, Sonny Pole, other minor lights and your old friend and admirer Smike – within 100 yards of here – there must be 30 different studios. (Streeton 94)Whilst some of the artists whom Streeton mentioned were studying at either the Royal Academy or the Slade School, it was the clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club where they were most likely to encounter fellow Australian artists. Tom Roberts was obviously attentive to Streeton’s enthusiastic account and, when he returned to London the following year to work on his commission for The Big Picture of the 1901 opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, he soon joined. Roberts, through his expansive personality, became particularly active in London’s Australian expatriate artistic community and later became Vice-President of the Chelsea Arts Club. Along with Streeton and Roberts, other visiting Melbourne Savage Club artists joined the Chelsea Arts Club. They included, John Longstaff (1861–1941), James Quinn (1869–1951), George Coates (1869–1930), and Will Dyson (1880–1938), along with Sydney artists Henry Fullwood (1863–1930), George Lambert (1873–1930), and Will Ashton (1881–1963) (Croll 95). Smith describes the exodus to London and Paris: “It was the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp” (Smith, Smith and Heathcote 152).Streeton, who retained his Chelsea Arts Club membership when he returned for a while to Australia, wrote to Roberts in 1907, “I miss Chelsea & the Club-boys” (Streeton 107). In relation to Frederick McCubbin’s pending visit he wrote: “Prof McCubbin left here a week ago by German ‘Prinz Heinrich.’ … You’ll introduce him at the Chelsea Club and I hope they make him an Hon. Member, etc” (Streeton et al. 85). McCubbin wrote, after an evening at the Chelsea Arts Club, following a visit to the Royal Academy: “Tonight, I am dining with Australian artists in Soho, and shall be there to greet my old friends. How glad I am! Longstaff will be there, and Frank Stuart, Roberts, Fullwood, Pontin, Coates, Quinn, and Tucker’s brother, and many others from all around” (MacDonald, McCubbin and McCubbin 75). Impressed by the work of Turner he wrote to his wife Annie, following avisit to the Tate Gallery:I went yesterday with Fullwood and G. Coates and Tom Roberts for a ramble … to the Tate Gallery – a beautiful freestone building facing the river through a portico into the gallery where the lately found turners are exhibited – these are not like the greater number of pictures in the National Gallery – they represent his different periods, but are mostly in his latest style, when he had realised the quality of light (McCubbin).Clearly Turner’s paintings had a profound impression on him. In the same letter he wrote:they are mostly unfinished but they are divine – such dreams of colour – a dozen of them are like pearls … mist and cloud and sea and land, drenched in light … They glow with tender brilliancy that radiates from these canvases – how he loved the dazzling brilliancy of morning or evening – these gems with their opal colour – you feel how he gloried in these tender visions of light and air. He worked from darkness into light.The Chelsea Arts Club also served as a venue for artists to entertain and host distinguished visitors from home. These guests included; Melbourne Savage Club artist member Alf Vincent (Joske 112), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Trustee and popular patron of the arts, Professor Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Professor Frederick S. Delmer (1864–1931) and conductor George Marshall-Hall (1862–1915) (Mulvaney and Calaby 329; Streeton 111).Artist Miles Evergood arrived in London in 1910, and visited the Chelsea Arts Club. He mentions expatriate Australian artists gathering at the Club, including Will Dyson, Fred Leist (1873–1945), David Davies (1864–1939), Will Ashton (1881–1963), and Henry Fullwood (Hammer 41).Most of the Melbourne Savage Club artist members were active in the London Savage Club. On one occasion, in November 1908, Roberts, with fellow artist MacKennal in the Chair, attended the Australian Artists’ Dinner held there. This event attracted twenty-five expatriate Australian artists, all residing in London at the time (McQueen 532).These London arts clubs had a significant influence on the expatriate Australian artists for they became the “glue” that held them together whilst abroad. Although some artists travelled abroad specifically to take up places at the Royal Academy School or the Slade School, only a minority of artists arriving in London from Australia and other British colonies were offered positions at these prestigious schools. Many artists travelled to “try their luck.” The arts clubs of London, whilst similarly discerning in their membership criteria, generally offered a visiting “brother-of-the-brush” a warm welcome as a professional courtesy. They featured the familiar rollicking all-male “Smoke Nights” a feature of the Melbourne Savage Club. With a greater “artist” membership than the clubs in Australia, expatriate artists were not only able to catch up with their friends from Australia, but also they could associate with England’s finest and most progressive artists in a familiar congenial environment. The clubs were a “home away from home” and described by Underhill as, “an artistic Earl’s Court” (Underhill 99). Most importantly, the clubs were a centre for discourse, arguably even more so than were the teaching academies. Britain’s leading modernist artists were members of the Chelsea Arts Club and the New English Arts Club and mixed freely with the visiting Australian artists.Many Australian artists, such as Miles Evergood and George Bell (1878–1966), held anti-academic views similar to English club members and embraced the new artistic trends, which they would bring back to Australia. Streeton had no illusions about the relative worth of the famed institutions and the exhibitions held by clubs such as the New English. Writing to Roberts before he joins him in London, he describes the Royal Academy as having, “an inartistic atmosphere” and claims he “hasn’t the least desire to go again” (Streeton 77). His preference lay with a concurrent “International Exhibition”, which featured works by Rodin, Whistler, Condor, Degas, and others who were setting the pace rather than merely continuing the academic traditions.Architect Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) served as secretary of The Chelsea Arts Club. When he returned to Australia he brought back with him a number of British works by Streeton and Lambert for an exhibition at the Guild Hall Melbourne (Underhill 92). Artists and Bohemians, a history of the Chelsea Arts Club, makes special reference of its world-wide contacts and singles out many of its prominent Australian members for specific mention including; Sir John William (Will) Ashton OBE, later Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Will Dyson, whose illustrious career as an Australian war artist was described in some detail. Dyson’s popularity led to his later appointment as Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club where he initiated an ambitious rebuilding program, improving staff accommodation, refurbishing the members’ areas, and adding five bedrooms for visiting members (Bross 87-90).Whilst the influence of travel abroad on Australian artists has been noted, the importance of the London Clubs has not been fully explored. These clubs offered artists a space where they felt “at home” and a familiar environment whilst they were abroad. The clubs functioned as a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London had a significant impact on male Australian artists as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world which enhanced their experience whilst abroad and influenced the direction of their art.ReferencesCorbett, David Peters, and Lara Perry, eds. English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Croll, Robert Henderson. Tom Roberts: Father of Australian Landscape Painting. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1935.Cross, Tom. Artists and Bohemians: 100 Years with the Chelsea Arts Club. 1992. 1st ed. London: Quiller Press, 1992.Gray, Anne, and National Gallery of Australia. McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17. 1st ed. Parkes, A.C.T.: National Gallery of Australia, 2009.Halliday, Andrew, ed. The Savage Papers. 1867. 1st ed. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.Hammer, Gael. Miles Evergood: No End of Passion. Willoughby, NSW: Phillip Mathews, 2013.Joske, Prue. Debonair Jack: A Biography of Sir John Longstaff. 1st ed. Melbourne: Claremont Publishing, 1994.MacDonald, James S., Frederick McCubbin, and Alexander McCubbin. The Art of F. McCubbin. Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing, 1916.McCaughy, Patrick. Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters. Ed. Paige Amor. The Miegunyah Press, 2014.McCubbin, Frederick. Papers, Ca. 1900–Ca. 1915. Melbourne.McQueen, Humphrey. Tom Roberts. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996.Mead, Stephen. "Bohemia in Melbourne: An Investigation of the Writer Marcus Clarke and Four Artistic Clubs during the Late 1860s – 1901.” PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009.Melbourne Savage Club. Secretary. Minute Book: Melbourne Savage Club. Club Minutes (General Committee). Melbourne: Savage Archives.Mulvaney, Derek John, and J.H. Calaby. So Much That Is New: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929, a Biography. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1985.Smith, Bernard, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote. Australian Painting, 1788–2000. 4th ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2001.Streeton, Arthur, et al. Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1946.Streeton, Arthur, ed. Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton, 1890–1943. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989.Thornton, Alfred, and New English Art Club. Fifty Years of the New English Art Club, 1886–1935. London: New English Art Club, Curwen Press 1935.Underhill, Nancy D.H. Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991.Various. Melbourne Savage Club Correspondence Book: 1902–1916. Melbourne: Melbourne Savage Club.Williams, Graeme Henry. "A Socio-Cultural Reading: The Melbourne Savage Club through Its Collections." Masters of Arts thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013.

By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero” into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro” that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house” of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it” happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center” until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be fucking joking.” He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?” The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.” The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,” not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.” Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,” one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.” Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.” I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,” but this was the “frozen zone.” There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,” she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.” Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,” Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero” that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,” Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family center”: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.” Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11” post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.” They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.” I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.” The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.” The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they” could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.” He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?” he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?” I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.” Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero” a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA” I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us” by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our” skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?”: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind”—whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles” of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero” such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly” bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction While individuals from marginalised and vulnerable communities have long been confronted with the task of developing coping strategies, COVID-19 lockdowns intensified the conditions under which resilience and wellbeing were/are negotiated, not only for marginalised communities but for people from all walks of life. In particular, the pandemic has highlighted in simple terms the stark divide between the “haves” and “have nots”, and how pre-existing physical conditions and material resources (or lack thereof), including adequate income, living circumstances, and access to digital and other resources, have created different conditions for people to be able to physically isolate, avoid working in conditions that put them at greater risk of exposure to the virus, and maintain up-to-date information. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we live, and its conditions have tested our capacity for resilience to varying degrees. Poor mental health has become an increasingly urgent concern, with almost one in ten people contemplating suicide during Victoria’s second wave and prolonged lockdown in 2020 (Ali et al.; Czeisler & Rajaratnam; Paul). The question of what enables people to cope and adapt to physical distancing is critical for building a more resilient post-pandemic society. With the understanding that resilience is comprised of an intersection of material and immaterial resources, this project takes as its focus the material dimensions of everyday resilience. Specifically, “Objects for Everyday Resilience” explores the intersection of material objects and everyday resilience, focussing on the things that have supported mental and physical health of different sections of the community in Melbourne, Australia, during the pandemic. People in the Victorian city of Melbourne, Australia – including the research team authors of this article – experienced 262 days of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than any other city in the world. The infection rate was high, as was the death rate. Hospitals were in crisis attempting to deal with the influx (McReadie). During lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, all movement in the city was restricted, with 9 pm to 5 am curfews and a five-kilometre travel limit. Workplaces, schools, businesses, sports and leisure clubs were closed. One person per household could shop. Masks were mandatory at all times. PCR testing was extensive. People stayed in their homes, with no visitors. The city limits were closed by roadblocks. Rare instances of air travel required a hard-to-get exemption. Vaccines were delayed. The state government provided financial support for most workers who lost income from their regular work due to the restrictions. However, the financial assistance criteria rejected many casual workers, including foreign students who normally supported themselves through casual employment (McReadie). The mental health toll of protracted lockdowns on Melbourne residents was high (Klein, Tyler-Parker, and Bastian). Yet people developed measures of resilience that helped them cope with lockdown isolation (Gerrand). While studies of resilience have been undertaken during the pandemic, including increased attention towards the affordances of online platforms in lockdown, relatively little attention has been paid to whether and how material objects support everyday resilience. The significant amount of literature on objects and things (e.g. Whitlock) offers a wide range of potential applications when brought to bear on the material conditions of resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic as it continues to unfold. As ethnographer Paula Zuccotti notes in her study of objects that people used in lockdowns around the world, “Future Archeology of a Global Lockdown”, the everyday items we use tell us stories about how we exist (Zuccotti). Paying attention to the intersection of objects with resilience in everyday contexts can enable us to view resilience as a potential practice that can shape the conditions of social life that produce adversity in the first place (Chalmers). By studying relationships between material objects and people in conditions of adversity, this project aims to enhance and extend emerging understandings of multisystemic resilience (Ungar). Objects have been central to human history, culture, and life. According to Maurizio Ferraris, objects are characterised by four qualities: sensory-ness, manipulability, ordinariness, and relationality. “Unlike the three spheres of biological life – the mineral, the vegetable and the animal – objects and things have been customarily considered dependent on humans’ agency and presence” (Bartoloni). In everyday life, objects can enhance resilience when they are mobilised in strategies of resourcefulness and “making do” (de Certeau). Objects may also support the performance of identity and enable inter-subjective relations that create a sense of agency and of being at home, wherever one is located (Ahmed et al.; Gerrand). From an existential perspective, the experience of being confined in lockdown, “stuck” in one place, challenges cosmopolitan connectedness and sense of belonging. It also bears some similarities to the experiences of migrants and refugees who have endured great uncertainty, distance, and immobility due to detention or vintage of migration (Yi-Neumann et al.). It is possible that certain objects, although facilitating resilience, might also trigger mixed feelings in the individuals who relied on them during the lockdown (Svašek). From domestic accoutrements to digital objects, what kinds of things supported wellbeing in situations of confinement? Multisystemic Resilience in Lockdown It is especially useful to consider the material dimensions of resilience when working with people who have experienced trauma, marginalisation, or mental health challenges during the pandemic, as working with objects enables interaction beyond language barriers and enables alternatives to the re-telling of experiences. Resilience has been theorised as a social process supported (or inhibited) by a range of “everyday” intersecting external and contextual factors at individual, family, social, institutional, and economic resource levels (Ungar; Sherrieb et al.; Southwick et al.). The socio-ecological approach to resilience demonstrates that aspects of individual, family, and community resilience can be learned and reinforced (Bonanno), but they can also be eroded or weakened, depending on the dynamic interplay of various forces and influences in the social ecology of an individual or a group. This means that while factors at the level of the individual, family, community, or institutions may strengthen resistance to harms or the ability to overcome adversity in one context, the same factors can promote vulnerability and erode coping abilities in others (Rutter). Our project asked to what extent this social-ecological understanding of resilience might be further enhanced by attending to nonhuman materialities that can contribute or erode resilience within human relations. We were particularly interested in understanding the potential of the exhibition for creating an inclusive and welcoming space for individuals who had experienced long COVID lockdowns to safely reflect on the material conditions that supported their resilience. The aim of this exercise was not to provide answers to a problem, but to draw attention to complexity, and generate additional questions and uncertainties, as encouraged by Barone and Eisner. The exhibition, through its juxtaposition of (lockdown-induced) loneliness with the conviviality of the public exhibition format, enabled an exploration of the tension between the neoliberal imperative to physically isolate oneself and the public messaging concerning the welfare of the general populace. Our project emerged from insights collected on the issue of mental health during “Living Lab” Roundtables undertaken in 2020 by our Centre For Resilient and Inclusive Societies, convened as part of the Foundation Project (Lam et al.). In particular, we deployed an object-based analysis to investigate the art- and object-based methodology in the aftermath of a potentially traumatising lockdown, particularly for individuals who may not respond as well to traditional research methods. This approach contributes to the emerging body of work exploring the affordances of visual and material methods for capturing feelings and responses generated between people and objects during the pandemic (Watson et al.). “Objects for Everyday Resilience” sought to facilitate greater openness to objects’ vitality (Bennett) in order to produce new encounters that further understandings of multisystemic resilience. Such insights are critically tied to human mental health and physical wellbeing. They also enabled us to develop shared resources (as described below) that support such resilience during the period of recovery from the pandemic and beyond. Arts and Objects as Research The COVID-19 pandemic provoked not only a global health response, but also a reorientation of the ways COVID-related research is conducted and disseminated. Javakhishvili et al. describe the necessity of “a complex, trauma-informed psycho-socio-political response” in the aftermath of “cultural/societal trauma” occurring at a society-wide scale, pointing out the prevalence of mental health issues following previous epidemics (1). As they note, an awareness of such trauma is necessary “to avoid re-traumatization and to facilitate recovery”, with “safety, trustworthiness, transparency, collaboration and peer support, empowerment, choice” among the key principles of trauma-informed policies, strategies, and practices (3). Our project received funding from the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS) in July 2021, and ethics approval in November 2021. Centring materiality, in November 2021 we circulated a “call for objects” through CRIS’ and the research team’s social media channels, and collected over 40 objects from participants of all ages for this pilot study. Our participants comprised 33 women and 10 men. Following is a breakdown of the self-described cultural background of some participants: Five Australian (including one ‘6th generation Australian’); four Vietnamese; two Caucasian; one Anglo-Australian; one Asian; one Brazilian; one British; one Caucasian/English Australian; one Filipino; one Filipino-Australian; one German/Portuguese/US; one Greek Australian; one Iranian; one Irish and Welsh; one Israeli; one Half German, Half Middle Eastern; one Middle Eastern; one Singaporean; one White British. Participants’ objects and stories were analysed by the team both in terms of their ‘people, place, and things’ affordances – enhancing participants’ reflections of life in the pandemic – and through the prism of their vibrancy, drawing on object-oriented ontology and materiality as method (Ravn). Our participants were encouraged to consider how their chosen object(s) supported their resilience during the pandemic. For example, some objects enabled linking with memories that assist in elaborating experiences of loss or grief (Trimingham Jack and Devereux). To guide those submitting objects, we asked about: 1) their relationship to the object, 2) the meaning of the object, and 3) which features of resilience are mobilised by the object. From an analysis of our data, we have developed a working typology of objects to understand their particular relationship role to features of resilience (social capital, temporality) and to thematise our data in relation to emerging priorities in research in multisystemic resilience, materiality, and mental health. Things on Display Whilst we were initially unable to gather in person, we built an online Instagram gallery (@objectsforeverydayresilience) of submitted objects, with accompanying stories from research participants. Relevant hashtags in several languages were added to each post by the research team to ensure their widest possible visibility. This gallery features objects such as a female participant’s jigsaw puzzle which “helped me to pass the downtime in an enjoyable way”. Unlike much of her life in lockdown that was consumed by chores that “did not necessarily make me feel content or happy”, jigsaw puzzles made this participant “happy for that time I was doing them, transport[ing] me out of the confines of the lockdown with landscapes and images from across the globe”. Another female participant submitted a picture of her worn sneakers, which she used to go on what she called her “sanity walks”. To counteract the overwhelm of “being in the house all the time with 3 (autistic) children who were doing home learning and needed a lot of support”, while attempting to work on her PhD, going for walks every day helped clear my mind, get some fresh air, keep active and have some much needed quiet / me time. I ordered these shoes online because we couldn’t go to the shops and wore them almost daily during the extended lockdowns. Books were also popular. During lockdowns, according to a female participant, reading helped me connect with the outside world and be able to entertain myself without unhealthy coping mechanisms such as scrolling endlessly through TikTok. It also helped me feel less alone during the pandemic. Another female participant found that her son’s reading gave her time to work. Olfactory objects provided comfort for a participant who mourned the loss of smell due to mask wearing: perfumes were my sensory transport during this time – they could evoke memories of places I’d travelled to, seasons, people, feelings and even colours. I could go to far-off places in my mind through scent even though my body was largely stationary within my home. (Female participant) Through scent objects, this participant was “able to bring the world to meet me when I was unable to go out to meet the world”. Other participants sought to retreat from the world through homely objects: throughout lockdown I felt that my bed became an important object to my sanity. When I felt overwhelmed, I would come to bed and take a nap which helped me feel less out of control with everything going on in the world. (Female participant) For an essential worker who injured her leg whilst working in a hospital, an Ikea couch enabled recovery: “the couch saved my throbbing leg for many months. It served as a place to eat, paint and rest.” (Female participant) While pets were not included as objects within this project, several participants submitted their pets’ accoutrements. A female participant who submitted a photograph of her cat’s collar and tree movingly recounts how while I was working online in lockdown, this cat tree kept my cat entertained. She was so enthusiastic while scratching (covered in her fur) she somehow managed to remove her collar. I call Bouny my Emotional support cat … . She really stepped up her treatments of me during the pandemic. My mother had advanced dementia and multiple lockdowns [which] meant I could not see her in the weeks leading up to her death. These objects highlight the ways in which this participant found comfort during lockdown at a time of deep grief. For other participants, blankets and shawls provided sources of comfort “since much of lockdown was either in cool weather or deepest winter”. I found myself taking [my shawl] whenever I went out for any of the permitted activities and I also went to bed with it at night. The soft texture and the warmth against my face, neck and shoulders relaxed my body and I felt comforted and safe. (Female participant) Another used a calming blanket during lockdown “for time-outs on my bed (I was confined to a tiny flat at the time and separated from my family). It gave me a safe space”. (Female participant) In a similar vein, journalling provided several participants with “a safe space to explore thoughts and make them more tangible, acting as a consistent mindful practice I could always turn to”. The journal provided consistency throughout the ever-changing lockdown conditions and a strong sense of stability. Recording thoughts daily allowed me to not only process adversity, but draw attention to the areas in my life which I was grateful for … even from home. (Female participant) In addition to fostering mindfulness, the creative practice of journalling enabled this participant to exercise her imagination: writing from the perspectives of other people, from friends to strangers, also allowed me to reflect on the different experiences others had during lockdown. I found this fostered empathy and motivated me to reach out and check in on others, which in turn also benefited my own mental health. (Female participant) Creative practices were critical to sustaining many participants of this study. The Norman family, for example, submitted an acrylic on canvas artwork, Surviving COVID in Port Melbourne (2021), as their object of resilience: this work represents the sentiments and experiences of our family after a year of successive COVID lockdowns. Each section of the canvas has been completed a member of our family – 2 parents and a 21, 18 and 14 year-old. (Norman family) Likewise, musical instruments and sound objects – whether through analogue or digital means – helped participants to stay sane in long lockdowns: wen I didn’t know what to do with myself I always turned to the guitar. (Male participant) Music was so important to us throughout the lockdowns. It helped us express and diffuse big feelings. We played happy songs to amplify nice moments, funny songs to cheer each other up, angry songs to dance out rage. (Family participants) Curating the Lockdown Lounge To enhance the capacity of our project’s connections to the wider community, and respond to the need we felt to gather in person to reflect on what it meant for each of us to endure long lockdowns, we held an in-person exhibition after COVID-19 restrictions had eased in Melbourne in November 2022. The decision to curate the “Lockdown Lounge” art and research exhibition featuring objects submitted by research participants was consistent with a trauma-informed approach to research as described above. According to Crowther, art exhibits have the potential to redirect viewers’ attention from “aesthetic critique” to emotional connection. They can facilitate what Moon describes as “relational aesthetics”, whereby viewers may connect with the art and artists, and enhance their awareness of the self, artist, and the world. As a form of “guided relational viewing” (Potash), art exhibits are non-coercive in that they invite responses, discussion, and emotional involvement while placing no expectation on viewers to engage with or respond to the exhibition in a particular way. When considering such questions, our immersive in-person exhibition featured a range of object-based installations including audio-visual and sound objects, available for viewing in our Zine, The Lockdown Lounge (Walimunige et al.). The living room design was inspired by French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira’s immersive living room installation, “Dreams Don’t Have Titles”, at the 59th Venice Art Biennale’s French pavilion (Sedira), attended by project co-lead Vivian Gerrand in June 2022. The project team curated the gallery space together, which was located at Deakin University’s city conference venue, “Deakin Downtown”, in Melbourne, Australia. Fig. 1: The Lockdown Lounge, living room. “What Got You through Lockdown?” research exhibition and experience, Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, 21-25 November 2022. In the centre of the Lockdown Lounge’s living room (see fig. 1), for example, a television screen played a looped collection of popular YouTube videos, many of which had gone viral in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, admonishing Victorians to avoid non-essential activities through the example of an illicit dinner party held that resulted in a spike in coronavirus cases in March 2020 (ABC News). This short video excerpt of the Premier’s press conference concluded with his advice not to “get on the beers”. While not on display in this instance, many visitors would have been familiar with the TikTok video remix made later in the pandemic that featured the same press conference, with Premier Andrews’s words spliced to encourage listeners to “get on the beers!” (Kutcher). We recalled the ways in which such videos provided light relief through humour at a time of grave illness and trauma: when army trucks were being summoned to carry the deceased from Northern Italian hospitals to makeshift gravesites, those of us privileged to be at home, at a remove from the ravages of the virus, shared videos of Italian mayors shouting at their constituents to “vai a casa!” (Go home!). Or of Italians walking fake dogs to have an excuse to go outside. We finished the loop with a reproduction of the viral Kitten Zoom Filter Mishap, in which in online American courtroom defendant Rod Ponton mistakenly dons a cat filter while telling the judge, ‘I am not a cat’. The extraordinary nature of living in lockdown initially appeared as an opportunity to slow down, and this pandemic induced immobility appeared to prompt a kind of “degrowth” as industries the world over paused operation and pollution levels plummeted (Gerrand). In reflection of this, we included videos in our YouTube playlist of wild animals returning to big cities, and of the waters of Venice appearing to be clear. These videos recalled how the pandemic has necessitated greater appreciation of the power of things. The spread of the novel coronavirus’s invisible variants has permanently altered the conditions and perceptions of human life on the planet, forcing us to dwell on the vitality intrinsic to materiality, and renewing awareness of human lives as taking place within a broader ecology of life forms (Bennett). Within this posthuman perspective, distinctions between life and matter are blurred, and humans are displaced from a hierarchical ontological centre. In an essay titled “The Go Slow Party”, anthropologist Michael Taussig theorises a “mastery of non-mastery” that yields to the life of the object. This yielding – a necessary response to the conditions of the pandemic – can enable greater attentiveness to the interconnectedness and enmeshment of all things, leading to broader understandings of self and of resilience. To understand how participants responded to the exhibition, we asked them to respond to the following questions in the form of open-ended comments: What if anything affected you most? Did any of the objects resonate with you? Did the exhibition provide a safe environment for you to reflect on your sense of resilience during the pandemic? Fig. 2: Research exhibition participant standing beside artwork by the Norman family: Surviving COVID in Port Melbourne, acrylic on canvas (2021), The Lockdown Lounge. Through curating the art exhibition, we engaged in what Wang et al. describe as “art as research”, whereby the artist-researcher aims to “gain a deeper understanding of what art, art creation, or an artistic installation can do or activate … either in terms of personal experiences or environmental circumstances” (15). As Wang et al. write, “the act of creating is simultaneously the act of researching”, neither of which can be distinguished from one another (15). Accordingly, the process of curating the gallery space triggered memories of living in lockdown for members of our team, including one male youth researcher who remembers: as the space gradually began to be populated with object submissions … the objects began to find their place … . We slowly developed an understanding of the specific configurations of objects and the feelings that these combinations potentially could invoke. As we negotiated where my object might be placed, I felt an odd sense of melancholy seeing my record player and guitar at the exhibition, reminiscing about the music that I used to play and listen to with my family when we were all in lockdown … . As my Bon Iver record spun, and the familiar melodies rung out into the space, I felt as if I was sharing an intimate memory with others … . It also reminded me of the times when I had felt the most uplifted, when I was with family, near and far, knowing that we all were a unit. Another of our youth researcher team members served as an assistant curator and agreed to monitor the gallery space by being there for most of the five days of the exhibition’s opening to the public. She describes her work in the gallery thus: my role involved general exhibition upkeep – setup, answering visitor inquiries and monitoring the space – which meant being in the exhibition space for around 7.5 hours a day. Although it cannot be fully compared to living through Melbourne’s lockdowns, being in a space meant to mimic that time meant that comparisons naturally arose. I can see similarities between the things that supported my resilience during the lockdowns and the things that made my time at the gallery enjoyable. Through engaging with the gallery, this researcher was reminded of how spending time engaging in hands-on tasks made physical distancing more manageable. Spending time in the exhibition space also facilitated her experience of the lockdowns and the material conditions supporting resilience. She reflects that the hands-on, creative tasks of setting up the exhibition space and helping design a brochure reminded me of how I turned to baking so I could create something using my hands … . In the beginning, I approached my time at the gallery as a requirement of my work in this project … . Looking back now, I believe I understand both the person I was those years ago, and resilience itself, a little bit better. Fig. 3: Research exhibition participant wearing an Oculus virtual reality headset, watching the film Melbourne Locked Down (van Leeuwen), The Lockdown Lounge, November 2022. As these examples demonstrate, complex assemblages of people, places, and things during the COVID-19 pandemic were, and are, “suffused with multisensory and affective feelings”; exploring the ways affect is distributed through socio-spatialities of human experience enables researchers to better unpack individuals’ COVID experiences in ways that include their surroundings (Lupton). This was further evident in the feedback received from participants who attended the exhibition. Exhibition Feedback Feedback from participants suggested that the public exhibition format enabled them to explore this tension between isolation and orientation to the greater good in a safe and inclusive way (e.g. fig. 2). For Harry (29/m/Argentinian/New Zealand), interacting with the exhibition “reminded me that I wasn’t the only one that went through it”, while Sam (40/m/Chinese Australian) resonated with “many … people’s testimonials” of how objects helped support their resilience during long periods of confinement. Sam further added that participating in the exhibition was a “pleasant, friendly experience”, and that “everyone found something to do”, speaking to the convivial and inclusive nature of the exhibition. This resonates with Chaplin’s observation that “the production and reception of visual art works are social processes” that cannot be understood with reference to aesthetic factors alone (161-2). In the quotes above, it is evident that participants’ experience of the exhibition was inherently entwined with the sociality of the exhibition, evoking a sense of connection to others who had experienced the pandemic (in Harry’s case), and other exhibition attendees, whom he observed “all found something to do”. Additionally, participants’ responses highlighted the crucial role of the “artist researcher”, whom Wang et al. describe as qualitative researchers who use “artistically inspired methods or approaches” to blend research and art to connect with participants (10). In particular, the curation of the exhibition was something participants highlighted as key to facilitating their recollections of the pandemic in ways that were relatable. Nala (19/f/East-African Australian) commented that “the room’s layout allowed for this the most”: “the room was curated so well, it encaptured [sic] all the various stages of COVID lockdown – it made me feel like I was 16 again”. Returning to Wang et al.’s description of “art as research” as a means through which artist researchers can “gain a deeper understanding of what art, art creation, or an artistic installation can do or activate” (15), participant responses suggest that the curation of Lockdown Lounge as a trauma-informed art exhibition allowed participants to re-experience the pandemic lockdowns in ways that did not re-traumatise, but enabled the past and present to coexist safely and meaningfully for participants. Conclusion: Object-Oriented Wellbeing From different sections of the community, “Objects for Everyday Resilience” collected things that tell stories about how people coped in long lockdowns. Displaying the objects and practices that sustained us through the peak of the COVID-19 health crisis helped our participants to safely reflect on their experiences of living through long lockdowns. The variety of objects submitted and displayed draws our attention to the complex nuances of resilience and its material and immaterial intersections. These contributions composed, as fig. 1 illustrates, an almost accidentally curated diorama of a typical lockdown scene, imitating not only the materiality of living room itself but something also, through the very process of contribution, of the strange collectivity that the city of Melbourne experienced during lockdown periods. Precisely partitioned within domestic zones (with important differences for many “essential workers”, residents of public housing high-rises, and other exceptions), lockdowns enforced a different and necessarily unifying rhythm: attention to daily briefings on COVID numbers, affective responses to the heaves and sighs of infection rates, mourning over a new and untameable cause of loss of life, and routine check-ins on newly isolated friends and family. In hindsight, as the city has regained – perhaps redoubled, a sign of impatience with earlier governmental languages of austerity and moderation? – its economic and hedonistic pulse, there are also signs that any lockdown collectivity – which we also acknowledge was always partial and differentiated – has dispersed into the fragmentation of social interests and differences typical of late capitalism. The fascination with “public” objects – the Northface jacket of the state premier, COVID masks and testing kits, even toilet paper rolls, serving metonymically for a shared panic over scarcity – has receded. To the point, less than two years on, of this media attention being a scarcely remembered dream. The Lockdown Lounge is an example of a regathering of experiences through a process that, through its methods, also serves as a reminder of a common sociality integral to resilience. 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