On the troublesome relationship of feminism and terrorism: representing the female terrorist in contemporary art

This paper analyses tendencies in debates about cultural representations of terrorism to assume that artists make critical interventions, while the mass media circulates stereotypes. Some recent feminist analyses of female terrorist acts have re-instituted essentialist arguments in which violence and terrorism is described as inherently masculine, while women are by nature pacifist, so that femininity is the antithesis of militarism. More progressive analyses mostly tend to expose the circulation of stereotypes and their gender bias, in order to protest the misrepresentation of women in violence. These analyses do not construct alternative accounts. Through an analysis of two works by artists Hito Steyerl and Sharon Hayes, the paper argues that some of the moves to re-image the question of women, violence and agency have already been made in contemporary art practices. Through analysing legacies of terrorism and feminism, it becomes possible to rethink the question of agency, militancy and the nature of political art. The paper appears in an edited interdiscplinary collection arising from a conference at Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. It relates to wider projects involving collaborations with Birkbeck and Edinburgh on representations of terrorism and on violence and contemporary art.

The Dark Monarch: magic and modernity in British art

This major curated exhibition, publication and events builds on Rowlands’ curatorial research. Working in collaboration with co-curators Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives and Michael Bracewell, cultural historian, the exhibition sought to explore new narratives within British art. The innovative curatorial methodology developed from a fiction found in the infamous novel, The Dark Monarch by Sven Berlin, Gallery Press 1962. The research sought specific archival and collection work that allowed thematic strands to emerge that represented influences across generations. The exhibition features two-hundred artworks, from the Tate Collection, archives and other significant British public and private collections. It examines the development of early Modernism, in the UK, as well as the reappearance of esoteric and arcane references in a significant strand of contemporary art practice. Historical works from Samuel Palmer, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore and Paul Nash are shown alongside contemporary artists including Derek Jarman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Eva Rothschild, Linder and John Russell. The exhibition includes a key work by Damien Hirst ¬ the first time he has been shown at Tate St Ives and a number of contemporary commissions. The Dark Monarch publication extended the discourse of the research critically examining the tension between progressive modernity and romantic knowledge, the book focuses on the way that artworks are encoded with various histories - geological, mythical and magical. Essays examine magic as a counterpoint to modernity’s transparency and rational progress, but also draw out the links modernity has with notions such as fetishism, mana, totem, and the taboo. Often viewed as counter to Modernism, this collection of essays suggest that these products of illusion and delusion in fact belong to modernity. Drawing together 15 different writers commissioned to explore magic as a counterpoint of liberal understanding of modernity, drawing out links that modernity has with notions of fetish, taboo and occult philosophy. Including essays by Marina Warner, Ilsa Colsell, Philip Hoare, Chris Stephens, Jennifer Higgie and Morrissey.

Can objects perform?: agency and thingliness in contemporary sculpture and installation

In his 1967 essay, “Art and Objecthood”, Michael Fried bemoaned the theatricality of minimalist sculpture, which replaced the presentness of compositional sculpture with the staging of an experience for the viewer as performer. His argument has since been inverted by artists and art writers invested in the idea of sculptures as props forming part of an artistic experience economy. This discourse has accompanied the rise of relational aesthetics as a dominant paradigm for contemporary art. More recently, however, there has been a turn away from relationality to ‘object-oriented’ art, where objects are seen to stage their own theatrical experiences, performing themselves without requiring the activation of a viewer’s body. We trace parallels between the philosophy of Bruno Latour and the “Speculative Materialism” group and this emerging trend in sculpture. In ascribing agency to objects, Latour proposes a radical shift from philosophy’s traditional investigation of the relationship between the mind and the world. Drawn to the idea that matter can be creative, artists have embraced his thinking. However, we argue that this has lead to a generalized, universalizing humanism that disables political action. Moreover, it undermines the potential for anti-humanist critique latent in object-oriented philosophy.

Predictability of the western North Pacific summer climate demonstrated by the coupled models of ENSEMBLES

The Asian monsoon system, including the western North Pacific (WNP), East Asian, and Indian monsoons, dominates the climate of the Asia-Indian Ocean-Pacific region, and plays a significant role in the global hydrological and energy cycles. The prediction of monsoons and associated climate features is a major challenge in seasonal time scale climate forecast. In this study, a comprehensive assessment of the interannual predictability of the WNP summer climate has been performed using the 1-month lead retrospective forecasts (hindcasts) of five state-of-the-art coupled models from ENSEMBLES for the period of 1960–2005. Spatial distribution of the temporal correlation coefficients shows that the interannual variation of precipitation is well predicted around the Maritime Continent and east of the Philippines. The high skills for the lower-tropospheric circulation and sea surface temperature (SST) spread over almost the whole WNP. These results indicate that the models in general successfully predict the interannual variation of the WNP summer climate. Two typical indices, the WNP summer precipitation index and the WNP lower-tropospheric circulation index (WNPMI), have been used to quantify the forecast skill. The correlation coefficient between five models’ multi-model ensemble (MME) mean prediction and observations for the WNP summer precipitation index reaches 0.66 during 1979–2005 while it is 0.68 for the WNPMI during 1960–2005. The WNPMI-regressed anomalies of lower-tropospheric winds, SSTs and precipitation are similar between observations and MME. Further analysis suggests that prediction reliability of the WNP summer climate mainly arises from the atmosphere–ocean interaction over the tropical Indian and the tropical Pacific Ocean, implying that continuing improvement in the representation of the air–sea interaction over these regions in CGCMs is a key for long-lead seasonal forecast over the WNP and East Asia. On the other hand, the prediction of the WNP summer climate anomalies exhibits a remarkable spread resulted from uncertainty in initial conditions. The summer anomalies related to the prediction spread, including the lower-tropospheric circulation, SST and precipitation anomalies, show a Pacific-Japan or East Asia-Pacific pattern in the meridional direction over the WNP. Our further investigations suggest that the WNPMI prediction spread arises mainly from the internal dynamics in air–sea interaction over the WNP and Indian Ocean, since the local relationships among the anomalous SST, circulation, and precipitation associated with the spread are similar to those associated with the interannual variation of the WNPMI in both observations and MME. However, the magnitudes of these anomalies related to the spread are weaker, ranging from one third to a half of those anomalies associated with the interannual variation of the WNPMI in MME over the tropical Indian Ocean and subtropical WNP. These results further support that the improvement in the representation of the air–sea interaction over the tropical Indian Ocean and subtropical WNP in CGCMs is a key for reducing the prediction spread and for improving the long-lead seasonal forecast over the WNP and East Asia.

Global responses of terrestrial productivity to contemporary climatic oscillations

The terrestrial biosphere is subjected to a wide range of natural climatic oscillations. Best known is the El Niño–southern oscillation (ENSO) that exerts globally extensive impacts on crops and natural vegetation. A 50-year time series of ENSO events has been analysed to determine those geographical areas that are reliably impacted by ENSO events. Most areas are impacted by changes in precipitation; however, the Pacific Northwest is warmed by El Niño events. Vegetation gross primary production (GPP) has been simulated for these areas, and tests well against independent satellite observations of the normalized difference vegetation index. Analyses of selected geographical areas indicate that changes in GPP often lead to significant changes in ecosystem structure and dynamics. The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is another climatic oscillation that originates from the Pacific and exerts global impacts that are rather similar to ENSO events. However, the longer period of the PDO provided two phases in the time series with a cool phase from 1951 to 1976 and a warm phase from 1977 to 2002. It was notable that the cool phase of the PDO acted additively with cool ENSO phases to exacerbate drought in the earlier period for the southwest USA. By contrast in India, the cool phase of the PDO appears to reduce the negative impacts of warm ENSO events on crop production.

Playing with history: negotiating subjectivity in contemporary lens based work

Contemporary artists exploring Jewish identity in the UK are caught between two exclusions, broadly speaking: an art community that that sees itself as ‘post –identity’ and a ‘black’ art scene that revolves around the organizations that emerged out of the Identity debates of the 1980s and 1990s, namely Iniva, Third Text, Autograph. These organizations and those debates, don’t usually include Jewish identity within their remit as Jewish artists are considered to be well represented in the British art scene and, in any case, white. Out of these assumptions, questions arise in relation to the position of Jews in Britain and what is at stake for an artist in exploring Jewish Identity in their work. There is considerable scholarship, relatively speaking on art and Jewish Identity in the US (such as Lisa Bloom; Norman Kleeblatt; Catherine Sousslouf), which inform the debates on visual culture and Jews. In this chapter, I will be drawing out some of the distinctions between the US and the UK debates within my analysis, building on my own writing over the last ten years as well as the work of Juliet Steyn, Jon Stratton and Griselda Pollock. In short, this chapter aims to explore the problematic of what Jewish Identity can offer the viewer as art; what place such art inhabits within a wider artistic context and how, if at all, it is received. There is a predominance of lens based work that explores Identity arising out of the provenance of feminist practices and the politics of documentary that will be important in the framing of the work. I do not aim to consider what constitutes a Jewish artist, that has been done elsewhere and is an inadequate and somewhat spurious conversation . I will also not be focusing on artists whose intention is to celebrate an unproblematised Jewishness (however that is constituted in any given work). Recent artworks and scholarship has in any case rendered the trumpeting of attachment to any singular identity anachronistic at best. I will focus on artists working in the UK who incorporate questions of Jewishness into a larger visual enquiry that build on Judith Butler’s notion of identity as process or performative as well as the more recent debates and artwork that consider the intersectionality of identifications that co-constitute provisional identities (Jones, Modood, Sara Ahmed, Braidotti/Nikki S Lee, Glenn Ligon). The case studies to think through these questions of identity, will be artworks by Susan Hiller, Doug Fishbone and Suzanne Triester. In thinking through works by these artists, I will also serve to contextualise them, situating them briefly within the history of the landmark exhibition in the UK, Rubies and Rebels and the work of Ruth Novaczek, Lily Markewitz, Oreet Ashery and myself.

Predictability of the western North Pacific summer climate associated with different ENSO phases by ENSEMBLES multi-model seasonal forecasts

Predictability of the western North Pacific (WNP) summer climate associated with different El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phases is investigated in this study based on the 1-month lead retrospective forecasts of five state-of-the-art coupled models from ENSEMBLES. During the period from 1960 to 2005, the models well capture the WNP summer climate anomalies during most of years in different ENSO phases except the La Niña decaying summers. In the El Niño developing, El Niño decaying and La Niña developing summers, the prediction skills are high for the WNP summer monsoon index (WNPMI), with the prediction correlation larger than 0.7. The high prediction skills of the lower-tropospheric circulation during these phases are found mainly over the tropical western Pacific Ocean, South China Sea and subtropical WNP. These good predictions correspond well to their close teleconnection with ENSO and the high prediction skills of tropical SSTs. By contrast, for the La Niña decaying summers, the prediction skills are considerably low with the prediction correlation for the WNPMI near to zero and low prediction skills around the Philippines and subtropical WNP. These poor predictions relate to the weak summer anomalies of the WNPMI during the La Niña decaying years and no significant connections between the WNP lower-tropospheric circulation anomalies and the SSTs over the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean in observations. However, the models tend to predict an apparent anomalous cyclone over the WNP during the La Niña decaying years, indicating a linearity of the circulation response over WNP in the models prediction in comparison with that during the El Niño decaying years which differs from observations. In addition, the models show considerable capability in describing the WNP summer anomalies during the ENSO neutral summers. These anomalies are related to the positive feedback between the WNP lower-tropospheric circulation and the local SSTs. The models can capture this positive feedback but with some uncertainties from different ensemble members during the ENSO neutral summers.

The resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon and Indo-Pacific in a global 0.35◦ AGCM

The South Asian monsoon is one of the most significant manifestations of the seasonal cycle. It directly impacts nearly one third of the world’s population and also has substantial global influence. Using 27-year integrations of a high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model (Met Office Unified Model), we study changes in South Asian monsoon precipitation and circulation when horizontal resolution is increased from approximately 200 to 40 km at the equator (N96 to N512, 1.9 to 0.35◦). The high resolution, integration length and ensemble size of the dataset make this the most extensive dataset used to evaluate the resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon to date. We find a consistent pattern of JJAS precipitation and circulation changes as resolution increases, which include a slight increase in precipitation over peninsular India, changes in Indian and Indochinese orographic rain bands, increasing wind speeds in the Somali Jet, increasing precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands and decreasing precipitation over the northern Maritime Continent seas. To diagnose which resolution related processes cause these changes we compare them to published sensitivity experiments that change regional orography and coastlines. Our analysis indicates that improved resolution of the East African Highlands results in the improved representation of the Somali Jet and further suggests that improved resolution of orography over Indochina and the Maritime Continent results in more precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands at the expense of reduced precipitation further north. We also evaluate the resolution sensitivity of monsoon depressions and lows, which contribute more precipitation over northeast India at higher resolution. We conclude that while increasing resolution at these scales does not solve the many monsoon biases that exist in GCMs, it has a number of small, beneficial impacts.