Stripping Sight Bare : Alison Jones’ ‘Portraits by Proxy’

In this paper I analyse UK artist Alison Jones’ sonic interventions Portrait of the Artist by Proxy (2008), Voyeurism by Proxy (2008) and Art, Lies and Audio Tapes (2009). In Portrait of the Artist by Proxy, Jones – who, due to deteriorating vision, has not seen her reflection in a mirror in years – asks and trusts participants to audio-describe her own image back to her. In Voyeurism by Proxy, Jones asks participants to audio-describe erotic drawings by Gustav Klimt. In Art, Lies and Audio Tapes, Jones asks participants to audio-describe other artworks, such as W.F. Yeames’ And When Did You Last see Your Father?. In these portraits by proxy, Jones opens her image, and other images, to interpretation. In doing so, Jones draws attention to the way sight is privileged as a mode of access to fixed, fundamental truths in Western culture – a mode assumed to be untainted by filters that skew perception of the object. “In a culture where vision is by far the dominant sense,” Jones says, “and as a visual artist with a visual impairment, I am reliant on audio-description …Inevitably, there are limitations imposed by language, time and the interpreter’s background knowledge of the subject viewed, as well as their personal bias of what is deemed important to impart in their description” . In these works, Jones strips these background knowledges, biases and assumptions bare. She reveals different perceptions, as well as tendencies or censor, edit or exaggerate descriptions. In this paper, I investigate how, by revealing unconscious biases, Jones’ works renders herself and her participants vulnerable to a change of perception. I also examine how Jones’ later editing of the audio-descriptions allows her to show the instabilities of sight, and, in Portrait of the Artist by Proxy, to reclaim authorship of her own image.

Esprit Futur : Le Corbusier and José Oubrerie at Saint-Pierre De Firminy, Firminy-Vert, France, 1968–2006

What is the secret mesmerism that death possesses and under the operation of which a modern architect – strident, confident, resolute – becomes rueful, pessimistic, or melancholic?1 Five years before Le Corbusier’s death at sea in 1965, the architect reluctantly agreed to adopt the project for L’Église Saint-Pierre de Firminy in Firminy-Vert (1960–2006), following the death of its original architect, André Sive, from leukemia in 1958.2 Le Corbusier had already developed, in 1956, the plan for an enclave in the new “green” Firminy town, which included his youth and culture center and a stadium and swimming pool; the church and a “boîte à miracles” near the youth center were inserted into the plan in the ’60s. (Le Corbusier was also invited, in 1962, to produce another plan for three Unités d’Habitation outside Firminy-Vert.) The Saint-Pierre church should have been the zenith of the quartet (the largest urban concentration of works by Le Corbusier in Europe, and what the architect Henri Ciriani termed Le Corbusier’s “acropolis”3) but in the early course of the project, Le Corbusier would suffer the diocese’s serial objections to his vision for the church – not unlike the difficulties he experienced with Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp (1950–1954) and the resistance to his proposed monastery of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette (1957–1960). In 1964, the bishop of Saint-Étienne requested that Le Corbusier relocate the church to a new site, but Le Corbusier refused and the diocese subsequently withdrew from the project. (With neither the approval, funds, nor the participation of the bishop, by then the cardinal archbishop of Lyon, the first stone of the church was finally laid on the site in 1970.) Le Corbusier’s ambivalence toward the project, even prior to his quarrels with the bishop, reveals...

A dominant-negative mutation in the TRESK potassium channel is linked to familial migraine with aura

Migraine with aura is a common, debilitating, recurrent headache disorder associated with transient and reversible focal neurological symptoms. A role has been suggested for the two-pore domain (K2P) potassium channel, TWIK-related spinal cord potassium channel (TRESK, encoded by KCNK18), in pain pathways and general anaesthesia. We therefore examined whether TRESK is involved in migraine by screening the KCNK18 gene in subjects diagnosed with migraine. Here we report a frameshift mutation, F139WfsX24, which segregates perfectly with typical migraine with aura in a large pedigree. We also identified prominent TRESK expression in migraine-salient areas such as the trigeminal ganglion. Functional characterization of this mutation demonstrates that it causes a complete loss of TRESK function and that the mutant subunit suppresses wild-type channel function through a dominant-negative effect, thus explaining the dominant penetrance of this allele. These results therefore support a role for TRESK in the pathogenesis of typical migraine with aura and further support the role of this channel as a potential therapeutic target.

Permanent shift: the topology of Didier Vermeiren's Cariatide à la Pierre

Photographic documentation of sculpture produces significant consequences for the way in which sculptural space is conceived. When viewed as discrete mediums the interaction of the photograph and its sculptural subject is always framed by notions of loss. However, when taken as a composite system, the sculpture-photograph proposes a new ontology of space. In place of the fixity of medium, we can observe a topology at play: a theory drawn from mathematics in which space is understood not as a static field but in terms of properties of connectedness, movement and differentiation. Refracted through the photographic medium, sculpture becomes not a field of fixed points in space, but rather as a fluid set of relations - a continuous sequence of multiple ‘surfaces’, a network of shifting views. This paper will develop a topological account of studio practice through an examination of the work of the contemporary Belgian sculptor Didier Vermeiren (b. 1951). Since the 1980s, Vermeiren has made extensive use of photography in his sculptural practice. By analysing a series of iterations of his work Cariatide à la Pierre (1997-1998), this paper proposes that Vermeiren’s use of photography reveals patterns of connection that expand and complicate the language of sculpture, while also emphasising the broader topology of the artist’s practice as a network of ‘backward glances’ to previous works from the artist’s oeuvre and the art-historical canon. In this context, photography is not simply a method of documentation, but rather a means of revealing the intrinsic condition of sculpture as medium shaped by dynamic patterns of connection and change. In Vermeiren’s work the sculpture-photograph, has a composite identity that exceeds straightforward categories of medium. In their place, we can observe a practice based upon the complex interactions of objects whose ontology is always underpinned by a certain contingency. It is in this fundamental mobility, that the topology of Vermeiren’s practice can be said to rest.