Journal articles on the topic 'Ossorio'

Reseña del libro de Alfonso Álvarez-Ossorio Rivas – Eduardo Ferrer Albelda – Álvaro Delgado Pereira (coords.), Guerra y Paz. Las religiones ante los conflictos bélicos en la Antigüedad (=SPAL Monografías XXIII), Sevilla, Editorial Universidad de Sevilla–Servicio de asistencia religiosa de la Universidad de Sevilla, 2016, 237 pp. [ISBN: 978-84-472-1854-7].

El presente artículo se centra en establecer la importancia que todo académico del Derecho debe conocer; ya sea como estudiante, docente universitario, abogado litigante, juez, fiscal y todo conocedor del mundo jurídico; tanto en el aprendizaje inicial, abarcando también la enseñanza superior y el estudio continuo del Derecho; los temas que se desarrollan a continuación fueron considerados con la finalidad de mejorar la calidad del proceso de enseñanza, estudio y aprendizaje del futuro abogado y del abogado en sí. Por ello el presente artículo, a través del estudio e interpretación del tema, se inicia a desarrollar conceptualizando cada uno de los aspectos relevantes del aprendizaje, la enseñanza y el estudio del Derecho; citando autores como, Atienza, Carbonell, Ossorio, López; entre otros que desarrollan temas relevantes respecto del Derecho.

Los sermones del predicador neogranadino Antonio Ossorio de las Peñas se toman como ejemplo para mostrar las intenciones reales de estos mensajes doctrinales, que ofrecen la posibilidad de conocer las líneas programáticas de la transmisión de valores y virtudes cristianas. Los sermones propagados en tiempos coloniales eran discursos de carácter religioso con contenido político. Su finalidad real era la de construir modelos ideales de comportamiento de los sujetos barrocos para establecer un cuerpo social que no perturbara los objetivos de una política tradicional e imperialista. Para ello es necesario estudiar la relación entre la proclamación del sermón y la teatralización que caracterizaba el ceremonial de la prédica. La palabra dramatizada y el teatro trabajaron de la mano para impregnar en un amplio número de individuos el mensaje de Dios, del cual se apropiaba la Corona.

Aspartate aminotransferase (AspAT, EC 2.6.1.1) from the halophilic archaebacterium Haloferax mediterranei was purified [Muriana, Alvarez-Ossorio and Relimpio (1991) Biochem. J. 278, 149-154] and further characterization of the effects of temperature on the activity and stability of the halophilic AspAT were carried out. The halophilic transaminase is most active at 65 degrees C and stable at high temperatures, under physiological or nearly physiological conditions (3.5 M KCl, pH 7.8). Thermal inactivation (60-85 degrees C) of the halophilic AspAT followed first-order kinetics, 2-oxoglutarate causing a shift of the thermal inactivation curves to higher temperatures. The salt concentration affected the thermal stability of the halophilic transaminase at 60 degrees C, suggesting that disruption of hydrophobic interactions may play an important role in the decreased thermal stability of the enzyme.

Augusto Fernández de Avilés fue nombrado Director del Museo Arqueológico de Murcia en 1931 y Profesor Ayudante de la universidad entre 1931-36. En Murcia comenzó a colaborar con Mergelina como codirector de la excavación de la necrópolis ibérica del Cabecico del Tesoro entre 1935-36. Sobre este tema intentó elaborar una tesis doctoral, pero Mergelina prefirió que la tesis fuese para su ayudante, Nieto Gallo, al que cedió la dirección de campo de las excavaciones. En 1941 consiguió el traslado al Museo Arqueológico Nacional, colaborando en las excavaciones de Taracena en Vizcaya y la Rioja (1942-1946). Al mismo tiempo, estrechó su relación con García y Bellido, su nuevo director de tesis doctoral, que lo incorporó como Profesor Ayudante de Arqueología (1942-45, 1948-49), Secretario de la revista Archivo Español de Arqueología (1946-58), Jefe de Sección del Instituto Rodrigo Caro (1952-58), además de participar en las excavaciones de Iuliobriga (Santander) (1953-58) y Herrera del Pisuerga (Palencia) (1960-61). Su tesis doctoral sobre la escultura ibérica del Cerro de los Santos (Albacete) (1949) no le sirvió para conseguir la cátedra de Arqueología en Salamanca en 1949, donde no tuvo el apoyo de Taracena, pero le impulsó a excavar el Cerro de los Santos entre 1962-63. Al dimitir Navascués como director del Museo Arqueológico Nacional en 1966, fue nombrado director interino en abril de 1967, y se presentó al concurso convocado en julio. Contó con el apoyo de Nieto Gallo y Navascués, compitiendo con Almagro Basch, pero el cese de Nieto Gallo, y el nombramiento de Pérez Embid como nuevo Director General de Bellas Artes, en mayo de 1968, facilitó el nombramiento de Almagro Basch, aunque poco antes Fernández de Avilés había fallecido de una leucemia, con 60 años.

Abstract Bode, A., Álvarez-Ossorio M. T., Miranda, A., and Ruiz-Villarreal, M. 2013. Shifts between gelatinous and crustacean plankton in a coastal upwelling region. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 934–942. Variability in the dominance of copepods vs. gelatinous plankton was analysed using monthly time-series covering the last 55 years and related to changes in climatic, oceanographic, and fishery conditions in the upwelling region of Galicia (NW Spain). Seasonality was generally the main component of variability in all groups, both along the coast and in the nearby ocean, but no common long-term trend was found. Coastal copepods increased since the early 1990s, and gelatinous plankton increased in the ocean during the 1980s. Different trends were found for gelatinous plankton in two coastal sites, characterized by increases in either medusae or tunicates. In all series, multiyear periods of relative dominance of gelatinous vs. copepod plankton were evident. In general, copepod periods were observed in positive phases of the main modes of regional climatic variability. Conversely, gelatinous periods occurred during negative climatic phases. However, the low correlations between gelatinous plankton and climatic, oceanographic, or fishery variables suggest that local factors play a major role in their proliferations.

The long atmospheric residence time of CO2 creates an urgent need to add atmospheric carbon drawdown to CO2 regulatory strategies. Synthetic and systems biology (SSB), which enables manipulation of cellular phenotypes, offers a powerful approach to amplifying and adding new possibilities to current land management practices aimed at reducing atmospheric carbon. The participants (in attendance: Christina Agapakis, George Annas, Adam Arkin, George Church, Robert Cook-Deegan, Charles DeLisi, Dan Drell, Sheldon Glashow, Steve Hamburg, Henry Jacoby, Henry Kelly, Mark Kon, Todd Kuiken, Mary Lidstrom, Mike MacCracken, June Medford, Jerry Melillo, Ron Milo, Pilar Ossorio, Ari Patrinos, Keith Paustian, Kristala Jones Prather, Kent Redford, David Resnik, John Reilly, Richard J. Roberts, Daniel Segre, Susan Solomon, Elizabeth Strychalski, Chris Voigt, Dominic Woolf, Stan Wullschleger, and Xiaohan Yang) identified a range of possibilities by which SSB might help reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and which might also contribute to environmental sustainability and adaptation. These include, among other possibilities, engineering plants to convert CO2 produced by respiration into a stable carbonate, designing plants with an increased root-to-shoot ratio, and creating plants with the ability to self-fertilize. A number of serious ecological and societal challenges must, however, be confronted and resolved before any such application can be fully assessed, realized, and deployed.

El zombi experimenta un reciente auge en la cultura popular española contemporánea en forma de literatura, cómic o cine. El artículo analiza los últimos títulos del subgénero en esta cinematografía a través de su compleja relación tanto con el cine de zombis extranjero como con la propia tradición del personaje en el cine español del pasado. Lo que esta doble línea de lectura parece revelar es la existencia de un vínculo temático consistente entre el zombi español de los años sesenta-setenta y el zombi español de hoy: vínculo que se focaliza, fundamentalmente, en el papel que la religión cumple en el subgénero. Así, películas del tardofranquismo como la tetralogía de los caballeros templarios de Amando de Ossorio comparten con la serie Rec la representación del objeto religioso como una influencia numinosa que "crea" y controla a los zombis. La distancia irónica que la serie de Jaume Balagueró y Paco Plaza mantiene con este mismo objeto es significativa, sin embargo, de la evolución que el arquetipo del zombi ha experimentado en la cinematografía española; evolución que ha cristalizado en la siguiente paradoja: siendo Rec el producto zombi español que más rotundamente asimila las innovaciones del personaje en el siglo XXI, es, a la vez, el más internacional y el más local.

Acercarse al conflicto palestino implica, como mínimo, una doble dificultad. La primera parte de su compleja catalogación. Se trata de un conflicto en el que advertimos la presencia de una extraordinaria multitud de facetas: es un conflicto interno de Israel, y a la vez con fuertes implicaciones internacionales; es un conflicto por el territorio y por el agua, pero con fuerte componente político, y —aunque no son dominantes— no está exento de implicaciones religiosas. Es, en suma, lo que podríamos llamar un conflicto transversal, al que se han acercado especialistas en disciplinas tan dispares como la historia contemporánea, la religión, la geografía, las ciencias políticas, la filología y el periodismo.

The first part of this review of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí history (1384-1534) covers the period 1384, from the conquest of Richard II, to 1454, by which time the clan had entered into an alliance with their mortal enemies, the Butlers of Ormond. Twelve years after the commencement of this era the Lordship of Ossory had fallen to Finghin Óg; these were days of increasing formation of alliances between Gaelic chieftains. That changed around the time of Finghin Óg’s death in ca. 1417; the power struggle between Sir John Talbot and Sir James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, altered the face of Irish politics for the next 30 or so years, and Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí had to choose one side or the other. It was a time when Donnchadh Mór, a previously unrecognised Lord of Ossory, was chieftain. His life and times are recounted from entries in the Annals of the Four Masters and other familiar texts, but three largely overlooked sources of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí history – Liber Ruber, the Ormond Deeds and the Kildare Rental – significantly add to our understand of both he and Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí lineages, which to date have been muddled. New characters are uncovered, such as Morena ny Giolla Phádraig and her husband, John the Blind Butler, and the previously ignored branch, Clann Maeleachlainn Ruadh. An account of the early stages of the Ormond-Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí alliance, which would ultimately fragment the clan, is provided.

O estudo do Satnbaqui da Beirada faz parte de uma pe.s'quisa interdisciplinrtr - "Projeto Saqwarerut: Pré-Ili.stót'ict e Paleoambiente" - em desenvolvimento lto lítoral do Munic{pio de Saquarernø, Ìistctclo do Rir¡ deJaneiro. Escavaç:ões sistemáticas rectlizadas em 1987 numa área cle l6}nf e corn a profundidnde mó-ximct de I "75m apresentou camadas cle o'cupação com vestlgios de pedraJ', o,s^to.t e concltas. F'oram. classificadas ¿tm total de 398 peças de, pedra, 269 de ossorì e 2O8 de corrchas. A in¿Itistria de pedra dominante é representadn por r'peç6s utilizadas" comt¡ ",¡eixos de superflcie polidn pelo uso" e percutoreso' rinctpctlm.ente de diabdsio, e cuja localização nct área pemütitt a elaboraç'õo de três hipóteses relcttivas cto paleoambien.te. A inùlstria óssea rnais significativa é represerttada por "pontos" e "agulhas", sen¿Io essa úhinta realizarla na confecção cla "rede cle ¡tescanr'. Tais resultado,s mostrdram que o honrcm ¿lo sambaqui da Beirada era tão coletor de molusco,ç cluanto pescador.

The Reformation in Ireland has traditionally been seen as an unmitigated failure. This article contributes to current scholarship that is challenging this perception by conceiving the sixteenth-century Irish Church as part of the English Church. It does so by examining the episcopal career of John Bale, bishop of Ossory, County Kilkenny, 1552–3. Bale wrote an account of his Irish experience, known as theVocacyon, soon after fleeing his diocese upon the accession of Queen Mary to the English throne and the subsequent restoration of Roman Catholicism. The article considers Bale's episcopal career as an expression of the relationship between Church and state in mid-Tudor England and Ireland. It will be shown that ecclesiastical reform in Ireland was complemented by political subjugation, and vice versa. Having been appointed by Edward VI, Bale upheld the royal supremacy as justification for implementing ecclesiastical reform. The combination of preaching the gospel and enforcing the 1552 Prayer Book was, for Bale, the best method of evangelism. The double effect was to win converts and align the Irish Church with the English form of worship. Hence English reformers exploited the political dominance of England to export their evangelical faith into Ireland.

En el presente artículo abordaremos una de las estrategias más comunes del nuevo régimen franquista para consolidar el control sobre la sociedad española durante sus primeros años de existencia (1936-1955): el secuestro y/o la manipulación de la memoria de los vencidos a fin de hacerla desaparecer de la memoria colectiva. Para ello, recurriremos a la campaña de descrédito que sufre una figura representativa del bando republicano —el político democristiano Ossorio y Gallardo—, centrándonos en las razones y procedimientos más usuales del Estado para neutralizar a dicho rival. Como colofón, presentamos ciertas claves para la recuperación de la memoria individual, con especial atención a la localización de fuentes y a los obstáculos políticos de la actual coyuntura histórica.In this article we will deal with one of the most common strategies of the new Franquista regime in order to consolídate the control of spanish society during the first years of existence (1936-1953): the kidnapping and/or the manipulation of the defeated's memory to make her disappear from the collective memory. For this we will analyse to the discredit compaign of a representative figure of the republican band —the demochristian politician Ossorio y Gallardo— and the more usual state's reasons and procedures to neutralize the aforementioned rival. Finally we will present some keys for the individual memory's recuperation, especially the source's location and the politician obstacles of the present historical context.

Ethical guidance and understanding of research methods in Higher Education needs to catch up with the emerging landscape of internet research (BSA 2002, BPS 2013, Bassett, E and O’Riordan K 2002). The internet has become embedded and has had an impact on research in all domains. However, research practices that deploy online methods are not supported by sufficient ethical guidance (Shapiro, R. B. & Ossorio, P. N. 2013). This paper will aim to contextualise Internet Mediated Research (IMR) methods, consider how Higher Education Institutions are currently providing ethical review and guidance for projects using IMR methods, and explore the gap between the demands of research practice and HE ethical guidance. My paper will demonstrate work in progress to construct an argument for a reframing of research ethics for online research and provide discussion points of what this reframing may be.

Respiración artificial (1980), del escritor argentino Ricardo Piglia (1940-2017), constituye una narración híbrida donde el ensayo se imbrica en el diálogo y la correspondencia, modos que se combinan a su vez con la biografía, la autobiografía y el diario. De entre estos procedimientos, este artículo se propone explorar el desarrollo y los alcances del género epistolar, los mecanismos que determinan la disposición de las cartas a lo largo de la novela y las significaciones que adquieren en ella los rasgos que definen al género. Con este objetivo, se parte de un análisis del corpus epistolar que se aborda después desde tres instancias: la de la teoría de la narración, mediante el análisis del metadiscurso desplegado en la novela; la de la utopía, a través del proyecto novelístico de Enrique Ossorio; y la del complot, examinando las tensiones que se establecen entre los discursos sociales que circulan en las cartas interceptadas por Arocena y la lectura paranoica del Estado dictatorial.

Agudo González, J. (dir.), Relaciones jurídicas transnacionales y reconocimiento mutuo, Cizur Menor, Thomson Reuters Aranzadi, 2019, 310 pp., por J. I. Paredes Pérez Barreñada, I. (coord.), Abu-Tarbush, J., Álvarez-Ossorio, I. y Sanahuja, J. A., Entre España y Palestina. Revisión crítica de unas relaciones, Biblioteca del Islam Contemporáneo, Barcelona, Edicions Bellaterra, 2018, núm. 52, 327 pp., por Miguel Hernando de Larramendi Bedjaoui, M., La Guerra de Argelia, una revolución a la altura del ser humano, Valencia, Tirant Humanidades, 2019, 402 pp., por J. A. González Vega Carrascosa González, J., El Reglamento sucesorio europeo 650/2012 de 4 julio 2012: análisis crítico, 2.ª ed., Murcia, Rapid Centro, 2019, 734 pp., por E. Castellanos Ruiz Cebrián Salvat, A. y Lorente Martínez, I. (dirs.), Protección de menores y Derecho internacional privado, Granada, Comares, 2019, 341 pp., por S. Adroher Biosca Cebrián Salvat, A. y Lorente Martínez, I. (dirs.), Innovación docente y Derecho Internacional Privado, Granada, Comares, 2019, 168 pp., por D. Carrizo Aguado Fernández De Casadevante, C. (coord.), Los efectos jurídicos en España de las decisiones de los órganos internacionales de control en materia de derechos humanos de naturaleza no jurisdiccional, Madrid, Dykinson, 2020, 297 pp., por R. A. Alija Fernández Fernández Masiá, E., La transparencia al rescate del arbitraje inversor-Estado, Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2019, 168 pp., por M. V. Cuartero Rubio Fotinopoulou Basurko, O., Habitualidad vs. temporalidad en los contratos de trabajo ligados al transporte internacional, Atelier, 2019, 216 pp., por N. Fernández Avello Gutiérrez Castillo, V. (coord.), Amnistías y justicia transicional. Límites a la luz del Derecho internacional, Sevilla, Aula Magna. Proyecto Clave-McGraw Hill, 2019, 503 pp., por C. Gil Gandía Lorente Martínez, I., Sustracción internacional de menores. Estudio jurisprudencial, práctico y crítico, Madrid, Dykinson, 2019, 283 pp., por C. M. Caamiña Domínguez Márquez Carrasco, C., La Unión Europea y los actores no estatales, Pamplona, Thomson Reuters-Aranzadi, 2019, 234 pp., por A. Manero Salvador Pascual-Vives, F., La legitimación activa del individuo en el arbitraje de inversión, Navarra, Thomson Reuters-Aranzadi, 2019, 312 pp., por Ch. G. Sommer Ruiz Risueño, F. y Fernández Rozas, J. C. (coords.), El arbitraje y la buena administración de la justicia. Libro conmemorativo del 30 Aniversario de la Corte Civil y Mercantil de Arbitraje (CIMA), Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2019, 737 pp., por P. A. de Miguel Asensio Sánchez Legido, A., Controles migratorios y derechos humanos, Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2020, 232 pp., por N. Arenas Hidalgo Soler García, C., Los límites a la expulsión de extranjeros ante el Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos y el Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea, Pamplona, Thomson Reuters-Aranzadi, 2019, 539 pp., por A. Sánchez Legido Torres Cazorla, M.ª I. (coord.), Bioderecho internacional y universalización: el papel de las Organizaciones y los Tribunales internacionales, Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2020, 154 pp., por M. Campins Eritja

In this paper, we are interested in thinking about the way in which Afro-descendent portuguese filmmakers emerge in the field of Portuguese cinema, proposing new dynamics of production and circulation of images, as well as themes related to the anticolonial issue, transposing the place of representation to self-presentation. The question of the representation of black people in Portuguese cinema takes on two central aspects of this debate in the 21st century: the need for effective participation in the field of cinematographic work, that is, producing films and occupying technical positions; and, above all, redefining the subjectivities, memories and affectivities of the black people in Portuguese society from the perspective of black people. We will analyze, in this article, the film O canto de Ossobo (2017) by Silas Tiny.

Y-DNA analysis is a remarkable method that can inform patrilineal genealogies, both ancient, and modern. Applied here to facilitate a critical review of Branan pedigrees, an analysis of haplogroup R-BY140757 results in a deep questioning of the dominant narratives of the O’Braonáin Uí Dhuach (O’Brenan of Idough). What results is a disruption of those narratives that is total. The O’Braonáin Uí Dhuach, held by Ossorian historians to share descent from Cearbhall, King of Osraí (843-888 AD), we argue, are not Osraighe, but are an Uí Failghi tribe – this based on the ultimate authority of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh. Hence, Y-DNA connections between Branans, or those with similar-sounding surnames, and related others, are a false trail for those who claim descent from Cearbhall. Once Mac Fhirbhisigh is embraced, and the erroneous pedigrees of the O’Braonáin Uí Dhuach are set aside, the origins of men with Branan, and similar-sounding surnames, of haplogroup R-BY140757, can be correctly determined. And, based on Y-DNA haplotype analysis, it is considered those origins are not with the O’Braonáin Uí Dhuach, or any Irish clan. Rather, haplotype R-BY140757 appears to have originated from a family who settled near Braham, in Suffolk, after the Norman conquest of England. The key figure in the appearance of R-BY140757 pedigrees in Éire is Sir Robert de Braham, who was Sheriff of Kilkenny ca. 1250 AD.

Years have come and gone and Bob is still around He’s tied up by his ankles and he’s hanging upside downA lifetime of infection and his lungs all filled with phlegmThe CF would’ve killed him if it weren’t for S&M Supermasochistic Bob has Cystic Fibrosis by Bob Flanagan. Soundtrack from 1997 documentary, Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan In the 1997 film, Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, artist Bob Flanagan quite literally lays himself bare to the viewer. This is a wrenching documentary which charts the dying Flanagan’s battles with cystic fibrosis (CF), and also explores the impact of this on his art and life. Sick also explores to an explicit degree the sadomasochist practices that permeated Flanagan’s private life and performance art practice, and which he used as a means of asserting control of the chronic pain and infirmity of his medical condition. Sick is not an easy watch. The film evokes feelings of fear, empathy, and horror. It challenges notions of taste and bad taste. It subjects the viewer to witness the vulnerability of the repeatedly tortured and invaded body of the artist, and of his eventual confrontation with death. As performance pieces go, this is an extreme example of body-based art. Where does this extraordinary piece stem from? From which traditions in art does it draw? To answer these questions, it is necessary to examine the framework of disability art, transgressive art, and also the tradition of medical Gothic, or the history of the Gothic body as a site of art—art that involves reading the body as carnivalesque, as degenerate, as ab-human, as abject entity. The Gothic Body as Site of Art The body has long been a site of exploration in medical practice and in artistic practice. The body has been displayed and examined in various forms, as subject, object, or abject entity through ossories, medical collections, museums of pathology, and freak shows. Paintings of crucifixions and martyrdoms, and practices of flagellation have glorified the tortured body of Christians as physical reminders of extreme piety. The abnormal or monstrous body has been a trope in art since the medieval period, often identified with ideas of evil or sin. Anatomical bodies have been referenced and explored by artists since the Renaissance. With the popular explosion of performance art in the 1960’s, bodily practices have been incorporated into site specific art. Artists’ bodies are offered for our gaze, and sometimes for interaction with, all within the context of performance. Although performance art originates in the early 20th century, it was exponents of the 1960’s that firmly aligned this practice with the site of the artist’s body. At this time, the body became a new focus of culture, with the rise in sexual freedom and the accepted use of nudity in performances and happenings. This resulted in the performance of body-based pieces such as Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy (1964) and Interior Scroll (1975), Hermann Nitsch and the Viennese Actionists and their Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries (1962), and Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1971). This legacy of sexual, violent, or abject performances results in the creation of provocative and disturbing contemporary pieces such as Sick that confront the spectator with the vulnerabilities and limits of the living body. Today, contemporary culture is suffused with images of the body, both the idealised bodies of advertising and music videos, and the grotesque and transfigured bodies of contemporary art. Spooner has commented, “Contemporary Gothic is more obsessed with bodies than in any of its previous phases: bodies become spectacle, provoking disgust, modified, reconstructed and artificially augmented” (63). Today, culture’s preoccupation with the body runs the gamut from horror films obsessed with the penetrated body, to subcultural style and body manipulation, and the increasing popularity of plastic surgery makeovers on mainstream television. The body has never been so exposed, so open to the audience’s gaze. Key artists such as Damien Hirst, Mat Collishaw, the Chapman Brothers, Gabriela Friðriksdóttir, and Sue de Beer respond to this contemporary preoccupation by exploring the body in its manifold Gothic forms. This is a rich body of work that uses abject materials, references slasher movies, and plays with notions of identity, societal violence, body-horror, and the grotesque. This article looks specifically at works by contemporary transgressive artists that utilise their own bodies as site of performance, and the challenges to accepted tastes that this work poses. Performances by Bob Flanagan, Ron Athey, and Marina Abramovic are analysed in terms of boundaries, identity, and other implications in using the body of the artist as the site of art. Tropes of torture, pain. and body modification are examined as contesting the parameters of what body limits and of what is acceptable in contemporary art practice. An Intimate Canvas: The Artist’s Body as Site So what does it mean to use your own body as site of exploration? The work of artists who use their own bodies as a site of spectacle, as a medium of art, has several interesting implications. By its very nature, such an act is transgressive. It blurs the boundaries between artwork and artist. This creates an interesting tension between self and other and, indeed, arguably explores the notion of self as other. This work has an autobiographical function, in that it not only reveals universal themes of significance to the artist but, given the intimacy of the canvas, it also betrays personal preoccupations, and signifies the artist’s own relationship with the body and bodily practices. The use of the human body as canvas brings an intense physical and emotional proximity to the piece. The bodily traumas that are witnessed via performance art—whether it is Chris Burden being nailed to a Volkswagen (Trans-fixed, 1974) or Marina Abramović and Ulay collapsing, unconscious, lungs filled with carbon dioxide from reciprocal exchange of breaths (Breathing In/Breathing Out, 1977)—constitute an intimate link with the audience that arises from the shock of witnessing these transgressive acts. The body of the artist exposed in this way—a body normally only viewed by a partner, doctor or close family member—creates immediacy, giving the individual spectator in an intimate connection with the artist. Francesca Gavin, in her introductory essay to Hellbound: New Gothic Art, cites this voyeurism as essential to the experience of viewing Gothic art: “By looking at the violence or horror we become complicit in its creation, part of the cause—hence part of the discomfort in looking” (7). The first of these areas of discomfort to consider is the association of the body with pain, torture and mutilation, and the use of the artist’s body to explore this theme. Pushing the Limits: The Artist’s Body as Site of Pain The work of Marina Abramović has had a powerful effect on the contemporary landscape of body-based performance art that tests the limits of endurance of the corporeal body. Her past projects have focused on the uneasy power exchange between audience and performer. In Rhythm 0 (1974), her first long durational performance, Abramović offered her audience a choice of 72 objects including a gun, a hammer, sugar, and scissors, to be used on her own body, without any limitations on their deployment. This six-hour performance featured a motionless Abramović offering her body passively to the spectators to interact with. The intensity of the resulting video piece is remarkable; the recording of the performance captures the potential dissolution of the societal contract between artist and audience, a mutable discourse of agency and power. Abramović spoke of the sense of fear she experienced during this performance— “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere” (quoted, Danieri 30). Her work plays constantly with the idea of boundaries and limits, often pushing her physical self past extraordinary barriers of pain and exertion, as in Rhythm 5 (1974) where she lost consciousness as a result of smoke inhalation and had to be rescued by the spectators. Amelia Jones has analysed these performances of pain as central to the artist’s desire to establish a connection with the audience during performances: “While pain cannot be shared, its effects can be projected onto others such that they become the site of suffering […] and the original sufferer can attain some semblance of self-containment (paradoxically, through the very penetration and violation of the body” (230). One could also argue that this sharing of experience also effectively normalises the abnormal body by establishing a common bond between viewer and performer. However, this work raises questions for the viewer. Is what these artists do self-harm, presented on a public stage? Is this ethical? And, importantly, is it within the bounds of taste? The answer, it would seem, lies in issues of agency and control and, of course, in the separation of art from life that occurs due to the act of performing itself. As Coogan puts it “[t]he performance frame is contingent and temporary, holding the performer in a liminal, provisional and suspended place” (1). While Abramović’s work experiments with bodily endurance and performative limits, other artists who produce autobiographical, body-based performance can be located within the world of medical discourse and performed disability. An artist who subverts the boundaries of the body, and taste alike, is Ron Athey, the HIV-positive artist who makes performance work based on blood rituals, torture, and cutting. His use of blood is central to his practice, and the fact that this blood, which is let through performances, contains the HIV virus, gives it a doubly abject aspect. His performance Excerpted Rites Transformation (1995) which took place at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis caused an extreme reaction. During this performance Athey pierced own his skin with needles, and also cut into the skin of black artist Daryl Carlton in a mimicry of tribal scarification rituals that highlighted issues of race, then hung handkerchiefs dipped in Carlton’s blood on clotheslines that ran over the heads of the audience. Mary Abbe, an art critic with the Minneapolis Star Tribune who had not attended the performance, wrote an article about the danger posed to the audience by what she wrongly termed Athey’s blood. (Carlton is not HIV positive). It is clear from the tone of this response that such disease causes a profound dis-ease in the beholder. Bob Flanagan’s oeuvre also locates him in this tradition of artists who perform their disability on a public stage. Critics such as Kuppers consider Athey and Flanagan as artists who subvert the medical gaze (Foucault), refusing to accept the passive role of ‘patient’, and defiantly flaunting their abnormal bodies in the public arena. These bodies can also be considered as modified bodies. Sandahl has contextualised Athey’s performance as going beyond the parameters of the human body: “Athey’s radical cyborg identity is a temporary mode of survival, an alternative way of being in there here and now. A body not interested solely in cure nor submissive to medical interventions” (59). Kuppers, in The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art, reflects on Flanagan and Athey’s careers as disabled artists. She examines how Flanagan constructs his identity as a chronically ill artist, and his pain performances that allowed him to avoid attracting the sentimental pity associated with illness; replacing audience empathy with shock and often revulsion. Kuppers highlights Flanagan’s use of dark humour in his performances through songs like Fun to be Dead (1997), which work to subvert the dominance of his illness. In fact, Flanagan’s work often asserts his central belief that his relative longevity (he lived to be 43, a decade longer than most CF sufferers) was achieved by his ability to counter the pain of his chronic condition with the pain of his masochistic suffering. The stereotype that the masochist is snivelling and weak is actually not true. The masochist has to know his or her own body perfectly well and be in full control of their body, in order to give control to somebody else or to give control to pain. So the masochist is actually a very strong person. I think some of that strength is what I use to combat the illness. (Dick) Athey’s description of his relief at the act of cutting echoes Flanagan’s identification of these rites as way of asserting control over a dysfunctional body: “The sight of your own blood, brought forth from your own hand, spells an almost immediate relief, a release to the pressure valve. It’s a violation that you yourself now control.” What effect does this painful and masochistic art have on the audience? On the act of viewing? On taste itself? Taste and Transgression: Beyond the Parameters of the Body The notion of taste is a hotly debated area in contemporary art practice—arguments rage as to what constitutes good or bad taste. Woodward argues that “[B]ad taste often passes for avant-garde taste these days—so long as the artist signals ‘transgressive’ intent” (1). Grunenberg (1997) has addressed the problematic notion of the audience engagement with this mode of Gothic art, asking whether it has ilost its power to shock. He contends that with the contemporary saturation of all media with violent and shocking imagery, “the ability to be shocked and moved by real or fictitious images of horror has been showing positive signs of attrition.” Nevertheless, the proximity of performance, the immediacy of the artist’s body as canvas, the feelings of horror, empathy, and even wonder occasioned by the manipulation and excesses of the body, continue to draw audiences. The artist’s body as site of performance becomes a space in which the audience may inscribe their own narratives. The body is a locus of projection, almost ab-human, “a not-quite-human subject, characterised by its morphic variability, continually in danger of becoming not-itself, becoming other” (Hurley 3–4). As the artist’s body becomes ever more manipulated and pushed beyond boundaries of taste and pain, it forces artist and audience alike to ask what lies beyond the parameters of the body. Experimentation with torture methods, with cutting, with abject materials, seems to lead back inevitably to the notion of Gothic, othered body, and a desire to pass beyond the boundaries of the repeatedly invaded and wracked body. Once you transgress the boundaries of the body, the logical locus that lies beyond is death. Dick’s Sick documents Bob Flanagan’s death, which formed part of the agreement between documentary maker and artist before shooting. Flanagan hoped his body art would continue beyond death: “I want a wealthy collector to finance an installation in which a video camera will be placed in the coffin with my body, connected to a screen on the wall, and whenever he wants to, the patron can see how I’m coming along” (Dick). Playing with the shadow of death becomes a mode of performance itself. Abramović recalls her acceptance of this fact in her early performance pieces: “When I was in Yugoslavia I was always thinking that art was a kind of question between life and death and some of my performances really included the possibility of dying, you know, during the piece, it could happen” (quoted in McEvilley 15). She also records her fear experienced during Rhythm 0 (1974), stating “What I learned was that [... ]if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you” (quoted in Danieri 29). Death has receded from us in the 21st century. Death happens in hospitals, in the antiseptic confines of the Intensive Care Unit, it is medicated and mediated by medical staff. Traditional rituals of deathbed conversations and posthumous wakes are gradually disappearing. The discourse of death has grown silent except through the medium of the Gothic and especially the Gothic body, as the Gothic “consistently attempts to speak about the unspeakable—that is, death” (McGrath 154). Artists such as Abramović, Flanagan, and Athey function within this Gothic tradition. By insistently presenting their Gothic bodies, they force the audience to acknowledge death, transgression, and decay as realities. With collaborative partners, they mediate the process of surgery, torture, dying, and even the moment of death through photography and lens-based media. This use of media in capturing the moment also functions in a contemporary post-religious society as a mode of replication and, even, perhaps, of immortality. Bold, provocative, and challenging, the work of these transgressive artists continues to challenge the idea of bodily limits and boundaries and highlight the notion of the body as site of transformation. They continue to challenge our taste, our definition of art, and our comfort as audience. The words of Gavin come again to mind: “By looking at the violence or horror we become complicit in its creation, part of the cause—hence part of the discomfort in looking” (7). Using the artist’s body as site of performance forces us to challenge our conception of art, illness, life and death and leads to a reappraisal of taste itself. References Abbe, Mary. “Bloody Performance Draws Criticism.” Star Tribune 24 Mar. 1994. 1A. Abramovic, Marina. [website] 4 Feb. 2014. ‹http://www.marinaabramovicinstitute.org›. Athey, Ron. [website] 4 Feb. 2014. ‹http://ronatheynews.blogspot.ie›. Coogan, Amanda. “What is Performance Art?.” Irish Museum of Modern Art [website] (2011). 4 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212496.htm›. Daneri, Anna, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, L. Hegyi, SR Sanzio, & A. Vettese. Eds. Marina Abramović. Milan: Charta, 2002. Dick, Kirby. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Dir. Kirby Dick. 1997. Flanagan, Bob. [website] 4 Feb. 2014. ‹http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/flanagan/flanagan.html›. Gavin, Francesca. Hellbound: New Gothic Art. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2008. Grunenberg, Christoph. “Unsolved Mysteries: Gothic Tales from Frankenstein to the Hair Eating Doll.” Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century Art. Ed. Christoph Grunenberg. Boston: MIT Press, 1997. Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 160–212. Kuppers, Petra. The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Mc Grath, Patrick. “Transgression and Decay.” Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century Art. Ed. Christoph Grunenberg. Boston: MIT Press, 1997. 153–58. Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Sandahl, Carrie. “Performing Metaphors: Aids, Disability and Technology.” Contemporary Theatre Review 11.3–4 (2001): 49–60. Woodward, Richard B. “When Bad is Good.” ARTnews [website] (2012). 4 Feb. 2014. ‹http://www.artnews.com/2012/04/12/when-bad-is-good›. Zylinska, Joanna. The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age. London: Continuum, 2002.