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1

Hadalin, Jurij. "Unwanted Heritage? Historiographic Discourse about (Second) Yugoslavia." Contributions to Contemporary History 56, no. 3 (2016): 11–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.51663/pnz.56.3.01.

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In a short overview the author attempts to present the attitude towards the second Yugoslav state in the Slovenian historiography and society, as in Slovenia the Yugoslav history remains above all a political rather than expert topic. The question when this flaw will be overcome remains unanswered. Nevertheless, the author estimates that the processes, seen outside of the broader context in the past, should sometimes be viewed from a somewhat different perspective.
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Kisiel, Piotr. "Unwanted inheritance? Industrial past as the EU heritage." International Journal of Heritage Studies 26, no. 7 (2019): 652–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2019.1678053.

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3

Cappitelli, Francesca, Cristina Cattò, and Federica Villa. "The Control of Cultural Heritage Microbial Deterioration." Microorganisms 8, no. 10 (2020): 1542. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8101542.

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The microbial deterioration of cultural heritage includes physical and chemical damage as well as aesthetic alteration. With the technological advancement, a plethora of techniques for removing unwanted microorganisms have opened up new opportunities for microbiologists and conservators. This article reviews the most applied, up-to-date, and sustainable techniques developed for the control of cultural heritage microbial deterioration presenting noteworthy case studies. These techniques include chemical methods, i.e., traditional biocides and nanoparticles; physical methods, such as mechanical removal, UV irradiation, gamma radiation, laser cleaning, heat shocking, microwaves, and dry ice treatment; and biological methods, such as natural molecules with biocidal activity, enzymes, and microorganisms. The application of control systems requires the comprehension of their behavior toward the unwanted microorganisms and possible interactions with the heritage materials. This overview shows also the control methods drawbacks for the purpose of creating awareness in selecting the most suitable technique or combination of techniques.
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Iacono, Francesco, and Klejd L. Këlliçi. "Of Pyramids and Dictators: Memory, Work and the Significance of Communist Heritage in Post-Socialist Albania." AP: Online Journal in Public Archaeology 5 (January 7, 2017): 97. http://dx.doi.org/10.23914/ap.v5i0.66.

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The communist regime that governed Albania between 1944 and 1991 has left considerable architectural remains. These however, are rapidly dissapearing, as a result of recent development. This paper explores the perception of the monumental heritage of the socialist regime in current day Albania. In our view, concepts of “unwanted” or “difficult” heritage used in the past to make sense of the heritage of socialist dictatorships, are not able to fully account for the specificities of the Albanian case as aspects other than trauma and pain need to be considered.The perception of the heritage from Albania’s communist past is investigated both through a theoretical discussion, which addresses the relationship between “unwanted heritage” and phenomena of nostalgia for certain aspects of life during communism, as well as through a questionnaire targeted at a sample of the population of the capital city Tirana. As far as this last aspect is concerned, our focus has been on the most iconic communist monument in Tirana, the Pyramid, the former museum dedicated to the dictator Enver Hoxha.In the last part of the paper, we try to make sense of the trends that emerged through the analysis of quantitative data, addressing the role of work and related forms of memory in forging the relationship between Albanians and the material remains of their recent past.
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Light, Duncan. "An Unwanted Past: contemporary tourism and the heritage of communism in Romania." International Journal of Heritage Studies 6, no. 2 (2000): 145–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/135272500404197.

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6

Parra, Ricardo, and Jorge Ferraz. "From a Communist Heritage to an Unwanted Past: The Case of Romania." Science Insights 38, no. 1 (2021): 298–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.15354/si.21.re076.

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Communist ideologies and political regimes have had their specific models of tourism. These models reflect on the way former communist countries view tourism today. Despite the long communist period, Romania refuses to accept Communism as an integral part of its historical culture and society, being perceived as a dark period of its history. Several campaigns which were broadcasted as a way to show the cultural and natural beauty of the country, promote rural tourism and the ancient Romanian History, eluding themes and subjects related with that recent past. Even though there has been a growing touristic interest in Romania’s communist heritage, the country’s strategies express the difficulty in accepting Communism as part of the Romanian cultural identity and history. Thus, what communication strategies does Romania use to promote its culture, in order to avoid its communist heritage? What are the reasons behind the country’s vehement silence about its past? This article aims to discuss how and why the country and its population promote specific tourist products as a way to avoid their communist legacy.
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Chapagain, Neel Kamal. "Contextual Approach to the Question of Authenticity in Heritage Management and Tourism." Journal of Heritage Management 1, no. 2 (2016): 160–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2455929616687898.

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Moving beyond the objectives of conservation, today’s heritage profession aims for heritage management. The management approach reminds professionals and host communities to consider sustainability of heritage in economic, environmental and socio-cultural frameworks. Integration of tourism within heritage management frameworks can provide economic incentives for managing heritage sites and activities, whereas well managed and interpreted heritage resources can be popular destinations for tourism. However, there might be other unwanted and unforeseen consequences of these practices. While providing an economic support for heritage management, the economic attraction may entice exploitation of heritage resources, including over-use, theft and vandalism. Over-marketing of heritage resources may trigger promotion of cheap mimicries of heritage manifestations and values. Such consequences and discussion often revolve around the notion of authenticity—one of the much-talked about and widely used terminologies in both heritage management and tourism. The notion of authenticity may have different meanings for different contexts, resulting in a mismatch of perceptions of what and how to be conserved, preserved, managed and presented. This article explores some of the complications associated with the notion of authenticity in heritage management and tourism, and suggests a contextual approach to authenticity.
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Nowicka, Klaudia. "The Heritage Given: Cultural Landscape and Heritage of the Vistula Delta Mennonites as Perceived by the Contemporary Residents of the Region." Sustainability 14, no. 2 (2022): 915. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su14020915.

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All tangible and intangible elements of cultural heritage that the past has conceded to local communities create unique landscapes shaped by tightly connected anthropogenic and natural factors. This heritage is a keystone of local identity which plays a significant role in politics, economic development, society and world view. In some regions, such as in the Vistula delta in Poland, the cultural heritage has been created by consecutive groups of settlers who represented different values, beliefs and ways of life. On the one hand, such a rich heritage may be perceived as a valuable asset and become a landmark or tourism product of a region. On the other hand, it may be perceived as alien and unwanted by contemporary residents, especially when they are not descendants of the former communities. The main objective of the study presented herein is to analyse how the residents of the Vistula delta region, called Żuławy Wiślane, perceive and use cultural heritage of the Mennonites, representing the most extraordinary group of settlers who used to live in the region. The analysis covers original data gathered during survey research in the period of 2017–2018 under the project Miniatura I “Perception and usage of cultural heritage of the Vistula delta Mennonites” financed by the National Science Centre in Poland.
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Punzo, Lionello F. "GROWTH THEORY AS AN UNWANTED CHILD OF MACRO-DYNAMICS." Investigación Económica 77, no. 306 (2018): 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.22201/fe.01851667p.2018.306.67802.

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<p align="center"><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p class="NormaleWeb1">The story this paper tells, attempts to explain 1) how Neo-Classical growth theory happened to be simultaneously born by the hands of Solow (1956) and Swan (1956); and 2) how it carried its signature characteristics, <em>i.e.</em> the exogeneity of the long run growth driver. Both issues are ascribed to the heritage of unsolved problems from Macroeconomics, in its most mature version a non-linear theory of fluctuations.<strong></strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p align="center">LA TEORÍA DEL CRECIMIENTO COMO UN VÁSTAGO NO DESEADO DE LA MACRODINÁMICA</p><p align="center"><strong>RESUMEN</strong></p><p class="NormaleWeb1">Este artículo narra e intenta explicar: 1) cómo la teoría neoclásica del crecimiento surgió de forma simultánea de las manos de Solow (1956) y de Swan (1956) y 2) cómo llevó consigo sus características distintivas, <em>i.e.</em>, la exogeneidad de su fuerza motriz de largo plazo. Ambas cuestiones se atribuyen a la herencia de problemas no resueltos de la macroeconomía en su versión más madura, una teoría no lineal de las fluctuaciones cíclicas.</p>
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Sima, Claudia. "Communist heritage representation gaps and disputes." International Journal of Tourism Cities 3, no. 3 (2017): 210–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijtc-03-2017-0015.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore how different stakeholders represent communist and revolution heritage for tourism, with a case-study on Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. The research attempts to identify gaps and tensions between representation makers on communist heritage tourism. Design/methodology/approach The research employs a range of qualitative methods in order to explore communist heritage tourism representation from different perspectives: content analysis of secondary data in the form of government, industry and media destination promotional material; interviews with a range of representation producers (government, industry and media); focus groups with potential tourists; and content analysis of user generated content under the form of blogs by actual visitors to Bucharest. Findings Findings reveal that there are gaps between the “official” or government representations of communism and revolution heritage and “unofficial” or industry, media and tourists’ representations. The research confirms and builds on Light’s (2000a, b) views that communist heritage is perceived as “problematic” by government officials and that attempts have been made to reinterpret it in a different light. The process of representation is made difficult by recent trends such as the increase in popularity of communism heritage tourism in countries such as Germany or Hungary. The potential of communist and revolution heritage to generate tourism is increasingly being acknowledged. However, reconciliation with “an unwanted” past is made difficult because of the legacy of communism and the difficulties of transition, EU-integration, economic crisis or countless political and social crisis and challenges. The “official” and “unofficial” representations successfully coexist and form part of the communism and revolution heritage product. Research limitations/implications The research attempts to look at the representation of communism heritage from different angles, however, it does not exhaust the number of views and perspectives that exist on the topic. The research only records the British and Romanian perspectives on the topic. The topic is still in its infancy and more research is needed on communism heritage tourism and representation. Originality/value The research identifies and explores gaps, agreements and disagreements over the representation of communist and revolution heritage in Bucharest, Romania.
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Matacz, Paweł, and Leszek Świątek. "The Unwanted Heritage of Prefabricated Wartime Air Raid Shelters—Underground Space Regeneration Feasibility for Urban Agriculture to Enhance Neighbourhood Community Engagement." Sustainability 13, no. 21 (2021): 12238. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su132112238.

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The article deals with the problematic heritage associated with the system of Nazi German underground air raid shelters currently located within the Polish state, in the Baltic port city of Szczecin. The unwanted heritage has been inventoried, archival materials collected, and comparative analyses made of ways in which the underground space can be revitalised. An attempt was made to develop a typology of existing shelters and their locations. In order to overcome the negative associations with the warlike military space, positive system solutions were sought for the productive use of existing concrete structures located underground in central, easily accessible areas of the city districts. A process of upcycling the space was used to make ecologically efficient use of the material resources contained in the shelters. In order to activate the local community, a modular, hydroponic plant-growing system, adapted to the prefabricated spaces of the historical air raid shelters, was proposed. In this way, the central location of the underground structures within the boundaries of residential neighbourhoods was exploited. Such action strengthens the food sovereignty of the inhabitants, initiates bottom-up activity within the boundaries of the neighbourhood unit, and builds social ties in the spirit of a regenerative economy and positive sustainability.
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Ciarkowski, Błażej. "Unwanted heritage and its cultural potential. Values of modernist architecture from the times of the Polish People’s Republic." MAZOWSZE Studia Regionalne, no. 22 (December 2017): 71–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.21858/msr.22.05.

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Ortega-Villamagua, Erick, Marco Gudiño-Gomezjurado, and Alex Palma-Cando. "Microbiologically Induced Carbonate Precipitation in the Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage Materials." Molecules 25, no. 23 (2020): 5499. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules25235499.

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Microbiologically induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) is a well-known biogeochemical process that allows the formation of calcium carbonate deposits in the extracellular environment. The high concentration of carbonate and calcium ions on the bacterial surface, which serves as nucleation sites, promotes the calcium carbonate precipitation filling and binding deteriorated materials. Historic buildings and artwork, especially those present in open sites, are susceptible to enhanced weathering resulting from environmental agents, interaction with physical-chemical pollutants, and living organisms, among others. In this work, some published variations of a novel and ecological surface treatment of heritage structures based on MICP are presented and compared. This method has shown to be successful as a restoration, consolidation, and conservation tool for improvement of mechanical properties and prevention of unwanted gas and fluid migration from historical materials. The treatment has revealed best results on porous media matrixes; nevertheless, it can also be applied on soil, marble, concrete, clay, rocks, and limestone. MICP is proposed as a potentially safe and powerful procedure for efficient conservation of worldwide heritage structures.
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14

Keith, Sara, and Maria Silies. "New life luxury: upcycled Scottish heritage textiles." International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 43, no. 10/11 (2015): 1051–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm-07-2014-0095.

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Purpose – The term luxury and sustainability, within the fashion and textile industries are seldom seen as natural bedfellows. Recently however, the perception of luxury has begun to include a definition left behind in the twentieth century; beautifully hand crafted artefacts valued for the time, skill and design invested in them. It is possible though, for the concept of luxury textiles to embrace this definition and that of the sustainable credentials of a “Cradle to Cradle” (McDonough and Braungart, 2002) mindset (that of a life beyond original creation) and be fashionable. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Utilising a variety of methodologies including case studies, reflective practice and a practice-based approach; this paper examines the use of pre-consumer waste in the creation of new luxury textiles. Several projects are cited, offering examples of collaboration between textile mills and designers in the creation of new fabrics made from luxury by-products. This luxury waste is routinely shredded for automobile seat filling or landfill, however current sustainable thinking encourages a more creative solution to this circumstance. Designers have a crucial role to play in converting an unwanted by-product to one that is highly desirable. Findings – Traditional values of what constitutes a luxury item include the concept of time invested in making a unique handmade artefact. More recently, this premise has been overlooked in favour of branded goods. The slow fashion movement advocates the inherent value of craftsmanship coupled with the ethical use of sustainable and or local materials and processes. The traditional techniques of felting, weave and stitch are utilised to create beautiful, original textiles from discarded waste. By collaborating with local mills, designers provide solutions to something that could be perceived as a problem. Originality/value – The embedded narrative within these layered textiles provides an original quality and added value, building on their Scottish heritage. The resulting textiles reflect their provenance; the landscape they come from and the people who created them. As a result of purchase, the story continues with the new custodian, adding to the ongoing history of the textile. The design work and collaboration that this paper outlines embodies a transferable model for sustainable upcycled luxury textiles.
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Chiantore, Oscar, and Tommaso Poli. "Indoor Air Quality in Museum Display Cases: Volatile Emissions, Materials Contributions, Impacts." Atmosphere 12, no. 3 (2021): 364. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos12030364.

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The control of air quality in museum showcases is a growing issue for the conservation of the displayed artefacts. Inside an airtight showcase, volatile substances may rapidly concentrate and favor or directly cause the degradation or other unwanted phenomena on the objects. The role of materials used in the construction of museum display cases as a source of pollutants and volatile compounds dangerous for the cultural heritage integrity is here reviewed with an illustration of consequences and critical damages. Ways of assessing the suitability of materials used either in the construction or in use of the display cases are also discussed altogether with an overview of the possible choices for monitoring the air quality and limiting the concentration of volatile compounds in their interior.
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Mo, Matthew, and Robert Oliver. "Current approaches to rehoming unwanted, escaped and seized native animal pets in New South Wales and recent trends." Australian Zoologist 40, no. 4 (2020): 548–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.7882/az.2019.002.

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Native mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs kept as pets become displaced after they are unwanted, escaped or seized. The Office of Environment and Heritage manages the rehoming of displaced native animal pets, which are regulated under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 in New South Wales. Primarily, animals are balloted to licensed animal keepers and exhibitors. Otherwise, rehoming may be delegated to third party organisations, and pet shops licensed to sell reptiles are obligated to accept back returned reptiles for resale. From 2014 to 2017, at least 1,000 native animal pets were rehomed in New South Wales, the majority of which were reptiles. During this period, there was a significant increase in annual numbers of displaced native animal pets related to a recent increase in displaced reptiles. The majority of cases occurred within the Greater Sydney region. The trends presented in this paper had important implications for a review of the current management framework in light of the increasing volumes. Initial stakeholder consultations have supported the notion of a community education program with an emphasis on responsible pet ownership.
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Williams, Don, and Peter D. Burns. "Thinking Outside the Color Profiling Capture Box." Archiving Conference 2021, no. 1 (2021): 84–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2021.1.0.19.

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Color-capture systems use color-correction processing operations to deliver expected results in the saved image files. For cultural heritage imaging projects, establishing and monitoring such operations are important when meeting imaging requirements and guidelines. To reduce unwanted variations, it is common to evaluate imaging performance, and adjust hardware and software settings. In most cases these include the use of ICC Color profiling software and supporting measurements. While advice on the subject by experts can be deftly persuasive, discussions of color goodness for capture are clouded by many imaging variables. This makes claims of a single, color-profiling approach or engine moot in the context of a greater workflow environment. We suggest looking outward and considering alternative profiling practices and evaluation methods that could improve color image capture accuracy and consistency.
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Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka, and Teija Löytönen. "A Slow Reading [of] Notes and Some Possibilities of Liberated, Open, Becoming Universities." Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 17, no. 3 (2016): 294–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1532708616673657.

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University similar to church is one of the oldest institutions passing and preserving cultural heritage. In addition, universities are active societal contributors and influential communal contingences in our contemporary societies. However, recently increasing numbers of these traditional and historical functions of universities have become hijacked by neoliberal practices and values. Oftentimes, alternatives to the restructured and liberated universities are considered as unwanted exceptions. Potential higher education anomalies cannot be fully materialized or practiced due to the limited resources, paralyzing normative practices, market-driven beliefs, and capitalistic values of dominant higher education systems and structures. Rather than continuing these discourses, in this article, we will take a step forward, discuss, dream, and image diverse possibilities or universities to come. Thus, we will focus on imagining, pondering alternatives, and writing notes (to be read slowly) about fragile futures of liberated, open, and becoming universities.
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Bręczewska-Kulesza, Daria. "Provincial treatment and care asylums for the mentally ill in East Prussia as forgotten cultural heritage: case study of the asylum in Allenberg (now Znamensk, Russian Federation)." Studia z Dziejów Rosji i Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej 56, no. 3 (2022): 41–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/sdr.2021.en6.02.

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The article focuses on issues demonstrating the role of architecture in the development of Prussian psychiatry in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The Provincial Treatment and Care Institution Allenberg (now Znamensk, Russian Federation) is used as a case study to demonstrate the perception of model solutions used in Prussian asylums located in distant provinces. The asylum discussed in this article met the contemporary requirements, proving that these models and newest trends reached East Prussia very quickly. The asylum complex in Allenberg was a testimony to the development of Prussian and European architectural thought in the service of medicine. Unfortunately, today the former asylum remains in a poor condition and is treated as unwanted legacy rather than a cultural monument.
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Turșie, Corina. "The unwanted past and urban regeneration of Communist heritage cities. Case study: European Capitals of Culture (ECoC) Riga 2014, Pilsen 2015 and Wroclaw 2016." Journal of Education Culture and Society 6, no. 2 (2020): 122–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.15503/jecs20152.122.138.

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Within the ECoC programme, it has been argued that the European dimension is most visible when the candidates reflect their own history as a part of European history, particularly when hinting at their involvement with the major ideologies of twentieth century, such as National Socialism or Communism. ECoC is about cities re-inventing their identities, re-narrating their history in a European context. But how should ex-communist cities deal with their unwanted past and narrate it in order to fit into the European dimension of the project? The focus of this investigation is on three ex-ECOCs from ex-Communist Europe, chosen for several reasons: geographical position (Central, Eastern/Northern European countries, ex-communist past, new membership of the European Union (since 2004), the year of holding the title (the two ECoC selection criteria exist since 2010). Using qualitative content analysis on a set of documents (application books, official web pages and ex-post evaluations) the study will offer an analysis of cities’ politics of memory and urban regeneration strategies.
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Martins, Joao C. "Tangible Cultural Heritage Re-Appropriation Towards A New Urban Centrality. A Critical Crossroad In Semi-Peripheral Eastern Riverside Lisbon." GEOGRAPHY, ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY 13, no. 3 (2020): 139–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.24057/2071-9388-2020-58.

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. The transformation of decayed semi-peripheral riverside areas and its Tangible Culture Heritage is presented today as a contributing factor in urban regeneration by several public preservation bodies and agendas, as well as privately led investment. These practices demand the economic and symbolic valorization of abandoned Tangible Cultural Heritage, where the social coexistence of residents, workers and visitors is seen as a smoother urban integration of these deprived territories and their communities into the surrounding contemporary cities.We’ll focus our approach on socio-spatial changes occurring in Marvila and Beato, presented today as new urban areas in which to financially invest after the 2011 economic crisis occurred in Portugal, discussing public and private re- appropriation of Old Palaces, Convents and Farms and Reconverted Warehouses (industrial and commercial); towards the creation of a new urban centrality in Lisbon. In this case, public ground-field intervention established a culture led regeneration process, with the creation of a municipal library, a crucial point in the cultural use of this space, community participation and gathering. Dealing with private investors, despite the positive effects, such as a reduction in unemployment, economic diversification and re-use of urban voids, there is always the possibility of undesired consequences. This paper argues, and the research experiments in many European cities show us that the ambition to improve the image of these deprived areas, despite somGonzalex encouraging ground level achievements, has unwanted or unexpected outcomes, starting as urban regeneration practices, often sliding towards gentrification, where local public powers have a determinant role.
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Puzdrakiewicz, Krystian. "Cemeteries as (un)wanted heritage of previous communities. An example of changes in the management of cemeteries and their social perception in Gdańsk, Poland." Landscape Online 86 (November 20, 2020): 1–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.3097/lo.202086.

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Cemeteries, despite the sacred values attributed to them, proving their inviolability and durability, undergo functional transformations in the dynamic structure of developing cities. This article focuses on the city of Gdańsk, which historically changed its statehood several times. Almost a full exchange of population from German to Polish took place after World War II. The main aim of the article is to compare the post-1945 attitudes of the new Gdańsk community and the authorities towards cemeteries being a legacy of their predecessors. During World War II and the three subsequent decades most of the unwanted (unrelated to the Polish community) necropolises were closed down and removed. 25 of the 101 inventoried cemeteries have survived until modern times. It has been shown that there are clear differences in the management of cemeteries after 1945, from the removing them in the communist times to the commemorating and revitalizing them during the maturing democracy. This is associated with the current social views, where the majority of residents object to changing the function of the sites of the former cemeteries and only allow converting them into greenery with commemoration of the history of the place.
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Bal, Wojciech, and Magdalena Czałczyńska-Podolska. "Architecture and Recreation as a Political Tool—Seaside Architectural Heritage of the Worker Holiday Fund (WHF) in the Era of the Polish People’s Republic (1949–1989)." Sustainability 14, no. 1 (2021): 171. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su14010171.

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The Worker Holiday Fund (WHF) was set up just after the Second World War as a state-dependent organization that arranged recreation for Polish workers under the socialist doctrine. The communist authorities turned organized recreation into a tool of indoctrination and propaganda. This research aims to characterize the seaside tourism architecture in the Polish People’s Republic (1949–1989) against the background of nationalized and organized tourism being used as a political tool, to typify the architecture and to verify the influence of politics on the development of holiday architecture in Poland. The research methodology is based on historical and interpretative studies (iconology, iconography and historiography) and field studies. The research helped distinguish four basic groups of holiday facilities: one form of adapted facilities (former villas and boarding houses) and three forms of new facilities (sanatorium-type, pavilion-type and lightweight temporary facilities, such as bungalows and cabins). The study found that each type of holiday facility was characterized by certain political significance and social impact. Gradual destruction was the fate of a significant part of WHF facilities, which, in the public awareness, are commonly associated with the past era of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) as an “unwanted heritage”.
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Marrocchino, Elena, Chiara Telloli, Marilena Leis, and Carmela Vaccaro. "Geochemical-Microscopical Characterization of the Deterioration of Stone Surfaces in the Cloister of Santa Maria in Vado (Ferrara, Italy)." Heritage 4, no. 4 (2021): 2996–3008. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/heritage4040167.

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Santa Maria in Vado is a monument in the rich artistic heritage of the city of Ferrara (north of Italy). In this paper we want to investigate the state of conservation of tombstones, cloister and the entrance to the basilica, in order to keep them in the best possible state for the future generations. From the chemical characterization, the state of conservation was determined focusing on the biodeteriogenic and non-biodeteriogenic factors, which determine a series of unwanted changes in the physical, mechanical and above all aesthetic properties of the material, often closely connected with the environment and conservation conditions. On the macroscopic observation, the state of conservation of the tombstones appeared to be very deteriorated through aesthetic and structural damage. In detail, the stereo microscope observation of samples collected from the tombstones show the presence of efflorescence probably caused by the abundant of water that bring the salts present inside the rock into solution. Relating the columns, μ-XRF analysis confirm the carbonate composition of samples and presence of iron and sulfur. Finally, SEM observation highlighted the presence of black crust on arch samples and the presence of pollen on the black crust and spheroidal particles probably related to atmospheric pollution.
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Fazaa, Nadheer A., Jonathon C. Dunn, and Mark J. Whittingham. "Pollution threatens water quality in the Central Marshes of Southern Iraq." Baghdad Science Journal 18, no. 4(Suppl.) (2021): 1501. http://dx.doi.org/10.21123/bsj.2021.18.4(suppl.).1501.

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Water pollution is an issue that can be exacerbated by drought as increased concentrations of unwanted substances are a consequence of lower water levels. Polluted water that flows into natural marshlands leads to the deposition of pollutants in the interior of the marsh. Here we present evidence that the interior of the Central Marsh (CM) in southern Iraq suffers from higher levels of pollution than areas closer to the source of water entering the marsh (the Euphrates River). A 1.7m embankment that halts the flow of the Euphrates is only infrequently breached and so the CM is effectively the terminal destination of the waters (and their associated pollutants and agricultural waste) flowing from the West of Iraq. A range of water quality metrics were measured where the Euphrates enters the CM and at increasing distances into the interior of the CM. The following measures were taken: NO2, NO3, PO4 , Salinity, Major ions, and Heavy Metals (Cu, Ni, Pb, Cd, Zn). The area of study was divided into four horizontal zones (the river and three zones inside the marsh) and eight field surveys were carried out from November 2013 to June 2014 to collect water samples by using a transect line methodology. Salinity and major ions (Na, K, Cl, Ca, and Mg) were significantly higher inside the marsh compared with levels in the river water immediately before it entered the CM. These findings indicate the increased risk of these pollutants to humans and wildlife living in and using the CM. This issue requires urgent attention, especially to the status of the CM as a World Heritage site (for the ecosystem services provided to local people) as an Important Biodiversity Area. The reported declines in water quantity in the Euphrates over recent decades will likely further exacerbate the problems we report.
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Bara, Salvador. "Black-body luminance and magnitudes per square arcsecond in the Johnson-Cousins BVR photometric bands." Photonics Letters of Poland 11, no. 3 (2019): 63. http://dx.doi.org/10.4302/plp.v11i3.926.

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A relevant amount of light pollution studies deal with the unwanted visual effects of artificial light at night, including the anthropogenic luminance of the sky that hinders the observation of the celestial bodies which are a main target of ground-based astrophysical research, and a key asset of the intangible heritage of humankind. Most quantitative measurements and numerical models, however, evaluate the anthropogenic sky radiance in any of the standard Johnson-Cousins UBVRI photometric bands, generally in the V one. Since the Johnson-Cousins V band is not identical with the visual CIE V() used to assess luminance, the conversion between these two photometric systems turns out to be spectrum-dependent. Given its interest for practical applications, in this Letter we provide the framework to perform this conversion and the transformation constants for black-body spectra of different absolute temperatures. Full Text: PDF ReferencesF. Falchi et al. "The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness", Sci. Adv. 2, e1600377 (2016). CrossRef M. Kocifaj, "A review of the theoretical and numerical approaches to modeling skyglow: Iterative approach to RTE, MSOS, and two-stream approximation", Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer 181, 2 (2016). CrossRef M.S. Bessel, "UBVRI PASSBANDS", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 102, 1181 (1990).. CrossRef CIE, Commision Internationale de l'Éclairage. CIE 1988 2° SpectralLuminous Efficiency Function for Photopic Vision. (Vienna, Bureau Central de la CIE, 1990) DirectLink S. Bará, "Variations on a classical theme: On the formal relationship between magnitudes per square arcsecond and luminance", International Journal of Sustainable Lighting IJSL 19(2), 104 (2017). CrossRef A. Sánchez de Miguel, M. Aubé, J. Zamorano, M. Kocifaj, J. Roby, C. Tapia. "Sky Quality Meter measurements in a colour-changing world", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 467(3), 2966 (2017). CrossRef M.S. Bessell, "Standard Photometric Systems", Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 43, 293 (2005). CrossRef J.B. Oke, "Absolute Spectral Energy Distributions for White Dwarfs", The Astrophysical Journal Suppl. Series 236(27), 21 (1974). CrossRef J.B. Oke, J.E. Gunn, "Secondary standard stars for absolute spectrophotometry", The Astrophysical Journal 266, 713 (1983). CrossRef M.R. Blanton, S. Roweis S., "K-Corrections and Filter Transformations in the Ultraviolet, Optical, and Near-Infrared", The Astronomical Journal, 133(2), 734(2007). Table 1. CrossRef
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Grinfelde, Ilze, and Linda Veliverronena. "THE LIMITS OF CREATIVE APPROACH: CONDUCTING AN ORCHESTRA OF EMOTIONS IN THE DARKNESS." Creativity Studies 11, no. 2 (2018): 362–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.3846/cs.2018.7183.

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Soviet period has left behind number of uncomfortable, also unwanted heritage sites in Eastern Europe countries that are sensitive, emotionally loaded and easy to communicate neither for locals nor tourists. Such a site is Committee for State Security Building that functions as a museum of Communist regime victims in Riga, Latvia. The research discusses the balance between creativity and authentic simplicity in the designing visitors’ on-site experience in dark tourism objects. The aim of the study is to explore visitors’ emotions during visit to Committee for State Security Building in Riga and the role of a creative tourism product design in stimulating emotions. Visitors’ comments about their visit to the Committee for State Security Building on TripAdvisor were used as the main data source. The research results confirm walking tour in Committee for State Security Building generates memorable impressions and contrast the opinion that new layers of creativity to this dark tourism product would satisfy and entertain customer. The Committee for State Security Building in Riga is an example where creative tourism product design does not have a significant impact on the emotional experience of visitors because main sources of visitors’ experience are high quality performance of tour guides and their rich knowledge, personal stories, authentic atmosphere and interior of the building. Santrauka Rytų Europos šalyse sovietinis periodas paliko daugybę nemalonių ir nepageidaujamų paveldo vietų, kurios yra jautrios, įkrautos emociškai ir nelengvai komunikuojamos tiek vietinių, tiek turistų. Tokia vieta yra Valstybės saugumo komiteto pastatas, veikiantis kaip komunistinio režimo aukų muziejus Rygoje (Latvija). Tyrime aptariama pusiausvyra tarp kūrybiškumo ir autentiško paprastumo, modeliuojant lankytojų vietos potyrius tamsiojo turizmo objektuose. Tyrimo tikslas – paaiškinti lankytojų emocijas, lankantis Valstybės saugumo komiteto pastate Rygoje ir kūrybinio turizmo produkto dizaino vaidmenį sužadinant emocijas. Kaip pagrindiniu duomenų šaltiniu buvo pasinaudota lankytojų atsiliepimais apie jų apsilankymą Valstybės saugumo komiteto pastate TripAdvisor platformoje. Tyrimo rezultatai patvirtina, kad pasivaikščiojimas po Valstybės saugumo komiteto pastatą sukelia įsimintinų įspūdžių ir prieštarauja nuomonei, jog nauji šio tamsiojo turizmo produkto kūrybiškumo klodai patenkins ir pralinksmins klientą. Valstybės saugumo komiteto pastatas Rygoje – tai pavyzdys, kai kūrybinio turizmo produkto dizainas neturi reikšmingo poveikio lankytojų emociniams potyriams, nes pagrindiniai šaltiniai apie lankytojų patirtį yra aukštos kokybės turus vedančių gidų ir jų turimų gausių žinių, asmeninių istorijų, autentiškos atmosferos ir pastato interjero kuriamas spektaklis.
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Everaerts, Michel, and Jean-Louis Mansy. "Le filtrage des anomalies gravimetriques; une cle pour la comprehension des structures tectoniques du Boulonnais et de l'Artois (France)." Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France 172, no. 3 (2001): 267–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.2113/172.3.267.

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Abstract The geology of the Boulonnais has been well studied since the early part of the last century [Gosselet and Bertaut, 1873; Olry, 1904; Pruvost and Delepine, 1921]. Extensive coal exploration added substantially to the general understanding of the geology of the region but as outcrop is poor, many questions remain. Gravity methods used in the analysis of geological structures have had a long and successful history in helping to study the earth's crust for scientific and applied objectives. Regional gravity data are particularly useful in mapping geographic distribution and configuration of density contrast of rocks. Previous gravity research shows the main trends of the structure. In most cases the regional Bouguer gravity hides the relationship between the geology and the shape of the anomaly caused by the perturbing body. New information can be obtained by filtering the maps. The purpose of filtering a map is to remove unwanted characteristics and enhance desirable characteristics that are diagnostic for the geology. Because of their simple mathematical forms, most potential field filters are in the spectral domain. It is advisable to transform the original unfiltered field to the spectral domain, apply the filter, then transform the filtered map back to the spatial domain for use in the interpretation. Several spectrally filtered versions of the original gravity map are used in this regional interpretation. In the case of the Boulonnais the most useful filters have been the horizontal component and the first vertical derivative. In the first instance computing the horizontal gradients of the gravity field permits us to localise the limit of the blocks and then the fault positions. The gravimetric field above a vertical contact of rock with different density shows a low on the side of the low density rocks and a high on the side of the high density rocks. The inflection point is located just on the contact of the two types of rocks. This contact can be outlined by locating the maxima of the horizontal gradient. In the case of a low dipping contact maxima stay close to the contact, but are displaced down dip. In the second instance the first vertical derivative acts as a booster for the short wavelength; this attenuates or destroys the effect of the regional field. The resulting map shows a better structure because in complex areas they give a better definition of the different bodies by separating their effects. In the case of the Boulonnais the first vertical derivative allows us to distinguish the depressed region from the uplifted one. The structural evolution of the Boulonnais-Artois area includes two main extensional events in the late Palaeozoic-early Cretaceous interval and an inversion in mid-late Palaeocene time. The new gravity data in combination with recent field and published data have provided a new insight into the structure of the Boulonnais-Artois area and a new interpretation is proposed. -- Fault patterns are oriented 110N and 040N in the Boulonnais and 140N in Artois areas. -- The linkage between the faults shows a relay geometry with transfer zones [cf. Morley et al., 1990 and Pea-cock and Sanderson, 1994]. The best example is located between Sangatte (near the tunnel) and Landrethun faults where overlapping synthetic faults with a relay ramp are imaged. -- There is no major continuous fault zone but a complex en echelon fault system. -- Linkage between Boulonnais and Artois fault is not well constrained. An important discontinuity between the two regions is apparent. This model underlines the importance of overlapping fault tips with the generation of transfer zones. These structures are also known in the Wessex and Weald basins [Stoneley, 1982; Chadwick, 1993] where heritage and inversion are significant.
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Cardi, Teodoro, Giorgia Batelli, and Alessandro Nicolia. "Opportunities for genome editing in vegetable crops." Emerging Topics in Life Sciences 1, no. 2 (2017): 193–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/etls20170033.

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Vegetables include high-value crops with health-promoting effects and reduced environmental impact. The availability of genomic and biotechnological tools in certain species, coupled with the recent development of new breeding techniques based on precise editing of DNA, provides unique opportunities to finally take advantage of the past decades of detailed genetic analyses, thus making improvement of traits related to quality and stress tolerance achievable in a reasonable time frame. Recent reports of such approaches in vegetables illustrate the feasibility of obtaining multiple homozygous mutations in a single generation, heritable by the progeny, using stable or transient transformation approaches, which may not rely on the integration of unwanted foreign DNA. Application of these approaches to currently non-sequenced/tissue culture recalcitrant crops will contribute to meet the challenges posed by the increase in population and climate change.
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30

Di Liegro, Schiera, Proia, and Di Liegro. "Physical Activity and Brain Health." Genes 10, no. 9 (2019): 720. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10090720.

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Physical activity (PA) has been central in the life of our species for most of its history, and thus shaped our physiology during evolution. However, only recently the health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, and of highly energetic diets, are becoming clear. It has been also acknowledged that lifestyle and diet can induce epigenetic modifications which modify chromatin structure and gene expression, thus causing even heritable metabolic outcomes. Many studies have shown that PA can reverse at least some of the unwanted effects of sedentary lifestyle, and can also contribute in delaying brain aging and degenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Most importantly, PA improves cognitive processes and memory, has analgesic and antidepressant effects, and even induces a sense of wellbeing, giving strength to the ancient principle of “mens sana in corpore sano” (i.e., a sound mind in a sound body). In this review we will discuss the potential mechanisms underlying the effects of PA on brain health, focusing on hormones, neurotrophins, and neurotransmitters, the release of which is modulated by PA, as well as on the intra- and extra-cellular pathways that regulate the expression of some of the genes involved.
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Meiliana, Anna, and Andi Wijaya. "The Stem Cell Hypothesis of Aging." Indonesian Biomedical Journal 2, no. 1 (2010): 26. http://dx.doi.org/10.18585/inabj.v2i1.108.

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BACKGROUND: There is probably no single way to age. Indeed, so far there is no single accepted explanation or mechanisms of aging (although more than 300 theories have been proposed). There is an overall decline in tissue regenerative potential with age, and the question arises as to whether this is due to the intrinsic aging of stem cells or rather to the impairment of stem cell function in the aged tissue environment.CONTENT: Recent data suggest that we age, in part, because our self-renewing stem cells grow old as a result of heritable intrinsic events, such as DNA damage, as well as extrinsic forces, such as changes in their supporting niches. Mechanisms that suppress the development of cancer, such as senescence and apoptosis, which rely on telomere shortening and the activities of p53 and p16INK4a may also induce an unwanted consequence: a decline in the replicative function of certain stem cells types with advancing age. This decrease regenerative capacity appears to pointing to the stem cell hypothesis of aging.SUMMARY: Recent evidence suggested that we grow old partly because of our stem cells grow old as a result of mechanisms that suppress the development of cancer over a lifetime. We believe that a further, more precise mechanistic understanding of this process will be required before this knowledge can be translated into human anti-aging therapies.KEYWORDS: stem cells, senescence, telomere, DNA damage, epigenetic, aging
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O’Neill, Lee, Yung-Wei Pan, Amy M. Skinner, and Peter Kurre. "Limiting Carryover Events Resulting from Cell Surface Retention of VSV-G Pseudotyped HIV-Lentivector Particles on Hematopoietic Targets." Blood 110, no. 11 (2007): 3735. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v110.11.3735.3735.

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Abstract Preclinical evidence and clinical trials speak to the therapeutic potential of retrovirus vectors for the heritable genetic modification of cells. Careful evaluation of the antecedent risks is critical to move these applications forward. Others previously demonstrated the persistence of intact vector particles on the surface of target cells. Inadvertent particle transfer after in vivo applications could lead to the transduction of bystander tissues, or provoke immunological responses. We recently demonstrated prolonged adherence of VSV-G pseudotyped, HIV-1 derived lentivirus particles after ex vivo transduction culture of murine hematopoietic target cells (1°) with subsequent transduction of secondary (2°) targets in vitro and in vivo. Extended particle adherence is independent of Env pseudotype and routine wash procedures (Pan et al., J Virol. Jan 2007). We hypothesized that unwanted carryover could be minimized by disrupting the vector particle attachment to 2° cells while maintaining uptake to 1° targets. Initial studies indicated that the transduction of 1° targets at 4°C (to prevent uptake) for up to 6 hours followed by serial PBS washes and subsequent direct co-culture with fibroblasts resulted in undiminished 2° gene transfer compared to transduction at 37°C. Conversely, post-transduction exposure to escalating concentrations of citric acid resulted in a systematic decrease in both 1° and 2° gene transfer rates. This is consistent with separable mechanisms for pH sensitive VSV-G mediated uptake of particles in 1° targets and the receptor independent attachment responsible for carryover and 2° transduction, respectively. Glycosaminoglycans, including heparin, quantitatively bind to pseudotyped vector particles. We found that exposure of particles to heparin effectively abrogated subsequent transduction of cells by disrupting attachment. Remarkably, serial heparin washes at the conclusion of transduction had only minimal effects on gene transfer to 1° targets, but resulted in a two-log reduction in 2° gene transfer. Increases in the concentration of protamine sulfate (a polycation) during transduction partly reversed the effect of heparin (a polyanion), demonstrating the residual impact of electrostatic interactions on attachment of retrovirus particles from the 1° cell. In further studies we showed that trypsin washes following vector exposure incompletely cleaved 1° cell surface bound particles while pronase effectively degraded cell surface bound particles in a dose dependent manner, abrogating carryover. Because pronase at high concentrations also compromised cell surface epitope integrity we studied the expression of chemokine receptor (CXCR) 4, both a critical mediator of progenitor cell homing to the bone marrow and a representative protease-sensitive surface molecule. These experiments revealed a dose dependent degradation of CXCR4 on the cell surface of 1° target cells and rapid regeneration within three hours, critical for applications involving the injection of ex vivo modified hematopoietic cells. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that select wash procedures can disrupt the ability of virus particles to bind secondary targets, degrade residual surface bound particles and reduce gene transfer to inadvertent 2° targets in vitro by up to 99%. These studies are important first steps in understanding and limiting inadvertent carryover in the context of gene therapy while maximizing target cell transduction.
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Tіpіlo, H. T., and V. V. Dzitsiuk. "FEATURES OF CHROMOSOMAL SET OF SHEEP OF ROMANOV BREED." Animal Breeding and Genetics 54 (November 29, 2017): 162–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.31073/abg.54.21.

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During long time a great interest was revealed to the Romanov breed by many sheep farmers of the world. To preserve and develop the breed, it is necessary to use modern approaches to assess its inbred breed diversity. One of most perspective for population-genetic researches is cytogenetic that allows to investigate the integrity of the chromosomal set and prevent the spread of unwanted genetic abnormalities in the population. The spontaneous chromosomal to aberration have a selective value in a breed formative process, that are fixed in generations. A level of chromosomal polymorphism is additional description of tribal value of animals, that can be taken into account at the selection of animals of wanted type. An analysis of chromosomal polymorphism of sheep is basis for forming of new knowledge about the dynamics of genetic structure in the populations of animals. The cytogenetics of animals collected considerable knowledge about influence of karyotype on the processes of individual development. With the help of cytogenetic studies, changes in chromosomes that are transmitted to offspring, and correspondingly affect the signs of an animal's organism, are detected. The object of the study was the number of sheep of the Romanov breed (n = 10), which are breeding in the breeding farm "Bach and family" (Kyiv region). The material for chromosomal preparations was the blood of sheep aged 1 to 3 years old that was taken from the jugular vein. The cytogenetic study was carried out at the Genetics Laboratory of the Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics named after M.V.Zubeta (Chubinskoye village) using special techniques and related equipment. To obtain the preparations of chromosomes, samples of the culture of leukocytes of peripheral blood of animals were used. For analysis and photographing, those metaphase plates were selected, in which the chromosomes were separate from each other. On one drug (glass), from one to ten metaphase plates were examined, and to analyze the karyotype, 50 and more metaphase plates were analyzed. Obtained experimental data was processed by the method of variation statistics using the computer programs EXCEL. The results of the cytogenetic analysis of the sheep of the Romanov breed showed that they all have a chromosomal set typical of the domestic breed of sheep. The chromosomal set of investigated sheep is represented by 54 chromosomes, of which 26 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes (XX or XY). The results of the metaphysical analysis allowed to fix a certain part of stable aberrations. Among 457 metaphase plates 81 aberrant cells (17.7%) were identified, of which aneuploid cells – 6.25%, polyploidy – 0.75%, cells with chromosomal ruptures – 0.25%, chromosomal pair fragments frequency – 0.37%, and the frequency of cells with asynchronous divergence of the centromeric regions of the chromosomes (ARTSRH) was 2.5%. Since the frequency of aberrant cells (n = 240) in a small population is 17.7%, this indicates that the detected violations in the chromosomal set of sheep are not accidental in nature and have an heritable basis. Thus, the results of the cytogenetic study of the sheep of the Romanov breed obtained from us show that their karyotypes have a characteristic chromosome set and structure for this species of animals. At the same time, in the studied animals, there is an individual chromosomal variability, which in turn may be associated with their productive or reproductive qualities. This argument is the basis for continuing our research on the chromosomal polymorphism of sheep of Romanov and other breeds.
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Kubiszyn, Marta. "Navigating an unwanted heritage: displacement, accommodation and effacement in Lublin’s local heritage initiatives." International Journal of Heritage Studies, July 14, 2021, 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1954056.

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Parra, Ricardo, and Jorge Ferraz. "From a Communist Heritage to an Unwanted Past: The Case of Romania." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3899261.

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Kłaczyński, Robert. "Prometeizm: utopijna idea czy realne narzędzie polskiej polityki wschodniej." Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia Politologica 18, no. 247 (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.24917/20813333.18.4.

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The intensification and quality of Polish-Russian relations remains, despite passing years andgenerations, a key issue in discussions about Polish Eastern Policy choices. Successful warwith Bolshevik state in 1920 left Poland independent but has put an end the idea of federation.It has been replaced with “promethean” conception which genesis should be searched amongPolish emigrational and independence movements of 19th century. The “promethean” ideawas to lead to independence of nations remaining under Russian rule. This conception, withtime, become influential among Marshal Piłsudski’s supporters and was a part of Poland’sEastern policy until the Second World War. It harmed the relations with USSR and madea permanent Warsaw-Moscow cooperation impossible. After the Second War this conceptionbecome a history, an unwanted heritage for new, communist elite. It become again popularafter 1989 and again harmed Polish-Russian relations. The paper entitled “Prometheanconception: an utopia or real tool of Polish Eastern Policy” aims to answer the question aboutrationality of this idea, its coherence. It also formulates the broader question if utopia can bea permanent, well established issue in state’s policy, despite changing reality.Key words: Poland, Russia, prometheism, history, politics
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"Optimal Character Segmentation for Touching Characters in Tamil Language Palm Leaf Manuscripts using Horver Method." International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering 9, no. 6 (2020): 1010–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.35940/ijitee.e3126.049620.

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An optimality of an automatic character recognition for Tamil palm leaf manuscripts can be achieved only by an efficient segmentation of touching characters. In this article, the touching characters are segmented as a single character to achieve an optimum solution by the recognizer in Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The proposed method provides a novelty in touching character segmentation of Tamil palm leaf manuscripts. An initial process of separation of background image and foreground characters is applied on the palm leaf images by filtering and removing unwanted pieces of characters by noise removal methods. The thickening process overcomes the difficulty of small breakages in the characters. The aspect ratio of the character image can be used to categorize the character such as single or multi touching. Single touching is divided by yet another ways such as horizontal or vertical touching. Finally, the proposed algorithm for Horizontal and Vertical character segmentation named as HorVer method is applied on the horizontally and vertically touching characters to segment as independent character. Experimental result produces 91% of an accuracy on segmenting the touching characters in Tamil palm leaf manuscript images collected from various resources and Tamil Heritage Foundation (THF). A novelty method can be achieved in Tamil touching character segmentation by the proposed algorithm.
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Petrović, Tanja. "Heritage of Liminality: Remnants of the Military in the Istrian City of Pula in the Aftermath of Yugoslav Socialism." Colloquia Humanistica, no. 10 (December 20, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.11649/ch.2536.

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Heritage of Liminality: Remnants of the Military in the Istrian City of Pula in the Aftermath of Yugoslav SocialismThis article is devoted to the meanings of the liminality that shaped the (self-) perception of the Croatian city of Pula and came as a result of the long-term presence of the military (and heavy industry) in the city. The study discusses the modalities of cohabitation of the Yugoslav People’s Army and the citizens of Pula, who lived together, interacted, and shaped each other during the period of Yugoslav socialism, and highlights the consequences of this mutual shaping in the aftermath of the Yugoslav socialist project. In the ongoing process of Pula’s contentious urban transformation, in which several military and industrial facilities, complexes, and areas still wait for their new functions and new owners, the city’s military nature and liminality have been identified as a problem by authorities and policy makers: they see the material and immaterial traces of the presence of the military in the city as an “unwanted heritage”. In opposition to the view that Pula’s military (and industrial) heritage is a problem to be overcome/eliminated, the article argues for a more inclusive approach that would acknowledge the fact that this heritage is perceived by citizens as closely related to their city’s multicultural and working-class tradition, and that would recognize its potential to produce meanings, values, histories, and memories.Nasleđe liminalnosti: tragovi prisustva vojske u istarskom gradu Puli posle kraja jugoslovenskog socijalizmaČlanak se bavi liminalnošću koja u značajnoj meri oblikuje (samo) percepciju grada Pule u Hrvatskoj, a nastala je kao rezultat dugotrajnog prisustva vojske (i teške industrije) u ovom gradu. U njemu raspravljam o modalitetima kohabitacije Jugoslovenske narodne armije i građana Pule, koji su zajedno živeli i delili urbani prostor u periodu jugoslovenskog socijalizma, i osvetljavam posledice ove kohabitacije, deljenja i uzajamnosti vidljive u vreme nakon kraja jugoslovenskog socijalističkog projekta. U ambivalentnom procesu urbane transformacije Pule koji se upravo odvija, dok mnogi vojni i industrijski objekti, kompleksi i prostori još uvek čekaju na novu namenu i vlasnike, gradske vlasti i snovaoci urbane politike „vojni” identitet grada i njegovu liminalnost identifikuju kao problem: materijalni i nematerijalni tragovi prisustva vojske u gradu označavaju se kao “neželjena baština”. Nasuprot viđenju pulske vojne (i industrijske) baštine kao problema koji treba prevazići/eliminisati, u članku se zalažem za inkluzivniji pristup koji uzima u obzir činjenicu da građani Pule ovo nasleđe usko povezuju sa multikulturnim i radničkim identitetom grada, i koji prepoznaje potencijal tog nasleđa da proizvodi značenja, vrednosti, istorije i sećanja.Dziedzictwo liminalności: znaki obecności wojska w Puli na Istrii po upadku jugosłowiańskiego socjalizmuArtykuł porusza kwestię liminalności w znacznym stopniu kształtującą (auto)percepcję miasta Pula w Chorwacji, co jest skutkiem wieloletniej obecności wojska (i przemysłu ciężkiego) w tym mieście. W tekście omawiam kwestię współdzielenia przestrzeni miejskiej w okresie jugosłowiańskiego socjalizmu przez Jugosłowiańską Armię Ludową i mieszkańców miasta, analizuję również skutki owej kohabitacji i współpracy widoczne w okresie po upadku jugosłowiańskiego projektu socjalistycznego. W trakcie wciąż trwającego ambiwalentnego procesu transformacji przestrzeni miejskiej Puli wiele obiektów, kompleksów i miejsc militarnych oraz przemysłowych oczekuje na zmianę przeznaczenia i nowych właścicieli, tymczasem władze miejskie oraz twórcy polityki miejskiej za podstawowy problem uznają „wojskową” tożsamość miasta i jej liminalność: materialne i niematerialne ślady obecności armii w mieście określane są jako „niechciane dziedzictwo”. Wbrew powszechnemu traktowaniu owego dziedzictwa jako problemu do rozwiązania, w swoim artykule wybieram podejście bardziej otwarte, które uwzględnia zdanie mieszkańców Puli wpisujących je w wielokulturową i robotniczą tożsamość miasta; staram się również podkreślić jego potencjał w procesie wytwarzania znaczeń, wartości, historii i pamięci.
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Self, Robin M., Donald R. Self, and Janel Bell-Haynes. "Marketing Tourism In The Galapagos Islands: Ecotourism Or Greenwashing?" International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER) 9, no. 6 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.19030/iber.v9i6.590.

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Tourism accounts for approximately 7.5% - 15% of the world’s total employment and is the world’s most important service industry. In heavily frequented tourist destinations such as the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, the importance is even higher. International travel is projected to double by 2020 with over 1.5 billion people traveling throughout the world. Within the tourism industry, ecotourism is the fastest growing sector, growing from 10 to 30 percent a year. While exact definitions of ecotourism vary, ecotourism is defined by the International Tourism Society (TIES) as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people.” A subset of sustainable tourism, ecotourism has a natural area focus, which benefits the environment and communities visited, fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and awareness. Because there is no universally adopted certification program for ecotourism, tourism operators may market their operations as “ecotourism” while in reality they are “greenwashing.” Greenwashers are dishonest tourism operators who embrace ecotourism as a new selling angle. To greenwash is to promote ecotourism while effectively doing the opposite. The Galapagos Islands is a popular destination for ecotourism. Beginning in the late 1960’s, the Galapagos tourism industry started with about 1,000 tourists per year and has boomed to 148,000 tourists in 2006. This has caused several problems: growing human population, introduction of alien and invasive species, and unwanted by-products from tourism. As a result, in 2007, the Galapagos Islands were placed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. Because of the unique biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands, and the increase in tourism and its negative consequences, the Galapagos Islands presents an excellent example for a case study in marketing of ecotourism. Using the criteria established by the Mohonk Agreement for responsible ecotourism, this paper examines the websites of ecotourism operators in the Galapagos Islands to determine the extent to which they are “ecotours” or “greenwashed tours.” The implications for conservation of the islands and responsible marketing are discussed.
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40

Echu, George. "The Language Question in Cameroon." Linguistik Online 18, no. 1 (2004). http://dx.doi.org/10.13092/lo.18.765.

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In multilingual Cameroon, 247 indigenous languages live side by side with English and French (the two official languages) and Cameroon Pidgin English (the main lingua franca). While the two official languages of colonial heritage dominate public life in the areas of education, administration, politics, mass media, publicity and literature, both the indigenous languages and Cameroon Pidgin English are relegated to the background. This paper is a critique of language policy in Cameroon revealing that mother tongue education in the early years of primary education remains a distant cry, as the possible introduction of an indigenous language in the school system is not only considered unwanted by educational authorities but equally combated against by parents who believe that the future of their children lies in the mastery of the official languages. This persistent disregard of indigenous languages does not only alienate the Cameroonian child culturally, but further alienates the vast majority of Cameroonians who are illiterate (in English and French) since important State business is carried out in the official languages. As regards the implementation of the policy of official language bilingualism, there is clear imbalance in the use of the two official languages as French continues to be the dominant official language while English is relegated to a second place within the State. The frustration that ensues within the Anglophone community has led in recent years to the birth of Anglophone nationalism, a situation that seems to be widening the rift between the two main components of the society (Anglophones and Francophones), thereby compromising national unity. The paper is divided into five major parts. After a brief presentation of the country, the author dwells on multilingualism and language policy since the colonial period. The third, fourth and last parts of the paper focus on the critique of language policy in Cameroon with emphasis first on the policy of official language bilingualism and bilingual education, then on the place of indigenous languages, and finally on the national language debate.
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Brien, Donna Lee. "From Waste to Superbrand: The Uneasy Relationship between Vegemite and Its Origins." M/C Journal 13, no. 4 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.245.

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This article investigates the possibilities for understanding waste as a resource, with a particular focus on understanding food waste as a food resource. It considers the popular yeast spread Vegemite within this frame. The spread’s origins in waste product, and how it has achieved and sustained its status as a popular symbol of Australia despite half a century of Australian gastro-multiculturalism and a marked public resistance to other recycling and reuse of food products, have not yet been a focus of study. The process of producing Vegemite from waste would seem to align with contemporary moves towards recycling food waste, and ensuring environmental sustainability and food security, yet even during times of austerity and environmental concern this has not provided the company with a viable marketing strategy. Instead, advertising copywriting and a recurrent cycle of product memorialisation have created a superbrand through focusing on Vegemite’s nutrient and nostalgic value.John Scanlan notes that producing waste is a core feature of modern life, and what we dispose of as surplus to our requirements—whether this comprises material objects or more abstract products such as knowledge—reveals much about our society. In observing this, Scanlan asks us to consider the quite radical idea that waste is central to everything of significance to us: the “possibility that the surprising core of all we value results from (and creates even more) garbage (both the material and the metaphorical)” (9). Others have noted the ambivalent relationship we have with the waste we produce. C. T. Anderson notes that we are both creator and agent of its disposal. It is our ambivalence towards waste, coupled with its ubiquity, that allows waste materials to be described so variously: negatively as garbage, trash and rubbish, or more positively as by-products, leftovers, offcuts, trimmings, and recycled.This ambivalence is also crucial to understanding the affectionate relationship the Australian public have with Vegemite, a relationship that appears to exist in spite of the product’s unpalatable origins in waste. A study of Vegemite reveals that consumers can be comfortable with waste, even to the point of eating recycled waste, as long as that fact remains hidden and unmentioned. In Vegemite’s case not only has the product’s connection to waste been rendered invisible, it has been largely kept out of sight despite considerable media and other attention focusing on the product. Recycling Food Waste into Food ProductRecent work such as Elizabeth Royte’s Garbage Land and Tristram Stuart’s Waste make waste uncomfortably visible, outlining how much waste, and food waste in particular, the Western world generates and how profligately this is disposed of. Their aim is clear: a call to less extravagant and more sustainable practices. The relatively recent interest in reducing our food waste has, of course, introduced more complexity into a simple linear movement from the creation of a food product, to its acquisition or purchase, and then to its consumption and/or its disposal. Moreover, the recycling, reuse and repurposing of what has previously been discarded as waste is reconfiguring the whole idea of what waste is, as well as what value it has. The initiatives that seem to offer the most promise are those that reconfigure the way waste is understood. However, it is not only the process of transforming waste from an abject nuisance into a valued product that is central here. It is also necessary to reconfigure people’s acculturated perceptions of, and reactions to waste. Food waste is generated during all stages of the food cycle: while the raw materials are being grown; while these are being processed; when the resulting food products are being sold; when they are prepared in the home or other kitchen; and when they are only partly consumed. Until recently, the food industry in the West almost universally produced large volumes of solid and liquid waste that not only posed problems of disposal and pollution for the companies involved, but also represented a reckless squandering of total food resources in terms of both nutrient content and valuable biomass for society at large. While this is currently changing, albeit slowly, the by-products of food processing were, and often are, dumped (Stuart). In best-case scenarios, various gardening, farming and industrial processes gather household and commercial food waste for use as animal feed or as components in fertilisers (Delgado et al; Wang et al). This might, on the surface, appear a responsible application of waste, yet the reality is that such food waste often includes perfectly good fruit and vegetables that are not quite the required size, shape or colour, meat trimmings and products (such as offal) that are completely edible but extraneous to processing need, and other high grade product that does not meet certain specifications—such as the mountains of bread crusts sandwich producers discard (Hickman), or food that is still edible but past its ‘sell by date.’ In the last few years, however, mounting public awareness over the issues of world hunger, resource conservation, and the environmental and economic costs associated with food waste has accelerated efforts to make sustainable use of available food supplies and to more efficiently recycle, recover and utilise such needlessly wasted food product. This has fed into and led to multiple new policies, instances of research into, and resultant methods for waste handling and treatment (Laufenberg et al). Most straightforwardly, this involves the use or sale of offcuts, trimmings and unwanted ingredients that are “often of prime quality and are only rejected from the production line as a result of standardisation requirements or retailer specification” from one process for use in another, in such processed foods as soups, baby food or fast food products (Henningsson et al. 505). At a higher level, such recycling seeks to reclaim any reusable substances of significant food value from what could otherwise be thought of as a non-usable waste product. Enacting this is largely dependent on two elements: an available technology and being able to obtain a price or other value for the resultant product that makes the process worthwhile for the recycler to engage in it (Laufenberg et al). An example of the latter is the use of dehydrated restaurant food waste as a feedstuff for finishing pigs, a reuse process with added value for all involved as this process produces both a nutritious food substance as well as a viable way of disposing of restaurant waste (Myer et al). In Japan, laws regarding food waste recycling, which are separate from those governing other organic waste, are ensuring that at least some of food waste is being converted into animal feed, especially for the pigs who are destined for human tables (Stuart). Other recycling/reuse is more complex and involves more lateral thinking, with the by-products from some food processing able to be utilised, for instance, in the production of dyes, toiletries and cosmetics (Henningsson et al), although many argue for the privileging of food production in the recycling of foodstuffs.Brewing is one such process that has been in the reuse spotlight recently as large companies seek to minimise their waste product so as to be able to market their processes as sustainable. In 2009, for example, the giant Foster’s Group (with over 150 brands of beer, wine, spirits and ciders) proudly claimed that it recycled or reused some 91.23% of 171,000 tonnes of operational waste, with only 8.77% of this going to landfill (Foster’s Group). The treatment and recycling of the massive amounts of water used for brewing, rinsing and cooling purposes (Braeken et al.; Fillaudeaua et al.) is of significant interest, and is leading to research into areas as diverse as the development microbial fuel cells—where added bacteria consume the water-soluble brewing wastes, thereby cleaning the water as well as releasing chemical energy that is then converted into electricity (Lagan)—to using nutrient-rich wastewater as the carbon source for creating bioplastics (Yu et al.).In order for the waste-recycling-reuse loop to be closed in the best way for securing food supplies, any new product salvaged and created from food waste has to be both usable, and used, as food (Stuart)—and preferably as a food source for people to consume. There is, however, considerable consumer resistance to such reuse. Resistance to reusing recycled water in Australia has been documented by the CSIRO, which identified negative consumer perception as one of the two primary impediments to water reuse, the other being the fundamental economics of the process (MacDonald & Dyack). This consumer aversion operates even in times of severe water shortages, and despite proof of the cleanliness and safety of the resulting treated water. There was higher consumer acceptance levels for using stormwater rather than recycled water, despite the treated stormwater being shown to have higher concentrations of contaminants (MacDonald & Dyack). This reveals the extent of public resistance to the potential consumption of recycled waste product when it is labelled as such, even when this consumption appears to benefit that public. Vegemite: From Waste Product to Australian IconIn this context, the savoury yeast spread Vegemite provides an example of how food processing waste can be repurposed into a new food product that can gain a high level of consumer acceptability. It has been able to retain this status despite half a century of Australian gastronomic multiculturalism and the wide embrace of a much broader range of foodstuffs. Indeed, Vegemite is so ubiquitous in Australian foodways that it is recognised as an international superbrand, a standing it has been able to maintain despite most consumers from outside Australasia finding it unpalatable (Rozin & Siegal). However, Vegemite’s long product history is one in which its origin as recycled waste has been omitted, or at the very least, consistently marginalised.Vegemite’s history as a consumer product is narrated in a number of accounts, including one on the Kraft website, where the apocryphal and actual blend. What all these narratives agree on is that in the early 1920s Fred Walker—of Fred Walker and Company, Melbourne, canners of meat for export and Australian manufacturers of Bonox branded beef stock beverage—asked his company chemist to emulate Marmite yeast extract (Farrer). The imitation product was based, as was Marmite, on the residue from spent brewer’s yeast. This waste was initially sourced from Melbourne-based Carlton & United Breweries, and flavoured with vegetables, spices and salt (Creswell & Trenoweth). Today, the yeast left after Foster Group’s Australian commercial beer making processes is collected, put through a sieve to remove hop resins, washed to remove any bitterness, then mixed with warm water. The yeast dies from the lack of nutrients in this environment, and enzymes then break down the yeast proteins with the effect that vitamins and minerals are released into the resulting solution. Using centrifugal force, the yeast cell walls are removed, leaving behind a nutrient-rich brown liquid, which is then concentrated into a dark, thick paste using a vacuum process. This is seasoned with significant amounts of salt—although less today than before—and flavoured with vegetable extracts (Richardson).Given its popularity—Vegemite was found in 2009 to be the third most popular brand in Australia (Brand Asset Consulting)—it is unsurprising to find that the product has a significant history as an object of study in popular culture (Fiske et al; White), as a marker of national identity (Ivory; Renne; Rozin & Siegal; Richardson; Harper & White) and as an iconic Australian food, brand and product (Cozzolino; Luck; Khamis; Symons). Jars, packaging and product advertising are collected by Australian institutions such as Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, and are regularly included in permanent and travelling exhibitions profiling Australian brands and investigating how a sense of national identity is expressed through identification with these brands. All of this significant study largely focuses on how, when and by whom the product has been taken up, and how it has been consumed, rather than its links to waste, and what this circumstance could add to current thinking about recycling of food waste into other food products.It is worth noting that Vegemite was not an initial success in the Australian marketplace, but this does not seem due to an adverse public perception to waste. Indeed, when it was first produced it was in imitation of an already popular product well-known to be made from brewery by-products, hence this origin was not an issue. It was also introduced during a time when consumer relationships to waste were quite unlike today, and thrifty re-use of was a common feature of household behaviour. Despite a national competition mounted to name the product (Richardson), Marmite continued to attract more purchasers after Vegemite’s launch in 1923, so much so that in 1928, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Marmite, Vegemite was renamed “Parwill—the all Australian product” (punning on the idea that “Ma-might” but “Pa-will”) (White 16). When this campaign was unsuccessful, the original, consumer-suggested name was reinstated, but sales still lagged behind its UK-owned prototype. It was only after remaining in production for more than a decade, and after two successful marketing campaigns in the second half of the 1930s that the Vegemite brand gained some market traction. The first of these was in 1935 and 1936, when a free jar of Vegemite was offered with every sale of an item from the relatively extensive Kraft-Walker product list (after Walker’s company merged with Kraft) (White). The second was an attention-grabbing contest held in 1937, which invited consumers to compose Vegemite-inspired limericks. However, it was not the nature of the product itself or even the task set by the competition which captured mass attention, but the prize of a desirable, exotic and valuable imported Pontiac car (Richardson 61; Superbrands).Since that time, multinational media company, J Walter Thompson (now rebranded as JWT) has continued to manage Vegemite’s marketing. JWT’s marketing has never looked to Vegemite’s status as a thrifty recycler of waste as a viable marketing strategy, even in periods of austerity (such as the Depression years and the Second World War) or in more recent times of environmental concern. Instead, advertising copywriting and a recurrent cycle of cultural/media memorialisation have created a superbrand by focusing on two factors: its nutrient value and, as the brand became more established, its status as national icon. Throughout the regular noting and celebration of anniversaries of its initial invention and launch, with various commemorative events and products marking each of these product ‘birthdays,’ Vegemite’s status as recycled waste product has never been more than mentioned. Even when its 60th anniversary was marked in 1983 with the laying of a permanent plaque in Kerferd Road, South Melbourne, opposite Walker’s original factory, there was only the most passing reference to how, and from what, the product manufactured at the site was made. This remained the case when the site itself was prioritised for heritage listing almost twenty years later in 2001 (City of Port Phillip).Shying away from the reality of this successful example of recycling food waste into food was still the case in 1990, when Kraft Foods held a nationwide public campaign to recover past styles of Vegemite containers and packaging, and then donated their collection to Powerhouse Museum. The Powerhouse then held an exhibition of the receptacles and the historical promotional material in 1991, tracing the development of the product’s presentation (Powerhouse Museum), an occasion that dovetailed with other nostalgic commemorative activities around the product’s 70th birthday. Although the production process was noted in the exhibition, it is noteworthy that the possibilities for recycling a number of the styles of jars, as either containers with reusable lids or as drinking glasses, were given considerably more notice than the product’s origins as a recycled product. By this time, it seems, Vegemite had become so incorporated into Australian popular memory as a product in its own right, and with such a rich nostalgic history, that its origins were no longer of any significant interest or relevance.This disregard continued in the commemorative volume, The Vegemite Cookbook. With some ninety recipes and recipe ideas, the collection contains an almost unimaginably wide range of ways to use Vegemite as an ingredient. There are recipes on how to make the definitive Vegemite toast soldiers and Vegemite crumpets, as well as adaptations of foreign cuisines including pastas and risottos, stroganoffs, tacos, chilli con carne, frijole dip, marinated beef “souvlaki style,” “Indian-style” chicken wings, curries, Asian stir-fries, Indonesian gado-gado and a number of Chinese inspired dishes. Although the cookbook includes a timeline of product history illustrated with images from the major advertising campaigns that runs across 30 pages of the book, this timeline history emphasises the technological achievement of Vegemite’s creation, as opposed to the matter from which it orginated: “In a Spartan room in Albert Park Melbourne, 20 year-old food technologist Cyril P. Callister employed by Fred Walker, conducted initial experiments with yeast. His workplace was neither kitchen nor laboratory. … It was not long before this rather ordinary room yielded an extra-ordinary substance” (2). The Big Vegemite Party Book, described on its cover as “a great book for the Vegemite fan … with lots of old advertisements from magazines and newspapers,” is even more openly nostalgic, but similarly includes very little regarding Vegemite’s obviously potentially unpalatable genesis in waste.Such commemorations have continued into the new century, each one becoming more self-referential and more obviously a marketing strategy. In 2003, Vegemite celebrated its 80th birthday with the launch of the “Spread the Smile” campaign, seeking to record the childhood reminisces of adults who loved Vegemite. After this, the commemorative anniversaries broke free from even the date of its original invention and launch, and began to celebrate other major dates in the product’s life. In this way, Kraft made major news headlines when it announced that it was trying to locate the children who featured in the 1954 “Happy little Vegemites” campaign as part of the company’s celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the television advertisement. In October 2006, these once child actors joined a number of past and current Kraft employees to celebrate the supposed production of the one-billionth jar of Vegemite (Rood, "Vegemite Spreads" & "Vegemite Toasts") but, once again, little about the actual production process was discussed. In 2007, the then iconic marching band image was resituated into a contemporary setting—presumably to mobilise both the original messages (nutritious wholesomeness in an Australian domestic context) as well as its heritage appeal. Despite the real interest at this time in recycling and waste reduction, the silence over Vegemite’s status as recycled, repurposed food waste product continued.Concluding Remarks: Towards Considering Waste as a ResourceIn most parts of the Western world, including Australia, food waste is formally (in policy) and informally (by consumers) classified, disposed of, or otherwise treated alongside garden waste and other organic materials. Disposal by individuals, industry or local governments includes a range of options, from dumping to composting or breaking down in anaerobic digestion systems into materials for fertiliser, with food waste given no special status or priority. Despite current concerns regarding the security of food supplies in the West and decades of recognising that there are sections of all societies where people do not have enough to eat, it seems that recycling food waste into food that people can consume remains one of the last and least palatable solutions to these problems. This brief study of Vegemite has attempted to show how, despite the growing interest in recycling and sustainability, the focus in both the marketing of, and public interest in, this iconic and popular product appears to remain rooted in Vegemite’s nutrient and nostalgic value and its status as a brand, and firmly away from any suggestion of innovative and prudent reuse of waste product. That this is so for an already popular product suggests that any initiatives that wish to move in this direction must first reconfigure not only the way waste itself is seen—as a valuable product to be used, rather than as a troublesome nuisance to be disposed of—but also our own understandings of, and reactions to, waste itself.Acknowledgements Many thanks to the reviewers for their perceptive, useful, and generous comments on this article. All errors are, of course, my own. The research for this work was carried out with funding from the Faculty of Arts, Business, Informatics and Education, CQUniversity, Australia.ReferencesAnderson, C. T. “Sacred Waste: Ecology, Spirit, and the American Garbage Poem.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 17 (2010): 35-60.Blake, J. The Vegemite Cookbook: Delicious Recipe Ideas. Melbourne: Ark Publishing, 1992.Braeken, L., B. Van der Bruggen and C. Vandecasteele. “Regeneration of Brewery Waste Water Using Nanofiltration.” Water Research 38.13 (July 2004): 3075-82.City of Port Phillip. “Heritage Recognition Strategy”. Community and Services Development Committee Agenda, 20 Aug. 2001.Cozzolino, M. Symbols of Australia. Ringwood: Penguin, 1980.Creswell, T., and S. Trenoweth. “Cyril Callister: The Happiest Little Vegemite”. 1001 Australians You Should Know. North Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2006. 353-4.Delgado, C. L., M. Rosegrant, H. Steinfled, S. Ehui, and C. Courbois. Livestock to 2020: The Next Food Revolution. Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Discussion Paper, 28. Washington, D. C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009.Farrer, K. T. H. “Callister, Cyril Percy (1893-1949)”. Australian Dictionary of Biography 7. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979. 527-8.Fillaudeaua, L., P. Blanpain-Avetb and G. Daufinc. “Water, Wastewater and Waste Management in Brewing Industries”. Journal of Cleaner Production 14.5 (2006): 463-71.Fiske, J., B. Hodge and G. Turner. Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987.Foster’s Group Limited. Transforming Fosters: Sustainability Report 2009.16 June 2010 ‹http://fosters.ice4.interactiveinvestor.com.au/Fosters0902/2009SustainabilityReport/EN/body.aspx?z=1&p=-1&v=2&uid›.George Patterson Young and Rubicam (GPYR). Brand Asset Valuator, 2009. 6 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.brandassetconsulting.com/›.Harper, M., and R. White. Symbols of Australia. UNSW, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010.Henningsson, S., K. Hyde, A. Smith, and M. Campbell. “The Value of Resource Efficiency in the Food Industry: A Waste Minimisation Project in East Anglia, UK”. Journal of Cleaner Production 12.5 (June 2004): 505-12.Hickman, M. “Exposed: The Big Waste Scandal”. The Independent, 9 July 2009. 18 June 2010 ‹http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/exposed-the-big-waste-scandal-1737712.html›.Ivory, K. “Australia’s Vegemite”. Hemispheres (Jan. 1998): 83-5.Khamis, S. “Buy Australiana: Diggers, Drovers and Vegemite”. Write/Up. Eds. E. Hartrick, R. Hogg and S. Supski. St Lucia: API Network and UQP, 2004. 121-30.Lagan, B. “Australia Finds a New Power Source—Beer”. The Times 5 May 2007. 18 June 2010 ‹http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article1749835.ece›.Laufenberg, G., B. Kunz and M. Nystroem. “Transformation of Vegetable Waste into Value Added Products: (A) The Upgrading Concept; (B) Practical Implementations [review paper].” Bioresource Technology 87 (2003): 167-98.Luck, P. Australian Icons: Things That Make Us What We Are. Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1992.MacDonald, D. H., and B. Dyack. Exploring the Institutional Impediments to Conservation and Water Reuse—National Issues: Report for the Australian Water Conservation and Reuse Research Program. March. CSIRO Land and Water, 2004.Myer, R. O., J. H. Brendemuhl, and D. D. Johnson. “Evaluation of Dehydrated Restaurant Food Waste Products as Feedstuffs for Finishing Pigs”. Journal of Animal Science 77.3 (1999): 685-92.Pittaway, M. The Big Vegemite Party Book. Melbourne: Hill of Content, 1992. Powerhouse Museum. Collection & Research. 16 June 2010.Renne, E. P. “All Right, Vegemite!: The Everyday Constitution of an Australian National Identity”. Visual Anthropology 6.2 (1993): 139-55.Richardson, K. “Vegemite, Soldiers, and Rosy Cheeks”. Gastronomica 3.4 (Fall 2003): 60-2.Rood, D. “Vegemite Spreads the News of a Happy Little Milestone”. Sydney Morning Herald 6 Oct. 2008. 16 March 2010 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/vegemite-spreads-the-news-of-a-happy-little-milestone/2008/10/05/1223145175371.html›.———. “Vegemite Toasts a Billion Jars”. The Age 6 Oct. 2008. 16 March 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/vegemite-toasts-a-billion-jars-20081005-4uc1.html›.Royte, E. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006.Rozin, P., and M. Siegal “Vegemite as a Marker of National Identity”. Gastronomica 3.4 (Fall 2003): 63-7.Scanlan, J. On Garbage. London: Reaktion Books, 2005.Stuart, T. Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.Superbrands. Superbrands: An Insight into Many of Australia’s Most Trusted Brands. Vol IV. Ingleside, NSW: Superbrands, 2004.Symons, M. One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia. Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1982.Wang, J., O. Stabnikova, V. Ivanov, S. T. Tay, and J. Tay. “Intensive Aerobic Bioconversion of Sewage Sludge and Food Waste into Fertiliser”. Waste Management & Research 21 (2003): 405-15.White, R. S. “Popular Culture as the Everyday: A Brief Cultural History of Vegemite”. Australian Popular Culture. Ed. I. Craven. Cambridge UP, 1994. 15-21.Yu, P. H., H. Chua, A. L. Huang, W. Lo, and G. Q. Chen. “Conversion of Food Industrial Wastes into Bioplastics”. Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology 70-72.1 (March 1998): 603-14.
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Collins, Steve. "Good Copy, Bad Copy." M/C Journal 8, no. 3 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2354.

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 Nine Inch Nails have just released a new single; In addition to the usual formats, “The Hand That Feeds” was available for free download in Garageband format. Trent Reznor explained, “For quite some time I’ve been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks – to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what’s there” (MacMinute 15 April 2005). Reznor invites creativity facilitated by copying and transformation. “Copy” carries connotations of unsavoury notions such as piracy, stealing, fake, and plagiarism. Conversely, in some circumstances copying is acceptable, some situations demand copying. This article examines the treatment of “copy” at the intersection of musical creativity and copyright law with regard to cover versions and sampling.
 
 Waldron reminds us that copyright was devised first and foremost with a public benefit in mind (851). This fundamental has been persistently reiterated (H. R Rep. (1909); Sen. Rep. (1909); H. R. Rep. (1988); Patterson & Lindberg 70). The law grants creators a bundle of rights in copyrighted works. Two rights implicated in recorded music are located in the composition and the recording. Many potential uses of copyrighted songs require a license. The Copyright Act 1976, s. 115 provides a compulsory licence for cover versions. In other words, any song can be covered for a statutory royalty fee. The law curtails the extent of the copyright monopoly. Compulsory licensing serves both creative and business sides of the recording industry. First, it ensures creative diversity. Musicians are free to reinterpret cultural soundtracks. Second, it safeguards the composer’s right to generate an income from his work by securing royalties for subsequent usage. Although s. 115 permits a certain degree of artistic licence, it requires “the arrangement shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work”. Notwithstanding this proviso, songs can still be transformed and their meaning reshaped. Johnny Cash was able to provide an insight into the mind of a dying man through covering such songs as Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and Parker & Charles’ “We’ll Meet Again”.
 
 Compulsory licensing was introduced in response to a Supreme Court decision that deprived composers of royalties. Congress recognised:
 
 The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give to the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition, and it has been a serious and difficult task to combine the protection of the composer with the protection of the public, and to so frame an act that it would accomplish the double purpose of securing to the composer and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies, which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests (H. R. Rep. (1909)).
 
 
 Composers exercise rights over the initial exploitation of a song. Once a recording is released, the right is curtailed to serve the public dimension of copyright. 
 
 A sampler is a device that allows recorded (sampled) sounds to be triggered from a MIDI keyboard or sequencer. Samplers provide potent tools for transforming sounds – filters, pitch-shifting, time-stretching and effects can warp samples beyond recognition. Sampling is a practice that formed the backbone of rap and hip-hop, features heavily in many forms of electronic music, and has proved invaluable in many studio productions (Rose 73-80; Prendergast 383-84, 415-16, 433-34). Samples implicate both of the musical copyrights mentioned earlier. To legally use a sample, the rights in the recording and the underlying composition must be licensed. Ostensibly, acquiring permission to use the composition poses few obstacles due to the compulsory licence. The sound recording, however, is a different matter entirely. 
 
 There is no compulsory licence for sound recordings. Copyright owners (usually record labels) are free to demand whatever fees they see fit. For example, SST charged Fatboy Slim $1000 for sampling a Negativland record (Negativland). (Ironically, the sample was itself an unlicensed sample appropriated from a 1966 religious recording.) The price paid by The Verve for sampling an obscure orchestral version of a Rolling Stones song was more substantial. Allan Klein owns the copyright in “The Last Time” released by The Andrew Oldham Orchestra in 1965 (American Hit Network, undated). Licence negotiations for the sample left Klein with 100% of the royalties from the song and The Verve with a bitter taste. To add insult to injury, “Bittersweet Symphony” was attributed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards when the song was nominated for a Grammy (Superswell, undated). License fees can prove prohibitive to many musicians and may outweigh the artistic merit in using the sample: “Sony wanted five thousand dollars for the Clash sample, which … is one thousand dollars a word. In retrospect, this was a bargain, given the skyrocketing costs of sampling throughout the 1990s” (McLeod 86). Adam Dorn, alias Mocean Worker, tried for nine months to licence a sample of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Eventually his persistent requests were met with a demand for $10,000 in advance with royalties of six cents per record. Dorn was working with an album budget of a mere $40 and was expecting to sell 2500 copies (Beaujon 25). Unregulated licensing fees stifle creativity and create a de facto monopoly over recorded music. Although copyright was designed to be an engine of free expression1 it still carries characteristics of its monopolistic, totalitarian heritage. The decision in Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films supported this monopoly. Judge Guy ruled, “Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this stifling creativity in any significant way” (397).
 
 The lack of compulsory licensing and the Bridgeport decision creates an untenable situation for sampling musicians and adversely impacts upon the public benefit derived from creative diversity and transformative works (Netanel 288, 331). The sobering potential for lawsuits, ruinous legal costs, injunctions, damages (to copyright owners as well as master recordings), suppresses the creativity of musicians unwilling or unable to pay licence fees (Negativland 251.).
 
 I’m a big fan of David Bowie. If I wanted to release a cover version of “Survive”, Bowie and Gabrels (composers) and BMI (publishers) could not prevent it. According the Harry Fox Agency’s online licensing system, it would cost $222.50 (US) for a licence to produce 2500 copies. The compulsory licence demands fidelity to the character of the original. Although my own individual style would be embedded in the cover version, the potential for transformation is limited. Whilst trawling through results from a search for “acapella” on the Soulseek network I found an MP3 of the vocal acapella for “Survive”. Thirty minutes later Bowie was loaded into Sonar 4 and accompanied by a drum loop and bass line whilst I jammed along on guitar and tinkered with synths. Free access to music encourages creative diversity and active cultural participation. Licensing fees, however, may prohibit such creative explorations. Sampling technology offers some truly innovative possibilities for transforming recorded sound. The Roland VariOS can pitch-eliminate; a vocal sample can be reproduced to a melody played by the sampling musician. Although the original singer’s voice is preserved the melody and characteristic nuances can be significantly altered:
 
 V-Producer’s Phrase Scope [a system software component] separates the melody from the rest of the phrase, allowing users to re-construct a new melody or add harmonies graphically, or by playing in notes from a MIDI keyboard. Using Phrase Scope, you can take an existing vocal phrase or melodic instrument phrase and change the actual notes, phrasing and vocal gender without unwanted artefacts.
 
 
 Bowie’s original vocal could be aligned with an original melody and set to an original composition. The original would be completely transformed into a new creative work. Unfortunately, EMI is the parent company for Virgin Records, the copyright owner of “Survive”. It is doubtful licence fees could be accommodated by many inspired bedroom producers. EMI’s reaction to DJ Dangermouse’s “Grey Album“ suggests that it would not look upon unlicensed sampling with any favour. Threatening letters from lawyers representing one of the “Big Four” are enough to subjugate most small time producers. Fair use? If a musician is unable to afford a licence, it is unlikely he can afford a fair use defence. Musicians planning only a limited run, underground release may be forgiven for assuming that the “Big Four” have better things to do than trawl through bins of White Labels for unlicensed samples. Professional bootlegger Richard X found otherwise when his history of unlicensed sampling caught up to him: “A certain major label won’t let me use any samples I ask them to. We just got a report back from them saying, ‘Due to Richard’s earlier work of which we are well aware, we will not be assisting him with any future projects’” (Petridis).
 
 For record labels “copy” equals “money”. Allan Klein did very well out of licensing his newly acquired “Bittersweet Symphony” to Nike (Superswell). Inability to afford either licences or legal costs means that some innovative and novel creations will never leave the bedroom. Sampling masterpieces such as “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” are no longer cost effective (McLeod). The absence of a compulsory licence for sampling permits a de facto monopoly over recorded music. Tricia Rose notes the recording industry knows the value of “copy” (90). “Copy” is permissible as long as musicians pay for the privilege – if the resultant market for the sampling song is not highly profitable labels may decline to negotiate a licence. Some parties have recognised the value of the desire to creatively engage with music. UK (dis)band(ed) Curve posted component samples of their song “Unreadable Communication” on their website and invited fans to create their own versions of the song. All submissions were listed on the website. Although the band reserved copyright, they permitted me to upload my version to my online distribution website for free download. It has been downloaded 113 times and streamed a further 112 times over the last couple of months. The remix project has a reciprocal dimension: Creative engagement strengthens the fan base. Guitarist/programmer, Dean Garcia, states “the main reason for posting the samples is for others to experiment with something they love . . . an opportunity as you say to mess around with something you otherwise would never have access to2”. Umixit is testing the market for remixable songs. Although the company has only five bands on its roster (the most notable being Aerosmith), it will be interesting to observe the development of a market for “neutered sampling” and how long it will be before the majors claim a stake. The would-be descendants of Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambaataa may find themselves bound by end-user licences and contracts.
 
 The notion of “copy” at the nexus of creativity and copyright law is simultaneously a vehicle for free expression and a vulgar infringement on a valuable economic interest. The compulsory licence for cover versions encourages musicians to rework existing music, uncover hidden meaning, challenge the boundaries of genre, and actively participate in culture creation. Lack of affirmative congressional or judicial interference in the current sampling regime places the beneficial aspects of “copy” under an oppressive monopoly founded on copyright, an engine of free expression.
 
 References
 
 American Hit Network. “Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve.” Undated. 17 April 2005 http://www.americanhitnetwork.com/1990/fsongs.cfm?id=8&view=detail&rank=1>. Beaujon, A. “It’s Not The Beat, It’s the Mocean.’ CMJ New Music Monthly, April 1999. EMI. “EMI and Orange Announce New Music Deal.” Immediate Future: PR & Communications, 6 January 2005. 17 April 2005 http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/359>. H. R. Rep. No. 2222. 60th Cong., 2nd Sess. 7. 1909. H. R. Rep. No. 609. 100th Cong., 2nd Sess. 23. 1988. MacMinute. “NIN Offers New Single in GarageBand Format.” 15 April 2005. 16 April 2005 http://www.macminute.com/2005/04/15/nin/>. McLeod, K. “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An Interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.” Stay Free 2002, 23 June 2004 http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html>. McLeod, K. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday Books, 2005. Negativland. “Discography.” Undated. 18 April 2005 http://www.negativland.com/negdisco.html>. Negativland (ed.). Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. Concord: Seeland, 2005. Netanel, N. W. “Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society.” 106 Yale L. J. 283. 1996. Patterson, L.R., and S. Lindberg. The Nature of Copyright: A Law of Users’ Rights. Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1991. Petridis, A. “Pop Will Eat Itself.” The Guardian (UK) 2003. 22 June 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,922797,00.html>. Prendergast, M. The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby – The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Rose, T. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2004. Sen. Rep. No. 1108, 60th Cong., 2nd Sess. 7. 1909. Superswell. “Horror Stories.” 17 April 2005 http://www.superswell.com/samplelaw/horror.html>. Waldron, J. “From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property.” 68 Chicago-Kent Law Review 842, 1998.
 Endnotes
 
 1 Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985).
 
 2 From personal correspondence with Curve dated 16 September 2004.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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43

Kuppers, Petra. "“your darkness also/rich and beyond fear”: Community Performance, Somatic Poetics and the Vessels of Self and Other." M/C Journal 12, no. 5 (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.203.

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Abstract:
“Communicating deep feeling in linear solid blocks of print felt arcane, a method beyond me” — Audre Lorde in an interview with Adrienne Rich (Lorde 87) How do you disclose? In writing, in spoken words, in movements, in sounds, in the quiet energetic vibration and its trace in discourse? Is disclosure a narrative account of a self, or a poetic fragment, sent into the world outside the sanction of a story or another recognisable form (see fig. 1)?These are the questions that guide my exploration in this essay. I meditate on them from the vantage point of my own self-narrative, as a community performance practitioner and writer, a poet whose artistry, in many ways, relies on the willingness of others to disclose, to open themselves, and yet who feels ambivalent about narrative disclosures. What I share with you, reader, are my thoughts on what some may call compassion fatigue, on boredom, on burn-out, on the inability to be moved by someone’s hard-won right to story her life, to tell his narrative, to disclose her pain. I find it ironic that for as long as I can remember, my attention has often wandered when someone tells me their story—how this cancer was diagnosed, what the doctors did, how she coped, how she garnered support, how she survived, how that person died, how she lived. The story of how addiction took over her life, how she craved, how she hated, how someone sponsored her, listened to her, how she is making amends, how she copes, how she gets on with her life. The story of being born this way, being prodded this way, being paraded in front of doctors just like this, being operated on, being photographed, being inappropriately touched, being neglected, being forgotten, being unloved, being lonely. Listening to these accounts, my attention does wander, even though this is the heart blood of my chosen life—these are the people whose company I seek, with whom I feel comfortable, with whom I make art, with whom I make a life, to whom I disclose my own stories. But somehow, when we rehearse these stories in each others’s company (for rehearsal, polishing, is how I think of storytelling), I drift. In this performance-as-research essay about disclosure, I want to draw attention to what does draw my attention in community art situations, what halts my drift, and allows me to find connection beyond a story that is unique and so special to this individual, but which I feel I have heard so many times. What grabs me, again and again, lies beyond the words, beyond the “I did this… and that… and they did this… and that,” beyond the story of hardship and injury, recovery and overcoming. My moment of connection tends to happen in the warmth of this hand in mine. It occurs in the material connection that seems to well up between these gray eyes and my own deep gaze. I can feel the skin change its electric tonus as I am listening to the uncoiling account. There’s a timbre in the voice that I follow, even as I lose the words. In the moment of verbal disclosure, physical intimacy changes the time and space of encounter. And I know that the people I sit with are well aware of this—it is not lost on them that my attention isn’t wholly focused on the story they are telling, that I will have forgotten core details when next we work together. But they are also aware, I believe, of those moments of energetic connect that happen through, beyond and underneath the narrative disclosure. There is a physical opening occurring here, right now, when I tell this account to you, when you sit by my side and I confess that I can’t always keep the stories of my current community participants straight, that I forget names all the time, that I do not really wish to put together a show with lots of testimony, that I’d rather have single power words floating in space.Figure 1. Image: Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang. Performer: Neil Marcus.”water burns sun”. Burning. 2009. Orientation towards the Frame: A Poetics of VibrationThis essay speaks about how I witness the uncapturable in performance, how the limits of sharing fuel my performance practice. I also look at the artistic processes of community performance projects, and point out traces of this other attention, this poetics of vibration. One of the frames through which I construct this essay is a focus on the formal in practice: on an attention to the shapes of narratives, and on the ways that formal experimentation can open up spaces beyond and beneath the narratives that can sound so familiar. An attention to the formal in community practice is often confused with an elitist drive towards quality, towards a modern or post-modern play with forms that stands somehow in opposition to how “ordinary people” construct their lives. But there are other ways to think about “the formal,” ways to question the naturalness with which stories are told, poems are written, the ease of an “I”, the separation between self and those others (who hurt, or love, or persecute, or free), the embedment of the experience of thought in institutions of thinking. Elizabeth St. Pierre frames her own struggle with burn-out, falling silent, and the need to just keep going even if the ethical issues involved in continuing her research overwhelm her. She charts out her thinking in reference to Michel Foucault’s comments on how to transgress into a realm of knowing that stretches a self, allows it “get free of oneself.”Getting free of oneself involves an attempt to understand the ‘structures of intelligibility’ (Britzman, 1995, p. 156) that limit thought. Foucault (1984/1985) explaining the urgency of such labor, says, ‘There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all’ (p. 8). (St. Pierre 204)Can we think outside the structure of story, outside the habits of thought that make us sense and position ourselves in time and space, in power and knowledge? Is there a way to change the frame, into a different format, to “change our mind”? And even if there is not, if the structures of legibility always contain what we can think, there might be riches in that borderland, the bordercountry towards the intelligible, the places where difference presses close in an uncontained, unstoried way. To think differently, to get free of oneself: all these concerns resonate deeply with me, and with the ways that I wish to engage in community art practice. Like St. Pierre, I try to embrace Deleuzian, post-structuralist approaches to story and self:The collective assemblage is always like the murmur from which I take my proper name, the constellation of voices, concordant or not, from which I draw my voice. […] To write is perhaps to bring this assemblage of the unconscious to the light of day, to select the whispering voices, to gather the tribes and secret idioms from which I extract something I call myself (moi). I is an order word. (Deleuze and Guattari 84).“I” wish to perform and to write at the moment when the chorus of the voices that make up my “I” press against my skin, from the inside and the outside, query the notion of ‘skin’ as barrier. But can “I” stay in that vibrational moment? This essay will not be an exercise in quotation marks, but it is an essay of many I’s, and—imagine you see this essay performed—I invite the vibration of the hand gestures that mark small breaches in the air next to my head as I speak.Like St. Pierre, I get thrown off those particular theory horses again and again. But curiosity drives me on, and it is a curiosity nourished not by the absence of (language) connection, by isolation, but by the fullness of those movements of touch and density I described above. That materiality of the tearful eye gaze, the electricity of those fine skin hairs, the voice shivering me: these are not essentialist connections that somehow reveal or disclose a person to me, but these matters make the boundaries of “me” and “person” vibrate. Disclose here becomes the density of living itself, the flowing, non-essential process of shaping lives together. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have called this bordering “deterritorialization,” always already bound to the reterritorialisation that allows the naming of the experience. Breath-touch on the limits of territories.This is not a shift from verbal to a privileging of non-verbal communication, finding richness and truth in one and less in the other. Non-verbal communication can be just as conventional as spoken language. When someone’s hand reaches out to touch someone who is upset, that gesture can feel ingrained and predictable, and the chain of caretaking that is initiated by the gesture can even hinder the flow of disclosure the crying or upset person might be engaged in. Likewise, I believe the common form of the circle, one I use in nearly every community session I lead, does not really create more community than another format would engender. The repetition of the circle just has something very comforting, it can allow all participants to drop into a certain kind of ease that is different from the everyday, but the rules of that ease are not open—circles territorialise as much as they de-territorialise: here is an inside, here an outside. There is nothing inherently radical in them. But circles might create a radical shift in communication situations when they break open other encrusted forms—an orientation to a leader, a group versus individual arrangement, or the singularity of islands out in space. Circles brings lots of multiples into contact, they “gather the tribes.” What provisional I’s we extract from them in each instance is our ethical challenge.Bodily Fantasies on the Limit: BurningEven deeply felt inner experiences do not escape the generic, and there is lift available in the vibration between the shared fantasy and the personal fantasy. I lead an artists’ collective, The Olimpias, and in 2008/2009, we created Burning, a workshop and performance series that investigated cell imagery, cancer imagery, environmental sensitivity and healing journeys through ritual-based happenings infused with poetry, dramatic scenes, Butoh and Contact Improvisation dances, and live drawing (see: http://www.olimpias.org/).Performance sites included the Subterranean Arthouse, Berkeley, July and October 2009, the Earth Matters on Stage Festival, Eugene, Oregon, May 2009, and Fort Worden, Port Townsend, Washington State, August 2009. Participants for each installation varied, but always included a good percentage of disabled artists.(see fig. 2).Figure 2. Image: Linda Townsend. Performers: Participants in the Burning project. “Burning Action on the Beach”. Burning. 2009. In the last part of these evening-long performance happenings, we use meditation techniques to shift the space and time of participants. We invite people to lie down or otherwise become comfortable (or to observe in quiet). I then begin to lead the part of the evening that most closely dovetails with my personal research exploration. With a slow and reaching voice, I ask people to breathe, to become aware of the movement of breath through their bodies, and of the hollows filled by the luxuriating breath. Once participants are deeply relaxed, I take them on journeys which activate bodily fantasies. I ask them to breathe in colored lights (and leave the specific nature of the colors to them). I invite participants to become cell bodies—heart cells, liver cells, skin cells—and to explore the properties and sensations of these cell environments, through both internal and external movement. “What is the surface, what is deep inside, what does the granular space of the cell feel like? How does the cell membrane move?” When deeply involved in these explorations, I move through the room and give people individual encounters by whispering to them, one by one—letting them respond bodily to the idea that their cell encounters alchemical elements like gold and silver, lead or mercury, or other deeply culturally laden substances like oil or blood. When I am finished with my individual instruction to each participant, all around me, people are moving gently, undulating, contracting and expanding, their eyes closed and their face full of concentration and openness. Some have dropped out of the meditation and are sitting quietly against a wall, observing what is going on around them. Some move more than others, some whisper quietly to themselves.When people are back in spoken-language-time, in sitting-upright-time, we all talk about the experiences, and about the cultural body knowledges, half-forgotten healing practices, that seem to emerge like Jungian archetypes in these movement journeys. During the meditative/slow movement sequence, some long-standing Olimpias performers in the room had imagined themselves as cancer cells, and gently moved with the physical imagery this brought to them. In my meditation invitations during the participatory performance, I do not invite community participants to move as cancer cells—it seems to me to require a more careful approach, a longer developmental period, to enter this darkly signified state, even though Olimpias performers do by no means all move tragically, darkly, or despairing when entering “cancer movement.” In workshops in the weeks leading up to the participatory performances, Olimpias collaborators entered these experiences of cell movement, different organ parts, and cancerous movement many times, and had time to debrief and reflect on their experiences.After the immersion exercise of cell movement, we ask people how it felt like to lie and move in a space that also held cancer cells, and if they noticed different movement patterns, different imaginaries of cell movement, around them, and how that felt. This leads to rich discussions, testimonies of poetic embodiment, snippets of disclosures, glimpses of personal stories, but the echo of embodiment seems to keep the full, long stories at bay, and outside of the immediacy of our sharing. As I look around myself while listening, I see some hands intertwined, some gentle touches, as people rock in the memory of their meditations.nowyour light shines very brightlybut I want youto knowyour darkness alsorichand beyond fear (Lorde 87)My research aim with these movement meditation sequences is not to find essential truths about human bodily imagination, but to explore the limits of somatic experience and cultural expression, to make artful life experiential and to hence create new tools for living in the chemically saturated world we all inhabit.I need to add here that these are my personal aims for Burning—all associated artists have their own journey, their own reasons for being involved, and there is no necessary consensus—just a shared interest in transformation, the cultural images of disease, disability and addiction, the effects of invasion and touch in our lives, and how embodied poetry can help us live. (see fig. 3). For example, a number of collaborators worked together in the participatory Burning performances at the Subterranean Arthouse, a small Butoh performance space in Berkeley, located in an old shop, complete with an open membrane into the urban space—a shop-window and glass door. Lots of things happen with and through us during these evenings, not just my movement meditations.One of my colleagues, Sadie Wilcox, sets up live drawing scenarios, sketching the space between people. Another artist, Harold Burns, engages participants in contact dance, and invites a crossing of boundaries in and through presence. Neil Marcus invites people to move with him, gently, and blindfolded, and to feel his spastic embodiment and his facility with tender touch. Amber diPietra’s poem about cell movement and the journeys from one to another sounds out in the space, set to music by Mindy Dillard. What I am writing about here is my personal account of the actions I engage in, one facet of these evenings—choreographing participants’ inner experiences.Figure 3. Image: Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang. Performers: Artists in the Burning project. “water burns sun”. Burning. 2009. My desires echo Lorde’s poem: “I want you”—there’s a sensual desire in me when I set up these movement meditation scenes, a delight in an erotic language and voice touch that is not predicated on sexual contact, but on intimacy, and on the borderlines, the membranes of the ear and the skin; ‘to know’—I continue to be intrigued and obsessed, as an artist and as a critic, by the way people envision what goes on inside them, and find agency, poetic lift, in mobilising these knowledges, in reaching from the images of bodies to the life of bodies in the world. ‘your darkness also’—not just the bright light, no, but also the fears and the strengths that hide in the blood and muscle, in the living pulsing shadow of the heart muscle pumping away, in the dark purple lobe of the liver wrapping itself around my middle and purifying, detoxifying, sifting, whatever sweeps through this body.These meditative slow practices can destabilise people. Some report that they experience something quite real, quite deep, and that there is transformation to be gained in these dream journeys. But the framing within which the Burning workshops take place question immediately the “authentic” of this experiential disclosure. The shared, the cultural, the heritage and hidden knowledge of being encultured quickly complicate any essence. This is where the element of formal enframing enters into the immediacy of experience, and into the narration of a stable, autonomous “I.” Our deepest cellular experience, the sounds and movements we listen to when we are deeply relaxed, are still cultured, are still shared, come to us in genres and stable image complexes.This form of presentation also questions practices of self-disclosure that participate in trauma narratives through what Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman has called “impression management” (208). Goffman researched the ways we play ourselves as roles in specific contexts, how we manage acts of disclosure and knowledge, how we deal with stigma and stereotype. Impression management refers to the ways people present themselves to others, using conscious or unconscious techniques to shape their image. In Goffman’s framing of these acts of self-presentation, performance and dramaturgical choices are foregrounded: impression management is an interactive, dynamic process. Disclosure becomes a semiotic act, not a “natural,” unfiltered display of an “authentic” self, but a complex engagement with choices. The naming and claiming of bodily trauma can be part of the repertoire of self-representation, a (stock-)narrative that enables recognition and hence communication. The full traumatic narrative arc (injury, reaction, overcoming) can here be a way to manage the discomfort of others, to navigate potential stigma.In Burning, by-passing verbal self-disclosure and the recitation of experience, by encountering ourselves in dialogue with our insides and with foreign elements in this experiential way, there is less space for people to speak managed, filtered personal truths. I find that these truths tend to either close down communication if raw and direct, or become told as a story in its complete, polished arc. Either form leaves little space for dialogue. After each journey through bodies, cells, through liver and heart, breath and membrane, audience members need to unfold for themselves what they felt, and how that felt, and how that relates to the stories of cancer, environmental toxins and invasion that they know.It is not fair. We should be able to have dialogues about “I am poisoned, I live with environmental sensitivities, and they constrict my life,” “I survived cancer,” “I have multiple sclerosis,” “I am autistic,” “I am addicted to certain substances,” “I am injured by certain substances.” But tragedy tugs at these stories, puts their narrators into the realm of the inviolate, as a community quickly feel sorry for these persons, or else feels attacked by them, in particular if one does not know how to help. Yes, we know this story: we can manage her identity for her, and his social role can click into fixity. The cultural weight of these narratives hinders flow, become heavily stigmatised. Many contemporary writers on the subjects of cancer and personhood recognise the (not always negative) aspects of this stigma, and mobilise them in their narratives. As Marisa Acocella Marchetto in the Cancer-Vixen: A True Story puts it: ‘Play the cancer card!’ (107). The cancer card appears in this graphic novel memoir in the form of a full-page spoof advertisement, and the card is presented as a way to get out of unwanted social obligations. The cancer card is perfectly designed to create the communal cringe and the hasty retreat. If you have cancer, you are beyond the pale, and ordinary rules of behavior do no longer apply. People who experience these life-changing transformational diagnoses often know very well how isolating it can be to name one’s personal story, and many are very careful about how they manage disclosure, and know that if they choose to disclose, they have to manage other people’s discomfort. In Burning, stories of injury and hurt swing in the room with us, all of these stories are mentioned in our performance program, but none of them are specifically given individual voice in our performance (although some participants chose to come out in the sharing circle at the end of the event). No one owns the diagnoses, the identity of “survivor,” and the presence of these disease complexes are instead dispersed, performatively enacted and brought in experiential contact with all members of our temporary group. When you leave our round, you most likely still do not know who has multiple sclerosis, who has substance addiction issues, who is sensitive to environmental toxins.Communication demands territorialisation, and formal experimentation alone, unanchored in lived experience, easily alienates. So how can disclosure and the storytelling self find some lift, and yet some connection, too? How can the Burning cell imaginary become both deep, emotionally rich and formal, pointing to its constructed nature? That’s the question that each of the Olimpias’ community performance experiments begins with.How to Host a Past Collective: Setting Up a CirclePreceding Burning, one of our recent performance investigations was the Anarcha Project. In this multi-year, multi-site project, we revisited gynecological experiments performed on slave women in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1840s, by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology.” We did so not to revictimise historical women as suffering ciphers, or stand helpless at the site of historical injury. Instead, we used art-based methods to investigate the heritage of slavery medicine in contemporary health care inequalities and women’s health care. As part of the project, thousands of participants in multiple residencies across the U.S. shared their stories with the project leaders—myself, Aimee Meredith Cox, Carrie Sandahl, Anita Gonzalez and Tiye Giraud. We collected about two hundred of these fragments in the Anarcha Anti-Archive, a website that tries, frustratingly, to undo the logic of the ordered archive (Cox et al. n.p).The project closed in 2008, but I still give presentations with the material we generated. But what formal methods can I select, ethically and responsibly, to present the multivocal nature of the Anarcha Project, given that it is now just me in the conference room, given that the point of the project was the intersection of multiple stories, not the fetishisation of individual ones? In a number of recent presentations, I used a circle exercise to engage in fragmented, shrouded disclosure, to keep privacies safe, and to find material contact with one another. In these Anarcha rounds, we all take words into our mouths, and try to stay conscious to the nature of this act—taking something into our mouth, rather than acting out words, normalising them into spoken language. Take this into your mouth—transgression, sacrament, ritual, entrainment, from one body to another.So before an Anarcha presentation, I print out random pages from our Anarcha Anti-Archive. A number of the links in the website pull up material through chance procedures (a process implemented by Olimpias collaborator Jay Steichmann, who is interested in digital literacies). So whenever you click that particular link, you get to a different page in the anti-archive, and you can not retrace your step, or mark you place in an unfolding narrative. What comes up are poems, story fragments, images, all sent in in response to cyber Anarcha prompts. We sent these prompts during residencies to long-distance participants who could not physically be with us, and many people, from Wales to Malaysia, sent in responses. I pull up a good number of these pages, combined with some of the pages written by the core collaborators of our project. In the sharing that follows, I do not speak about the heart of the project, but I mark that I leave things unsaid. Here is what I do not say in the moment of the presentation—those medical experiments were gynecological operations without anesthesia, executed to close vaginal fistula that were leaking piss and shit, executed without anesthesia not because it was not available, but because the doctor did not believe that black women felt pain. I can write this down, here, in this essay, as you can now stop for a minute if you need to collect yourself, as you listen to what this narrative does to your inside. You might feel a clench deep down in your torso, like many of us did, a kinesthetic empathy that translates itself across text, time and space, and which became a core choreographic element in our Anarcha poetics.I do not speak about the medical facts directly in a face-to-face presentation where there is no place to hide, no place to turn away. Instead, I point to a secret at the heart of the Anarcha Project, and explain where all the medical and historical data can be found (in the Anarcha Project essay, “Remembering Anarcha,” in the on-line performance studies journal Liminalities site, free and accessible to all without subscription, now frequently used in bioethics education (see: http://www.liminalities.net/4-2). The people in the round, then, have only a vague sense of what the project is about, and I explain why this formal frame appears instead of open disclosure. I ask their permission to proceed. They either give it to me, or else our circle becomes something else, and we speak about performance practices and formal means of speaking about trauma instead.Having marked the space as one in which we agree on a specific framework or rule, having set up a space apart, we begin. One by one, raw and without preamble, people in the circle read what they have been given. The meaning of what they are reading only comes to them as they are reading—they have had little time to familiarise themselves with the words beforehand. Someone reads a poem about being held as a baby by one’s mother, being accepted, even through the writer’s body is so different. Someone reads about the persistence of shame. Someone reads about how incontinence is so often the borderline for independent living in contemporary cultures—up to here, freedom; past this point, at the point of leakage, the nursing home. Someone reads about her mother’s upset about digging up that awful past again. Someone reads about fibroid tumors in African-American women. Someone reads about the Venus Hottentott. Someone begins to cry (most recently at a Feminisms and Rhetorics conference), crying softly, and there is no knowing about why, but there is companionship, and quiet contemplation, and it is ok. These presentations start with low-key chatting, setting up the circle, and end the same way—once we have made our way around, once our fragments are read out, we just sit and talk, no “presentation-mode” emerges, and no one gets up into high drama. We’ve all taken strange things into our mouths, talked of piss and shit and blood and race and oppression and love and survival. Did we get free of ourselves, of the inevitability of narrative, in the attention to articulation, elocution, the performance of words, even if just for a moment? Did we taste the words on our tongues, material physical traces of a different form of embodiment? Container/ConclusionThe poet Anne Carson attended one of our Anarcha presentations, and her comments to us that evening helped to frame our subsequent work for me—she called our work creating a container, a vessel for experience, without sharing the specifics of that experience. I have since explored this image further, thought about amphorae as commemorative vases, thought of earth and clay as materials, thought of the illustrations on ancient vessels, on pattern and form, flow and movement. The vessel as matter: deterritorialising and reterritorialising, familiar and strange, shaping into form, and shaped out of formlessness, fired in the light and baked in the earth’s darkness, hardened only to crumble and crack again with the ages, returning to dust. These disclosures are in time and space—they are not narratives that create an archive or a body of knowledge. They breathe, and vibrate, and press against skin. What can be contained, what leaks, what finds its way through the membrane?These disclosures are traces of life, and I can touch them. I never get bored by them. Come and sit by my side, and we share in this river flow border vessel cell life.ReferencesBritzman, Deborah P. "Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or, Stop Reading Straight." Educational Theory 45:2 (1995): 151–165. Burning. The Olimpias Project. Berkley; Eugene; Fort Worden. May-October, 2009Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Vol. 2. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1985.Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor, 1969Kuppers, Petra. “Remembering Anarcha: Objection in the Medical Archive.” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4.2 (2006): n.p. 24 July 2009 < http://liminalities.net/4-2 >.Cox, Aimee Meredith, Tiye Giraud, Anita Gonzales, Petra Kuppers, and Carrie Sandahl. “The Anarcha-Anti-Archive.” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4.2 (2006): n.p. 24 July 2009 < http://liminalities.net/4-2 >.Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: The Crossing Press, 1984.Marchetto, Marisa Acocella. Cancer Vixen: A True Story. New York: Knopf, 2006.St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams. “Circling the Text: Nomadic Writing Practices.” Qualitative Inquiry 3.4 (1997): 403–18.
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Dwyer, Simon. "Highlighting the Build: Using Lighting to Showcase the Sydney Opera House." M/C Journal 20, no. 2 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1184.

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IntroductionThe Sydney Opera House is Australia’s, if not the world’s, most recognisable building. It is universally recognised as an architectural icon and as a masterpiece of the built environment, which has captured the imagination of many (Commonwealth of Australia 4). The construction of the Sydney Opera House, between 1959 and 1973, utilised many ground-breaking methods and materials which, together, pushed the boundaries of technical possibilities to the limits of human knowledge at the time (Commonwealth of Australia 36, 45). Typical investigations into the Sydney Opera House focus on its architects, the materials, construction, or the events that occur on its stages. The role of the illumination, in the perception and understanding of Australia’s most famous performing arts centre, is an under-investigated aspect of its construction and its use today (Dwyer Backstage Biography 1; Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 131).This article examines the illumination of the Sydney Opera House from the perspective of light as a construction material, another element that is used to ‘build’ the structure on Bennelong Point. This article examines the illumination from an historical view as Jørn Utzon’s (1918-2008) concepts for the building, including the lighting design intentions, were not all realised as he did not complete the project. The task of finishing this structure was allocated to the architectural cooperative of Hall, Todd & Littlemore who replaced Utzon in 1966. The Danish-born Utzon was appointed in January 1957 having won an international competition, from a field of over 230 entries, to design a national opera house for Sydney. He quickly began the task of resolving his design, transforming the roughly-sketched concepts presented in his competition entry, into detailed drawings that articulated how the opera house would be realised. The iteration of these concepts can be most succinctly identified in Utzon’s formal design reports to the Opera House Committee which are often referred to based on the colour of their cover design. The first report, the ‘red book’ was issued in 1958 with further developments of the architectural and services designs outlined in the ‘yellow book’ which followed in 1962. The last of the original architects’ publications was the Utzon Design Principles (2002) which was created as part of the reengagement process—between the Government of New South Wales and the Sydney Opera House with the original architect—that commenced in 1999.As with many modern buildings (such as Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center, Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church or Adrian D. Smith’ Burj Khalifa), concrete was selected to form the basic structural element of the Sydney Opera House. Working with the, now internationally-renowned, engineering firm Ove Arup and Partners, Utzon designed some of the most significant shapes and finishes that have become synonymous with the site. The concrete elements range from basic blade walls with lustrous finishes to the complex, shape-changing beams that rise from under the monumental stairs and climb to terminate in the southern foyers. Thus, demonstrating the use of concrete as both a structural element and a high quality architectural finish. Another product used throughout the Sydney Opera House is granite. As a hardwearing stone, it is used in a crushed form as part of the precast panels that line the walls and internal flooring and as setts on the forecourt. As with the concrete the use of the same material inside and out blurs the distinction between interior and exterior. The forecourt forms a wide-open plaza before the building rises like a headland as it meets the harbour. The final, and most recognisable element is that of the shell (or roof) tiles. After many years of research Utzon settled on a simple mix of gloss and matt tiles of approximately 120mm square that, carefully arranged, produced a chevron shaped ‘lid’ and results in an effect likened to snow and ice (Commonwealth of Australia 51).These construction elements would all remain invisible if not illuminated by light, natural or artificial. This paper posits that the illumination reinforces the architecture of the structure and extends the architectural and experiential narratives of the Sydney Opera House across time and space. That, light is—like concrete, granite and tiles—a critical component of the Opera House’s build.Building a Narrative with LightIn creating the Sydney Opera House, Utzon set about harnessing natural and artificial illumination that are intrinsic parts of the human condition. Light shapes every facet of our lives from defining working and leisure hours to providing the mechanism for high speed communications and is, therefore, an obvious choice to reinforce the structure of the building and to link the built environment with the natural world that enveloped his creation. Light was to play a major role in the narrative of the Sydney Opera House starting from a patron’s approach to the site.Utzon’s staged approach to a performance at the Sydney Opera House is well documented, from the opening passages of the Descriptive Narrative (Utzon 1-2) to the Lighting Master Plan (Steensen Varming). The role of artificial light in the preparation of the audience extends beyond the simple visibility necessary to navigate the site. Light provides a linking element that guides an audience member along their ‘journey’ through several phases of transformation from the physicality of the city on the forecourt to “another world–a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) in the theatres. Utzon conceived of light as part of the storytelling process, expressing the building’s narrative in a way that allows illumination is to be so much more than signposts to points of activity such as cloaking areas, theatre entries and the like. The lighting was intended to delineate various stages on the ‘journey’ noted above, to reinforce the transition from one world to another such that the combination of light and architecture would provide a series of successive stimuli that would build until the crescendo of the performance itself. This supports the transition of the visitor from the world of the everyday into the narrative of the Sydney Opera House and a world of make believe. Yet, in providing a narrative between these two ‘worlds’ the lighting becomes an anchor—or an element held in suspension – a mediator in the tension between the city at the beginning of the ‘journey’ and the ‘other world’ of the performance at the end. There is a balance to be maintained between illuminating the Sydney Opera House so that it remains prominent in its harbour location, easily read as a distinct sculptural structure on the peninsular separate from, but still an essential part of, the city that lies beyond Circular Quay to the south. Utzon alludes to the challenges of crafting the illumination so that it meets these requirements, noting that the illumination of the broardwalks “must be compatible with the lighting on the approach roads” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 68) while maintaining that “the floodlit building will be the first and last impression for [… an audience] to receive” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). These lighting requirements are also tempered by the desire that the “night time [...] view will be all lights and reflections, [that] stretch all along the harbour for many miles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1) reinforcing the use of light as an anchor that provides both a point of reference and serves as a mediator of the Sydney Opera House’s place within the city.The narrative of the materials and elements that are combined to give the final, physical form its striking sensory presence is also told through light, in particular colour. Or, perhaps more precisely in an illumination sense, the accurate reproduction of colour and by extension accurate presentation of the construction materials used in the creation of the Sydney Opera House. Expression of the ‘truth’ in the materials he used was important for Utzon and the faithful representation of details such as the fine grains in timber and the smooth concrete finishes required careful lighting to enhance these features. When extended to the human occupants of the Sydney Opera House, there is a short, yet very descriptive instruction: the lighting is to give “life to the skin and hair on the human form in much the same way as the light from candles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Thus, the narrative of the materials and their quality was as important as the final structure and those who would occupy it. It is the role of light to build upon the story of the materials to contribute to the overall narrative of the Sydney Opera House.Building an Experience through IlluminationUtzon envisaged that light would do much more than provide illumination or tell the narrative of the materials he had selected – light was also to build a unique architectural experience for a patron. The experience of light was to be subtle; the architecture was to retain a position of centre stage, reinforced by, rather than ever replaced by, the illumination. In this way, concealed lighting was proposed which would be “designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of overall acoustic design” and “installed in carefully selected places based on knowledge gleaned from experimental work” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Through concealing the light source, the architecture did not become cluttered or over powered by a dazzling array of fixtures and fittings that detracted from the audience’s experiences. For instance, to illuminate the monumental steps, Utzon proposed that the fittings would be recessed into the handrails, while the bar and lounge areas would be lit from discreet fittings installed within the plywood ceiling panels (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 16) to create an experience of light that was unified across the site. In addition to the aesthetical improvements gained from the removal of the light sources from the field of view, unwanted glare is also reduced reinforcing the ‘whole’ of the architectural experience.During the time that Utzon was conceptualising the illumination of the Sydney Opera House, the Major Hall (what is now known as the Concert Hall) was envisaged as what might be considered as a modern multipurpose venue, one that could accommodate among other activities: symphonic concerts; opera; ballet and dance; choral concerts; pageants and mass meetings (NSW Department of Local Government 24). The Concert Hall was the terminus for the ‘journey’—where the actors and audience find themselves in the same space, the ‘other world’—“a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2). This other world was to sumptuously explode with rich colours “which uplift you in that festive mood, away from daily life, that you expect when you go to the theatre, a play, an opera or a concert” (Utzon Utzon Design Principles 34). These highly decorated and colourful finishes contrast with the white shells further highlighting the ‘journey’ that has taken place. Utzon proposed to use the illumination to reinforce this distance and provide the link between the natural colours of the raw materials used outside the theatre and highly decorated colours of the performance spaces.The lighting treatment of the theatres extended into the foyers and their public amenities to ensure that the lighting design contributed to the overall enhancement of a patron’s visit and delivered the experience of the ‘journey’ that was envisaged by Utzon (Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 130-32). This standardised approach was in concert with Utzon’s architectural philosophy where repetitive systems of construction elements were utilised, for instance, in the construction of the shells. Utzon clearly articulated this approach in The Descriptive Narrative, noting that “standard light fittings will be chosen […] to suit each location” (67), however the standardisation would not compromise other considerations of the space such as the acoustical performance, with Utzon noting that the “fittings for auditoria and rehearsal rooms must be of necessity, designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of over acoustic design” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Another parallel between the architectural development of the Sydney Opera House and Utzon’s approach to the lighting concepts was, uncommon at the time, his preference for prototyping and experimentation with lighting effects and various fittings (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). A sharp contrast to the usual practices of the day which relied upon more straightforward procurement processes with generic rather than tailored solutions. Peter Hall, of Hall, Todd & Littlemore, discussed the typical method of lighting design which was prevalent during the construction of the Sydney Opera House, as a method which “amounted to the electrical engineers laying out on a plan sufficient off-the-shelf light fittings to achieve the desired illumination levels […] the resulting effects were dull even if brightly lit” (Hall 180). Thus, Utzon’s careful approach to ensure that light and architecture were in harmony as “nothing is introduced into the scheme, before it has been carefully investigated and has proved to be the right solution to the problem” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) was highly innovative for its time.The use of light to provide an experience was not necessarily new, for example RSL Clubs, theme parks and department stores all used light to attract attention to their products and services, however the scale and proposed execution of these concepts was pioneering for Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Utzon’s concepts provided a highly experiential unified design to provide the patron with a unique architectural experience built through the careful use of light.Building the Scenery with LightArchitecture might be considered set design on a grand scale (for example see Raban, Rasmuseen and Read). Both architects and set designers are concerned with the relationship between the creative designs and the viewers and both set up opportunities for interactions between people (as actors or users) and structure. However, without light, the scene remains literally, in the dark, isolated from its surroundings and unperceetable to an audience.Utzon was acutely aware of the relationship between the Sydney Opera House and the city in which it stands. The positioning of the structure on the site is no accident and the interplay between the ‘sails’ and the sun is perhaps the most recognised lighting feature of the Sydney Opera House. By varying the angle of the shells, the reflections and the effects of the sunlight are constantly varying depending on the viewer’s position and focus. More importantly, these subtle variations in the light enhance the sculptural effect of the direct illumination and help create the effect of “matt snow and shining ice” (Commonwealth of Australia 51): the ‘shimmer of life’ so desired by Utzon as the sunlight strikes the ceramic tiles. This ‘shimmer’ is not the only natural lighting effect. The use of the different angles ensures variation in the light, clouds and resulting shadows to heighten interest and create an ever-changing scene that plays out on the shells as the sun moves across the sky, as Utzon notes, “something new goes on all the time and it is so important–this interplay is so important that together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes it a living thing” (Utzon Sydney Opera House 49). This scene is enhanced by the changing quality of the sunlight; the shells appear to be deep amber at first light their shadows long and faint before becoming shorter and stronger as the sun moves towards its midday position with the colour changing slowly to ‘pure’ white before the shadows change sides, the process reverses and they again disappear under the cover of darkness. Although the scene replays daily, the relative location of the sun and changing weather patterns ensure infinite variation in the effect.This changing scene, on a grand scale, with light as the central character is just as important as the theatrical performances taking place indoors on the stages. With a mobile audience, the detailing of the visual scene that is the structure becomes more important. The Sydney Opera House competes for attention with shipping movements in the harbour, the adjacent bridge with the ant-like procession of climbers and the activities of the city to the south. Utzon foresaw this noting that the “position on a peninsular, which is overlooked from all angles makes it important to maintain an all-round elevation. There can be no backsides to the building and nothing can be hidden from the view” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). The use of natural light to enhance the sculptural form and reinforce isolation of the structure on the peninsular, centre stage on the harbour is therefore not a coincidence. Utzon has deliberately harnessed the natural light to ensure that the Sydney Opera House is just as vibrant a performer as its surroundings. In this way, Utzon has used light to anchor the Sydney Opera House both in the city it serves and for the performances it houses.It is not just the natural light that is used as such an anchor point. Utzon planned for artificial lighting of the sails and surrounding site to ensure that after dark the ‘shimmer’ of the white tiles would be maintained with an equivalent, if manufactured, effect. For Utzon, the sculptural qualities of structure were important and should be clearly ‘read’ at night, even against a dark harbour on one side and the brighter city on the other. Through the use of artificial lighting, Utzon set the scene on Bennelong Point with the structure clearly centred in the set that is the Sydney skyline. This reinforced the notion that a journey into the Sydney Opera House was something special, a transition from the everyday to the ‘other’ world.ConclusionFor Utzon light was just as essential as concrete and other building materials for the design of the Sydney Opera House. The traditional bright lights of the stage had no place in the architectural illumination, replaced instead by a much more subtle, understated use of light, and indeed its absence. Utzon planned for the lighting to envelope an audience but not to smother them. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his project and in 1968 J.M. Waldram was eventually appointed to complete the lighting design. Waldram’s lighting solutions—many of which are still in place today—borrowed or significantly drew upon Utzon’s original illumination concepts, thus demonstrating their strength and timeless qualities. In this way light builds on the story of the structure, reinforcing the architecture of the building and extending the narratives of the construction elements used to build the Sydney Opera House.AcknowledgementsThe author acknowledges the assistance of Rachel Franks for her input on an early draft of this article and thanks the blind peer reviewers for their generous feedback and suggestions, of course any remain errors or omissions are my own. ReferencesCommonwealth of Australia. Sydney Opera House Nomination by the Government of Australia for Inscription on the World Heritage List. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2006.Cleaver, Jack. Surface and Textured Finishes for Concrete and Their Impact upon the Environment. Sydney: Steel Reinforcement Institute of Australia, 2005.Dwyer, Simon. A Backstage Biography of the Sydney Opera House. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) 2016: 1-10.———. “Utzon’s Use of Light to Influence the Audience’s Perception of the Sydney Opera House”. Inhabiting the Meta Visual: Contemporary Performance Themes. Eds. Helene Gee Markstein and Arthur Maria Steijn. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary P, 2016.Hall, Peter. Sydney Opera House: The Design Approach to the Building with Recommendations on Its Conservation. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1990.NSW Department of Local Government. An International Competition for a National Opera House at Bennelong Point Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Conditions and Program (“The ‘Brown’ Book”). Sydney: NSW Government Printer, 1957.Raban, Jonathan. Soft City. London: Picador, 2008.Rasmuseen, Steen. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1964.Read, Gary. “Theater of Public Space: Architectural Experimentation in the Théâtre de l'Espace (Theater of Space), Paris 1937.” Journal of Architectural Education 58.4 (2005): 53-62.Steensen Varming. Lighting Master Plan. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2007.Utzon, Jørn. Sydney Opera House: The Descriptive Narrative. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1965.———. The Sydney Opera House. Zodiac, 1965. 48-93.———. Untitled. (The ‘Red’ Book). Unpublished, 1958.———. Untitled. (The ‘Yellow’ Book). Unpublished, 1962.———. Utzon Design Principles. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2002.
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Collins-Gearing, Brooke. "Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledges in Australian Cinema." M/C Journal 13, no. 4 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.252.

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It was always based on a teenage love story between the two kids. One is a sniffer and one is not. It was designed for Central Australia because we do write these kids off there. Not only in town, where the headlines for the newspapers every second day is about ‘the problem,’ ‘the teenager problem of kids wandering the streets’ and ‘why don’t we send them back to their communities’ and that sort of stuff. Then there’s the other side of it. Elders in Aboriginal communities have been taught that kids who sniff get brain damage, so as soon as they see a kid sniffing they think ‘well they’re rubbish now, they’re brain damaged.’ So the elders are writing these kids off as well, as in ‘they are brain damaged so they’re no use now, they’ll be in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.’ This is not true, it’s just information for elders that hasn’t been given to them. That is the world I was working with. I wanted to show two incredibly beautiful children who have fought all their lives just to breathe and how incredibly strong they are and how we should be celebrating them and backing them up. I wanted to show that to Central Australia, and if the rest of Australia or the world get involved that’s fantastic. (Thornton in interview)Warwick Thornton’s 2009 film Samson and Delilah won the hearts of Australians as well as a bag of awards — and rightly so. It is a breathtaking film that, as review after review will tell you, is about the bravery, hopelessness, optimism and struggles of two Indigenous youths. In telling this story, the film extends, inverts and challenges notions of waste: wasted youths, wasted memory, wasted history, wasted opportunities, getting wasted and wasted voices. The narrative and the film as a cultural object raise questions about being discarded and “the inescapable fact that the experience of catastrophe in the past century can only be articulated from its remains, our history sifted from among these storied deposits.” (Neville and Villeneuve 2). The purpose of this paper is to examine reaction to the film, and where this reaction has positioned the film in Australian filmmaking history. In reading the reception of the film, I want to consider the film’s contribution to dialogical cultural representations by applying Marcia Langton’s idea of intersubjectivity.In his review, Sean Gorman argues thatThe main reason for the film’s importance is it enables white Australians who cannot be bothered reading books or engaging with Indigenous Australians in any way (other than watching them play football perhaps) the smallest sliver of a world that they have no idea about. The danger however in an engagement by settler society with a film like Samson and Delilah is that the potential shock of it may be too great, as the world which it portrays is, for many, an unknown Australia. Hence, for the settler filmgoer, the issues that the film discusses may be just too hard, too unreal, and their reaction will be limited to perhaps a brief bout of anger or astonishment followed by indifference. (81.1)It is this “engagement by settler society” that I wish to consider: how the voices that we hear speaking about the film are shifting attention from the ‘Other’ to more dialogical cultural representations, that is, non-Indigenous Australia’s emerging awareness of what has previously been wasted, discarded and positioned as valueless. I find Gorman’s surmise of white Australia’s shock with a world they know nothing about, and their potential power to return to a state of indifference about it, to be an interesting notion. Colonisation has created the world that Samson and Delilah live in, and the white community is as involved as the Indigenous one in the struggles of Samson and Delilah. If “settler” society is unaware, that unawareness comes from a history of non-Indigenous power that denies, excludes, and ignores. For this reason, Samson and Delilah is a dialogical cultural representation: it forces a space where the mainstream doesn’t just critique the Aborigine, but their own identity and involvement in the construction of that critique.Wasted VoicesWaste is a subjective notion. Items that some discard and perceive as valueless can be of importance to others, and then it also becomes a waste not to acknowledge or use that item. Rather than only focusing on the concept of “waste” as items or materials that are abandoned, I wish to consider the value in what is wasted. Centring my discussion of ‘waste’ on Thornton’s film provides the opportunity to view a wasteland of dispossession from another cultural and social perspective. Reaction to the film has constructed what could be perceived as an exceptional moment of engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices in dialogic intercultural dialogue. By revisiting early examples of ethnographic collaboration, and re-examining contemporary reactions to Samson and Delilah, I hope to forge a space for intervention in Australian film criticism that focuses on how ‘non-Aboriginality’ depends on ‘Aboriginality’ in a vast wasteland of colonial dispossession and appropriation.Many of the reviews of Thornton’s film (Buckmaster; Collins; Davis; Gorman; Hall; Isaac; Ravier; Redwood; Rennie; Simpson) pay attention to the emotional reaction of non-Indigenous viewers. Langton states that historically non-Indigenous audiences know ‘the Aborigine’ through non-Indigenous representations and monologues about Aboriginality: “In film, as in other media, there is a dense history of racist, distorted and often offensive representation of Aboriginal people” (24). The power to define has meant that ethnographic discourses in the early days of colonisation established their need to record Indigenous peoples, knowledges and traditions before they ‘wasted away.’ At the 1966 Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area, Stanley Hawes recounts how Ian Dunlop, an Australian documentary filmmaker, commented that “someone ought to film the aborigines of the Western Desert before it was too late. They had already almost all disappeared or gone to live on Mission stations” (69). This popular belief was one of the main motivations for research on Indigenous peoples and led to the notion of “smoothing the dying pillow,” which maintained that since Aborigines were a dying race, they should be allowed to all die out peacefully (Chandra-Shekeran 120). It was only the ‘real’ Aborigine that was valued: the mission Black, the urban Black, the assimilated Black, was a waste (Cowlishaw 108). These representations of Aboriginality depended on non-Indigenous people speaking about Aboriginality to non-Indigenous people. Yet, the impetus to speak, as well as what was being spoken about, and the knowledge being discussed and used, relied on Indigenous voices and presences. When Australia made its “important contribution to ethnographic films of its Aborigines” (McCarthy 81), it could not have done so without the involvement of Indigenous peoples. In her work on intersubjectivity, Langton describes “Aboriginality” as a “social thing” that is continually remade through dialogue, imagination, representation and interpretation. She describes three broad categories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal intersubjectivity: when Aboriginal people interact with other Aboriginal people; when non-Aboriginal people stereotype, iconise, and mythologise Aboriginal people without any Aboriginal contact; and when Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people engage in dialogue (81). Since W. Baldwin Spencer’s first ethnographic film, made between 1901 and 1912, which recorded the customs of the Aranda and neighbouring Central Australian tribes (McCarthy 80), the development of Australian cinema depended on these categories of intersubjectivity. While the success of Samson and Delilah could be interpreted as opening mainstream eyes to the waste that Indigenous communities have experienced since colonisation — wasted knowledge, wasted youths, wasted communities — it could also signify that what was once perceived by dominant non-Indigenous society as trash is now viewed as treasure. Much like the dot paintings which Delilah and her nana paint in exchange for a few bucks, and which the white man then sells for thousands of dollars, Aboriginal stories come to us out of context and filtered through appropriation and misinterpretation.Beyond its undeniable worth as a piece of top-notch filmmaking, Samson and Delilah’s value also resides in its ability to share with a wide audience, and in a language we can all understand, a largely untold story steeped in the painful truth of this country’s bloody history. (Ravier)In reading the many reviews of Samson and Delilah, it is apparent there is an underlying notion of such a story being secret, and that mainstream Australia chose to engage with the film’s dialogical representation because it was sharing this secret. When Ravier states that Aboriginal stories are distorted by appropriation and misinterpretation, I would add that such stories are examples of Langton’s second category of intersubjectivity: they reveal more about the processes of non-Indigenous constructions of ‘the Aborigine’ and the need to stereotype, iconise and mythologise. These processes have usually involved judgements about what is to be retained as ‘valuable’ in Indigenous cultures and knowledges, and what can be discarded — in the same way that the film’s characters Samson and Delilah are discarded. The secret that Samson and Delilah is sharing with white Australia has never been a secret: it is that non-Indigenous Australia chooses what it wants to see or hear. Wasted SilencesIn 1976 Michael Edols directed and produced Floating about the Mowanjum communities experiences of colonisation, mission life and resistance. That same year Alessandro Cavadini directed and Carolyn Strachan produced Protected, a dramatised documentary about life on the Queensland Aboriginal reserve of Palm Island — “a dumping ground for unwanted persons or those deemed to be in need of ‘protection’” (Treole 38). Phillip Noyce’s Backroads, a story about the hardships facing a young man from a reserve in outback New South Wales, was released in 1977. In 1979, Essie Coffey produced and directed My Survival as an Aboriginal, where she documented her community’s struggles living under white domination. Two Laws, a feature film made by four of the language groups around Borroloola in 1981, examines the communities’ histories of massacre, dispossession and institutionalisation. These are just some of many films that have dealt with the ‘secrets’ about Indigenous peoples. In more recent times the work of Noyce, Rolf de Heer, Stephen Johnson, Iven Sen, Rachel Perkins and Romaine Moreton, to name only a few, have inspired mainstream engagement with films representing Indigenous experiences and knowledges. “We live in a world in which, increasingly, people learn of their own and other cultures and histories through a range of visual media — film, television, and video,” writes Faye Ginsburg (5). Changing understandings of culture and representation means that there appears to be a shift away from the “monologic, observational and privileged Western gaze” towards more dialogic, reflexive and imaginative mediation. Perhaps Samson and Delilah’s success is partly due to its contribution to social action through compelling the non-Indigenous viewer to “revise our comfortable and taken for granted narrative conventions that fetishise the text and reify ‘culture’ and ‘cultural difference.’ Instead, we — as producers, audiences, and ethnographers — are challenged to comprehend the multiple ways that media operate as a site where culture is produced, contested, mediated and continually re-imagined” (Ginsburg 14). In his review, Tom Redwood writes about the filmLike life in the desert, everything is kept to a minimum here and nothing is wasted. ... Perhaps it took an Indigenous filmmaker from Alice Springs to do this, to lead the way in reinstating meaningfulness and honesty as core values in Australian cinema. But, whatever the case, Thornton's Indigenous heritage won't make his difficult vision any easier for local audiences to swallow. Most Australians aren't used to this degree of seriousness at the movies and though many here will embrace Samson and Delilah, there will no doubt also be a minority who, unable to reject the film as a cultural curiosity, will resist its uncompromising nature with cries of 'pessimism!' or even 'reverse-racism!’ (28-29)Perhaps the film’s success has to do with the way the story is told? — “everything kept to a minimum” and “nothing is wasted.” In attempts to construct Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal intersubjectivity in previous representations perhaps language, words, English got in the way of communication? For mainstream white Australian society’s engagement in dialogic representations, for Indigenous voices to speak and be heard, for non-Indigenous monologues to be challenged, perhaps silence was called for? As the reviews for the film have emphasised, non-Indigenous reactions contribute to the dialogic nature of the film, its story, as well as its positioning as a site of cultural meaning, social relations, and power. Yet even while critiquing constructions of Aboriginality, non-Aboriginality has historically remained uncritiqued—non-Aboriginal endorsement and reaction is discussed, but what this reaction and engagement, or lack of engagement (whether because of ignorance, unawareness, or racism) reveals is not. That is, non-Aboriginality has not had to critique the power it has to continue to remain ignorant of stories about wasted Indigenous lives. Thornton’s film appears to have disrupted this form of non-engagement.With the emergence of Indigenous media and Indigenous media makers, ethnographic films have been reconceptualised in terms of aesthetics, cultural observations and epistemological processes. By re-exploring the history of ethnographic film making and shifting attention from constructions of the ‘other’ to reception by the mainstream, past films, past representations of colonisation, and past dialogues will not be wasted. With the focus on constructing Aboriginality, the cultural value of non-Aboriginality has remained unquestioned and invisible. By re-examining the reactions of mainstream Australians over the last one hundred years in light of the success of Samson and Delilah, cultural and historical questions about ‘the Aborigine’ can be reframed so that the influence Indigenous discourses have in Australian nation-building will be more apparent. The reception of Samson and Delilah signifies the transformational power in wasted voices, wasted dialogues and the wasted opportunities to listen. Wasted DialoguesFelicity Collins argues that certain “cinematic events that address Indigenous-settler relations do have the capacity to galvanise public attention, under certain conditions” (65). Collins states that after recent historical events, mainstream response to Aboriginal deprivation and otherness has evoked greater awareness of “anti-colonial politics of subjectivity” (65). The concern here is with mainstream Australia dismantling generations of colonialist representations and objectifications of the ‘other.’ What also needs to be re-examined is the paradox and polemic of how reaction to Aboriginal dispossession and deprivation is perceived. Non-Indigenous reaction remains a powerful framework for understanding, viewing and positioning Indigenous presence and representation — the power to see or not to see, to hear or to ignore. Collins argues that Samson and Delilah, along with Australia (Luhrmann, 2009) and First Australians (Perkins, 2008), are national events in Australian screen culture and that post-apology films “reframe a familiar iconography so that what is lost or ignored in the incessant flow of media temporality is precisely what invites an affective and ethical response in cinematic spaces” (75).It is the notion of reframing what is lost or ignored to evoke “ethical responses” that captures my attention; to shift the gaze from Aboriginal subjectivity, momentarily, to non-Aboriginal subjectivity and examine how choosing to discard or ignore narratives of violence and suffering needs to be critiqued as much as the film, documentary or representation of Indigenality. Perhaps then we can start to engage in dialogues of intersubjectivity rather than monologues about Aboriginality.I made [Samson and Delilah] for my mob but I made sure that it can work with a wider audience as well, and it’s just been incredible that it’s been completely embraced by a much wider audience. It’s interesting because as soon as you knock down that black wall between Aboriginals and white Australia, a film like this does become an Australian film and an Australian story. Not an Aboriginal story but a story about Australians, in a sense. It’s just as much a white story as it is a black one when you get to that position. (Thornton in interview)When we “get to that position” described by Thornton, intercultural and intersubjective dialogue allows both Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality to co-exist. When a powerful story of Indigenous experiences and representations becomes perceived as an Australian story, it provides a space for what has historically been ignored and rendered invisible to become visible. It offers a different cultural lens for all Australians to question and critique notions of value and waste, to re-assess what had been relegated to the wasteland by ethnographic editing and Westernised labels. Ever since Spencer, Melies, Abbie and Elkin decided to retain an image of Aboriginality on film, which they did with specific purposes and embedded values, it has been ‘the Aborigine’ that has been dissected and discussed. It would be a waste not to open this historiography up to include mainstream reaction, or lack of reaction, in the development of cultural and cinematic critique. A wasteland is often perceived as a dumping ground, but by re-visiting that space and unearthing, new possibilities are discovered in that wasteland, and more complex strategies for intersubjectivity are produced. At the centre of Samson and Delilah is the poverty and loss that Indigenous communities experience on a daily basis. The experiences endured by the main characters are not new or recent ones and whether cinematic reception of them produces guilt, pity, sympathy, empathy, fear or defensiveness, it is the very potential to be able to react that needs to be critiqued. As Williamson Chang points out, the “wasteland paradigm is invisible to those embedded in its structure” (852). By looking more closely at white society’s responses in order to discern more clearly if they are motivated by feelings that their wealth—whether material, cultural or social—or their sense of belonging is being challenged or reinforced then ruling values and epistemologies are challenged and dialogic negotiations engaged. If dominant non-Indigenous society has the power to classify Indigenous narratives and representation as either garbage or something of value, then colonialist structures remain intact. If they have the self-reflexive power to question their own response to Indigenous narratives and representations, then perhaps more anti-colonial discourses emerge. Notions of value and waste are tied to cultural hierarchies, and it is through questioning how a dominant culture determines value that processes of transformation and mediation take place and the intersubjective dialogue sparked by Samson and Delilah can continueIn her review of Samson and Delilah, Therese Davis suggests that the film brings people closer to truthfulness, forcing the audience to engage with that realism: “those of us ‘outside’ of the community looking in can come to know ourselves differently through the new languages of this film, both cultural and cinematic. Reformulating the space of the national from an ‘insider,’ Aboriginal community-based perspective, the film positions its spectators, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, in a shared space, a space that allows for new forms of attachment, involvement and self-knowledge, new lines of communication.” Davis goes on to caution that while the film is groundbreaking, the reviews situating the film as what Australian cinema should be need to be mindful of feeding “notions of anti-diversity, which “is an old debate in Australian Cinema Studies, but in this instance anti-diversity is doubly problematic because it also runs the risk of narrowly defining Indigenous cinema.” The danger, historically, is that anything Indigenous, has always been narrowly defined by the mainstream and yes, to continue to limit Indigenous work in any medium is colonising and problematic. However, rather than just caution against this reaction, I am suggesting that reaction itself be critiqued. While currently contemporary mainstream response to Samson and Delilah is one of adoration, is the centre from which it comes the same centre which less than fifty years ago critiqued Indigenous Australians as a savage, noble, and/or dying race wasting away? Davis writes that the film constructs a new “relation” in Australian cinema but that it should not be used as a marker against which “all new (and old) Indigenous cinema is measured.” This concern resembles, in part, my concern that until recently mainstream society has constructed their own markers of Aboriginal cultural authenticity, deciding what is to be valued and what can be discarded. I agree with Davis’s caution, yet I cannot easily untangle the notion of ‘measuring.’ As a profound Australian film, certainly cinematic criticism will use it as a signifier of ‘quality.’ But by locating it singularly in the category of Indigenous cinema, the anti-colonial and discursive Indigenous discourses the film deploys and evokes are limited to the margins of Australian film and film critique once more. After considering the idea of measuring, and asking who would be conducting this process of measuring, my fear is that the gaze returns to ‘the Aborigine’ and the power to react remains solely, and invisibly, with the mainstream. Certainly it would be a waste to position the film in such a way that limits other Indigenous filmmakers’ processes, experiences and representations. I see no problem with forcing non-Indigenous filmmakers, audiences and perceptions to have to ‘measure’ up as a result of the film. It would be yet another waste if they didn’t, and Samson and Delilah was relegated to being simply a great ‘Indigenous Australian film,’ instead of a great Australian film that challenges, inverts and re-negotiates the construction of both Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality. By examining reaction to the film, and not just reading the film itself, discussions of dialogical cultural representation can include non-Aboriginality as well as Aboriginality. Films like this are designed to create a dialogue and I’m happy if someone doesn’t like the film and they tell me why, because we’re creating dialogue. We’re talking about this stuff and taking a step forward. That’s important. (Thornton)The dialogue opened up by the success of Thornton’s beautiful film is one that also explores non-Aboriginality. If we waste the opportunity that Samson and Delilah provides, then Australia’s ongoing cinematic history will remain a wasteland, and many more Indigenous voices, stories, and experiences will continue to be wasted.ReferencesBuckmaster, Luke. “Interview with Warwick Thornton”. Cinetology 12 May 2009. 18 Aug. 2010 ‹http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2009/05/12/interview-with-warwick-thornton-writerdirector-of-samson-delilah›.———. “Samson and Delilah Review: A Seminal Indigenous Drama of Gradual and Menacing Beauty”. Cinetology 6 May 2009. 14 June 2010 ‹http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2009/05/06/samson-delilah-film-review-a-seminal-indigenous-drama-of-gradual-and-menacing-beauty›.Chang, Williamson, B. C. “The ‘Wasteland’ in the Western Exploitation of ‘Race’ and the Environment”. University of Colorado Law Review 849 (1992): 849-870.Chandra-Shekeran, Sangeetha. “Challenging the Fiction of the Nation in the ‘Reconciliation’ Texts of Mabo and Bringing Them Home”. The Australian Feminist Law Journal 11 (1998): 107-133.Collins, Felicity. “After the Apology: Reframing Violence and Suffering in First Australians, Australia and Samson and Delilah”. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24.3 (2010): 65-77.Cowlishaw, Gillian, K. “Censoring Race in ‘Post-Colonial’ Anthropology”. Critique of Anthropology 20.2 (2000): 101-123. Davis, Therese. “Love and Marginality in Samson and Delilah”. Senses of Cinema 57 (2009). 7 Jan. 2010 ‹http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/09/51/samson-and-delilah.html›. Ginsburg, Faye. “Culture/Media: A (Mild) Polemic”. Anthropology Today 10.2 (1994): 5-15.Gorman, Sean. “Review of Samson and Delilah”. History Australia 6.3 (2009): 81.1-81.2.Hall, Sandra. “Review of Samson and Delilah”. Sydney Morning Herald. 7 May 2009. Hawes, Stanley. “Official Government Production”. Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area. Canberra: Australian National Advisory Committee, 1966. 62-71.Isaac, Bruce. “Screening ‘Australia’: Samson and Delilah”. Screen Education 54 (2009): 12-17. Langton, Marcia. Well, I Heard It on the Radio and I Saw It on the Television...: An Essay for the Australian Film Commission on the Politics and Aesthetics of Filmmaking by and about Aboriginal People and Things. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1993.McCarthy, F. D “Ethnographic Research Films” Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area Australian National Advisory Committee (1966): 80-85.Neville, Brian, and Johanne Villeneuve. Waste-Site Stories: The Recycling of Memory. Albany: State U of New York P., 2002.Ravier, Matt. “Review: Samson and Delilah”. In Film Australia. 2009. 7 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.infilm.com.au/?p=802›.Redwood, Tom. “Warwick Thornton and Kath Shelper on Making Samson and Delilah”. Metro 160 (2009): 31.Rennie, Ellie. “Samson and Delilah under the Stars in Alice Springs”. Crikey 27 Apr. 2009. 18 Aug. 2010 ‹ http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/04/27/samson-and-delilah-under-the-stars-in-alice-springs/›.Samson and Delilah. Dir. Warwick Thornton. Footprint Films, 2009. Treole, Victoria. Australian Independent Film. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1982.
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