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West Indian Soldiers and the Mediated, Imagined Landscapes of the First World War
No full textUsing artist Wyndham Lewis’ work as a point of departure, this chapter explores the dispersed traces of West Indian participation in the war through the sites of memory in both the physical landscape and the objects and images through which that participation may be remembered and imagined. Lewis’ account highlights how, for white European participants, the presence of West Indian, and other non-white troops, often underscored the uncanny aspects of the war; the shattering of old categories which merged with the alien as the war bridged the familiar and unfamiliar. But what of uncanniness from West Indian perspectives, a framing that has received scant attention? This chapter therefore also considers the role of landscape in West Indian soldiers’ memories of the war—particularly the dissonance experienced between home and the combat zones of the Western Front and the Middle East. Furthermore, the discussion will reflect on how West Indian soldiers’ uncanny encounters may have contributed to commemoration processes and new national imaginaries in the post-war period, particularly in relation to landownership and settlement
Arts Practice as the Daily Extraordinary: A Philosophy of Inclusivity
Get PDFTo conceive a philosophy of art education that is removed from actual practice would belie the extraordinary experience of developing and making practice. In this article, I propose to explore the philosophical implications of art practice being an experience of the ‘daily extraordinary.’ A view of practice as being at once stretching and comfortable, takes the artist and viewer's responses to the strangeness of the everyday: the delightful, the shocking, or even the miraculous, in what appear to be simple and mundane experiences. If we perceive learning in the arts as a pursuit of ideas, affect and expression that occurs in regular practice, there is an inclusivity that renders both learning in the arts and philosophy of art education accessible to everyone. In this article I will refer to the Goldsmiths Centre for Arts and Learning's research programme of 2022–2023, in which events and connected teaching activities practised being All For the Arts. With visiting speakers, museums and galleries and postgraduate students, CAL researched how the vitality and challenge of art practice, which includes the individualities and expression of persons and histories made ordinary and invisible, could bring the value of learning in the arts to the fore. Including reflections from contributors such as John Baldacchino, A Particular Reality, Carol Wild, Danny Braverman, Raphael Vella, Kevin Tavin and Andrea Kárpáti, we explored inclusivity in art practice from the daily extraordinary of each speaker's developments in educational research. Also, in the company of representatives from arts organisations such as Entelechy Arts, Autograph ABP, Whitechapel Gallery, Young V&A and Bow Arts, we considered the amazing and essential factors of inclusivity in the arts – that could be encountered on a daily basis. I will gather meeting points here among this incredible range of contributors
Tricks Played by English, Review of Planetary Pynchon: History, Modernity, and the Anthropocene by Tore Rye Anderson
No full textRepetitive behaviours in autistic and non-autistic adults: Associations with sensory sensitivity and impact on self-efficacy
Get PDFPurpose: Restricted and repetitive behaviours are a core feature of autism diagnoses but have not been widely studied in adulthood. This study examined the rates of and associations between repetitive behaviours and sensory sensitivity in autistic and non-autistic adults; and whether repetitive behaviours described as “stimming” impacted coping with difficulties (self-efficacy).
Methods: Diagnosed autistic (n=182), undiagnosed autistic (n=163) and non-autistic (n=146) adults completed online measures of repetitive behaviours, sensory sensitivity, and self-efficacy for when able and not able to stim.
Results: Repetitive behaviours and sensory sensitivity correlated significantly in each group, although ratings were high in autistic compared to non-autistic groups. When people were able to stim, no differences between the groups were observed on self-efficacy ratings. However when unable to stim, autistic people reported lower self-efficacy than non-autistic people.
Conclusions: Results suggest that repetitive behaviours are significantly associate with sensory sensitivities. Rather than repetitive behaviours being viewed as negative, stimming was associated with increased self-efficacy. Results suggest that stimming may have beneficial effects. Further work is needed to better understand how repetitive behaviours and stimming manifest in adulthood, how they change over time and their effects for autistic adults
Estimating life expectancy and years of life lost for autistic people in the UK: a matched cohort study
Get PDFBackground
Previous research has shown that people who have been diagnosed autistic are more likely to die prematurely than the general population. However, statistics on premature mortality in autistic people have often been misinterpreted. In this study we aimed to estimate the life expectancy and years of life lost experienced by autistic people living in the UK.
Methods
We studied people in the IQVIA Medical Research Database with an autism diagnosis between January 1, 1989 and January 16, 2019. For each participant diagnosed autistic, we included ten comparison participants without an autism diagnosis, matched by age, sex, and primary care practice. We calculated age- and sex-standardised mortality ratios comparing people diagnosed autistic to the reference group. We used Poisson regression to estimate age-specific mortality rates, and life tables to estimate life expectancy at age 18 and years of life lost. We analysed the data separately by sex, and for people with and without a record of intellectual disability. We discuss the findings in the light of the prevalence of recorded diagnosis of autism in primary care compared to community estimates.
Findings
From a cohort of nearly 10 million people, we identified 17,130 participants diagnosed autistic without an intellectual disability (matched with 171,300 comparison participants), and 6450 participants diagnosed autistic with an intellectual disability (matched with 64,500 comparison participants). The apparent estimates indicated that people diagnosed with autism but not intellectual disability had 1.71 (95% CI: 1.39–2.11) times the mortality rate of people without these diagnoses. People diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability had 2.83 (95% CI: 2.33–3.43) times the mortality rate of people without these diagnoses. Likewise, the apparent reduction in life expectancy for people diagnosed with autism but not intellectual disability was 6.14 years (95% CI: 2.84–9.07) for men and 6.45 years (95% CI: 1.37–11.58 years) for women. The apparent reduction in life expectancy for people diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability was 7.28 years (95% CI: 3.78–10.27) for men and 14.59 years (95% CI: 9.45–19.02 years) for women. However, these findings are likely to be subject to exposure misclassification biases: very few autistic adults and older-adults have been diagnosed, meaning that we could only study a fraction of the total autistic population. Those who have been diagnosed may well be those with greater support needs and more co-occurring health conditions than autistic people on average.
Interpretation
The findings indicate that there is a group of autistic people who experience premature mortality, which is of significant concern. There is an urgent need for investigation into the reasons behind this. However, our estimates suggest that the widely reported statistic that autistic people live 16-years less on average is likely incorrect. Nine out of 10 autistic people may have been undiagnosed across the time-period studied. Hence, the results of our study do not generalise to all autistic people. Diagnosed autistic adults, and particularly older adults, are likely those with greater-than-average support needs. Therefore, we may have over-estimated the reduction in life expectancy experienced by autistic people on average. The larger reduction in life expectancy for women diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability vs. men may in part reflect disproportionate underdiagnosis of autism and/or intellectual disability in women
Neither private property nor public service: Critical reflections on the conceptual framework of public service media
Get PDFPublic service media (PSM) have long been seen as the necessary counterweight to the failures of a market model. Given the rise of private corporate power over communications systems, PSM have long been claimed to the be the ‘heart of a heartless world’ – spaces dominated not by the relentless logic of capital but by broader ambitions that involve citizen participation, social improvement and knowledge acquisition. This article offers a different interpretation. It argues that at their very best, PSM have improved an otherwise anaemic commercial landscape; at their worst, they are simply an accessory to state actors and contaminated media markets that reproduce elite power. Media practices and institutions based on the public service idea all too often lack the accountability and indeed the fundamental democratic oversight of the publics in whose name they operate. This article seeks first to contrast the values and structures of public service media with those of wholly commercial models and illustrates some of the ‘defensive’ arguments and initiatives that have been developed in response to threats to PSM. The article then explores a series of arguments that problematise what is often a reflexive defence of PSM. It considers whether being non-commercial necessarily positions an institution as pro-public and focuses on the role of the state in the creation of PSM institutions. It argues that the gap between normative accounts of public service and their institutional structures is not an accident or an aberration but reflects the structural imbalances of power built into PSM. Finally, the article analyses the different ways in which ‘the public’ has been conceptualised and deployed in the operational models of PSM, often as the ‘masses’ or as individuals in need of enlightenment or as sovereign consumers, but rarely as active agents of social change
Towards a Machine Somaesthete: Latent Modeling of EMG Signals in Viola Playing
Get PDFSomaesthetic experiential qualities can provide a window into process of meaning-making, both human and machinic. We draw such qualities from viola performance into the design-in-progress of a novel interactive performance system. In doing so, we introduce the concept of a Machine Somaesthete that senses and makes sense of these qualities from a second-person perspective. Our system comprises electromyographic (EMG) muscle sensing and a Variational Autoencoder. With a novel dataset, we aim to encode latent representations of performance movement that are meaningful from a somaesthetic perspective. We present our model and our design process, then analyse latent trajectories to interrogate how our system can be considered a Machine Somaesthete, and the nature of its sensitivity to bodily experiences of viola playing. At the intersection of artificial intelligence, music performance and intra-action design, we take a sympoietic (together-making) view of knowledge creation. We and our practices are transformed as we design - and design with - machine learning systems
Counter-Archiving Migration: Tracing the Records of Protests against UNHCR
Get PDFThe archives of migration are piecemeal and scattered. This is both an epistemological problem, and a matter of political concern in an international order that forces people to migrate, racializes them, and renders them subject to violence. In response, we explore the potential of counter-archiving migration. First, we explain why archives matter politically, and consider which traces of migration are stored and which are absent or lost. Second, we develop a methodology for counter-archiving migration. Third, we illustrate a process of counter-archiving, taking protests and violent evictions outside the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices as an analytical lens. We begin with an “along the grain” reading of official archives; we then turn to ethnography to trace the memories, practices, and material remnants of migrants’ struggles. Our analysis makes the case for counter-archival work in and beyond the field of migration. We argue that this approach serves to disrupt the epistemic violence of classification systems and categories associated with border violence; to chart the contestations and transformations of the global order from below; and to articulate new horizons of justice
Kevin Blinderman, The Ravishment of Modern Figuration - exhibition text
No full textI was invited to write a text in response to a new suite of paintings by French artist Kevin Blinderman, generated by AI to recast as homoerotic, works by great artists of the 19th and 20th century. The text discusses themes of: taste and preciosity, their links to the homoerotic; queerness, repetition and sameness, and ideas of ravishment through repetition, with reference to Marguerite Duras' novel The Ravishment of Lol Stein
The Surprising History of Sisig And no, it’s not originally Kapampangan.
No full textThe history of Sisig, a beloved Filipino dish, has sparked considerable debate, particularly regarding its origins. Often associated with the Kapampangan people, Sisig has become a symbol of culinary pride, with claims to its invention heavily contested. While the modern version of Sisig, typically made from chopped pork ears, jowls, and maskara, is widely believed to have been popularized by Aling Lucing Cunanan in Angeles City during the 1970s, the dish's roots appear to stretch far beyond this narrative. Historical documents, such as the 1732 Bocabulario de Pampango and 1754 Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala, suggest that the term "Sisig" originally referred to a brine solution used for vegetables, not the sizzling pork dish we know today. The evolution of Sisig, known regionally as Sisig Matwa or Quilo Babi, has been traced to various provinces, including Tarlac and Bukidnon, with recipes predating the 1970s. Despite the city's efforts to claim Sisig as a tangible cultural heritage through Ordinance No. 405, evidence points to the dish as a shared culinary tradition, transcending regional boundaries. Sisig’s true origins remain a matter of historical and cultural debate, but its importance as a part of the Filipino gastronomic landscape is indisputable. Ultimately, Sisig is not the exclusive property of any one province but rather an intangible cultural heritage of the entire Filipino people