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Changing Winds: An Account Of The Bora Museum In Trieste (Italy) As A Space Of Rootedness In Climate Change
No full textThe Bora Museum in Trieste was founded in 2004 to celebrate the bora, the typical wind of Trieste, which for thousands of years has had an enormous impact on the city and the region in social, urban, economic, cultural and artistic terms. The museum has always been a space ‘in progress’, collecting testimonies of the wind and its changes. Since mid-2023, thanks to a major national grant, the museum has been working on opening a new exhibition space, the Borarium, designed as a centre for reflection on climate change. This contribution (presented here in the form of reflective papers or personal accounts) first aims to discuss the bottom-up and co-creation projects of the Bora Museum together with the citizens of Trieste, in particular Memories of bora, a series of videos dedicated to citizens’ memories of this characteristic wind, and Changing winds: climate emergency and us, dedicated to the climate changes perceptible in the wind. It then describes the ongoing interactive experiences, the Borarium Interactive project to digitise the museum’s analogue heritage, and initiatives to co-create content with visitors to support local processes of green transition and raise awareness of environmental choices. This work exemplifies a museum’s commitment to rooted work, as evidenced by its partnerships and collaborations with local communities on environmental issues, as well as its shared practices with its fellow citizens.
Keywords: Museum, wind, climate change, co-creation projects, Bora, Triest
Digital Uprising For Local Communities: The Case Of The Catpc White Cube In Lusanga
No full textIn 2017 the CATPC (Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise) founded the White Cube: an art museum built on reclaimed land, intended to “restore agency, capital, and visibility to plantation communities. From there, CATPC presents a program that not merely offers the public a beautiful spectacle, but it ensures that the utmost positive impact is made – both material (economic) and immaterial (historical memory)” (CATPC website). Since then, the league has been engaged in numerous activist curatorial projects, using analogue and digital means to create a personal artistic and territorial narrative. One project stands out: a series of NFTs, created in collaboration with Dutch artist Renzo Martens, disrupting museum ownership and restitution practices. These artworks, created from images of an original wooden statue symbolizing a local uprising against Belgian tax collectors, carved in the early thirties, represent a concrete way of reconnecting with the league’s heritage, history and future. Starting from this project, the paper researches the impact of digital technologies in strengthening territorial museological projects, discussing how the communitarian grounds of physical museum spaces can be empowered through digital infrastructures. Operating at the intersection between material evidence and virtual accessibility, digital cultural projects can often respond to identitarian meaning making needs, which cannot be met by analogue solutions. Opening the landscape of collective cultural production to a new version of rootedness, through the designs of marginalized and peripheral communities. Across the paper, questions of museum epistemological dominance and decolonial educational paradigms will be addressed, attempting to highlight the crucial characters of these new museological forms, emerging in the cultural field.
Keywords: CATPC, Collective Memory, Digital Heritage, NFTs, White Cube
The Enduring Popularity of the Cabinet of Curiosities: Why French Guiana's Museums will not be Decolonized
No full textThis article considers the persistence of 'cabinet of curiosities' style museums in French Guiana, France’s largest overseas département [department], within the wider context of decolonizing agendas found in mainland France and the Global North more generally. The central claim is that it is impossible to truly engage in decolonial praxis in places where colonial forms of governance still exist. It also suggests that to understand how and why the museum cannot fully be decolonized requires moving focus from institutions found in metropolitan centres to those located at the peripheries. Two museums will provide the focus of the analysis here – the Musée Alexandre Franconie in Cayenne and the Musée du Planeur Bleu in Cacao. The article will explore the ongoing local popularity of these museums where other larger scale 'postcolonial' museum projects have failed or stalled. The article will conclude by suggesting that while there do exist examples of museography in French Guiana that offer alternatives to both types of project, these are limited in scope and public engagement
Contemporary Art Museums and Youth: An Imperfect Genealogy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum, Tate and Whitechapel Gallery programmes
No full textThe unique feature of the youth groups formed in contemporary art museums is the wider ecology to which they are connected, meaning simultaneously the idiosyncrasies of each institution and their educational programmes, the people who plan and facilitate those initiatives, and the private or public funding schemes in the background that make them possible. In this paper I present the genealogies of the youth programmes of four contemporary art museums – two located in New York, USA: the Whitney Museum of American Art and New Museum, and two in London, UK: Tate, and Whitechapel Gallery. Together they make the intricacies, tensions, and potentialities of long-term programmes for youth in museums visible, while challenging the linearity of historical narratives and opening directions for the future
P1 5 Social Thermoregulation in Capybaras
No full textIn cold conditions capybaras often gather closely with one another, forming tight groups to conserve warmth. In this paper, we model the thermal advantage of capybara huddling using Newtonian cooling. We show analytically that heat loss per animal is proportional to the inverse square root of group size. Subsequently, we determine that the cooling time of capybaras in a huddle increases proportionately to the square root of the group size. This indicates that group behaviour is an energetically efficient thermoregulatory mechanism
P4 3 Snowpiercer: Ice Impact Analysis
No full textn this paper we investigate the Icepiercing ability of the ’Great Ark’ train in Snowpiercer (2013)by modelling the shear forces required to carve a train size hole through an ice wall, assumingrigidity dominates in the harsh cold conditions. We determine that the average force appliedby the speeding train through its collision, 2.069 × 1010N, would meet the threshold of shearseparation of the required volume of ice, 1.05 ×10 8 N, and break through
Editorial: Gender, Violence and Conflict: University of the West Indies and University of Leicester International Summer School, 27–31 May 2024
No full textHeld from 27–31 May 2024 at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, the latest iteration of the University of the West Indies and University of Leicester International Summer School brought together a vibrant and interdisciplinary cohort of postgraduate candidates and early career researchers from across the Caribbean, Canada and the UK. Centered on the theme of Gender, Violence and Conflict, the week-long programme invited participants to engage critically and creatively with some of the most pressing social challenges of our time, through lectures, seminars, and a culminating researcher-led mini-conference.
This special issue, a product of that intellectual and creative exchange, draws together contributions that span genres, geographies, and disciplinary perspectives. From academic essays to poetry, the pieces published here reflect the spirit of the summer school: collaborative, courageous, and committed to decolonial and context-sensitive approaches. The works explore a wide range of intersecting concerns, from gender-based violence to Afro-German identity, to ecological grief, to Caribbean cultural practices and literary imaginaries. In their form and content, these contributions speak to the multiplicity of voices, methods, and lived experiences that animated the 2024 programme. Together, they demonstrate the continued importance of centring global south epistemologies and creative modalities in tackling the layered entanglements of gender, violence and conflict
The contribution of museum programmes in supporting caregivers of people with life-limiting illnesses: A systematic literature review
No full textThis review aimed to explore and synthesize the benefits that museum programmes offer to caregivers of people with life-limiting illnesses, and to critically assess the level of support provided in light of the attention to an alternative public health approach of EoLC. In pursuit of this goal, systematic searches were conducted in various databases. According to the PRISMA guidelines, this resulted in 11 unique entries. The benefits identified across studies were associated with cognitive, social, and particularly psychological benefits for caregivers, especially those caring for people with dementia. However, none of the studies investigated long-term benefits. Therefore, future research is needed to allow for a more robust synthesis of findings and to maximize benefits and minimize risks, ensuring that these programmes become more widely available to caregivers of people with life-limiting illnesses
P1 2 Ceiling It
No full textThis paper investigates whether a Formula 1 car could drive inverted on the ceiling of the Monaco tunnel during a Grand Prix. A minimum speed of 211 kmh-1 is identified at which aerodynamic downforce balances the car’s weight, providing just enough adhesion to remain upside down. Beyond this threshold, usable tyre grip for steering and braking would increase with speed. However, the maximum speed achievable through the tunnel in a Grand Prix setting is insufficient to generate the lateral acceleration required for practical control, making the scenario impossible
P2 2 Star Trekkin'
No full textIn this paper we discuss the properties of the warp travel discussed in the science fiction universeof Star Trek. We find a relationship for the specific energy required for selected warp speeds bothrelativistically and classically, and investigate the viability of using available energy sources topower the different iterations of the starship NCC-1701 Enterprise. We find that the Sun couldsupport 16 million Enterprise-Ds each day at a modest warp factor 0.5