Exhibition Memory / Memory of an Exhibition

What are and how are memories witten? Since classical antiquity that an understading of the phenomon of memory has been searched for. How do memories, images of another time, constitute themselves as representations? How do we make objects of the past became present? Writing about the memories of an exhibition becomes a challenge of creating a representation. Operating a narrative that adds being. We assume that we narrate a process of something missing by evoking what became present in it.

Memory and power : two movements

The institutions that work with the preservation and diffusion of cultural heritage - be them archive, libraries, museums, art galleries or cultural centres - present a certain discourse about reality. To understand this discourse, composed by sound and silence, by fullness and emptiness, by presence and absence, by remembrance and forgetting, an operation is implied, not only with the enunciation of speech and its gaps, but also the comprehension of that which causes to speak, of who is speaking and of the point whence one speaks. Preservation and destruction, or, in another way, conservation and loss, walk hand in hand in the arteries of life. As suggested by Nietzsche (1999, p.273), it is impossible to live without loss, it is entirely impossible to live avoiding destruction to play its game and drive the dynamics of life on. However, by means of a kind of tautological argument, one often justifies preservation by the imminence of loss and memory by the threat of forgetting. Thus, one ceases to consider that the game and the rules of the game between forgetting and memory are not fed by themselves and that preservation and destruction are not opposed in a deadly duel, but instead they complement one another and are always at the service of subjects that build themselves and are built through social practices. To indicate that memories and forgettings can be sown and cultivated corroborates the importance of working towards the denaturalisation of these concepts and towards the understanding that they result from a construction process also involving other forces, such as: power. Power is a sower, a promoter of memories and forgettings.

The inclusive process of training in social museology: alternative museology in action in Carapateira, Portugal

Pierre Mayrand is a long-time member of ICTOP and founder of MINOM. He did graduate studies in Montreal and overseas, studying art history with a specialization in architecture and urban planning. In 1970, when the Université du Québec was founded, Pierre entered the teaching profession, participating (as director, professor, and researcher) in the setting up of programs in national heritage, museology and cultural development. He is still active in teaching and project development now as a altermuseologist.

Derrota del conocimiento por la información: una reflexión necesaria para pensar en el desarrollo humano y la calidad de vida desde una perspectiva emancipadora

La sociedad de mercado se expandió hasta un proceso de totalización global de los monopolios, viabilizado por el flujo y disponibilidad instantáneos de información (mensajes, valores y cálculos) sobre la base técnica de la comunicación digital, teleinformática e hipermedia y un gran proceso de industrialización de la memoria. En ese contexto, la información desde una perspectiva humana y democrática sólo puede construirse incorporando a las colectividades en el desarrollo de sistemas informáticos participativos, de proyección emancipadora. Propuesta que circula desde hace años en América Latina pero que no hace parte de las agendas de las entidades técnicas de salud, que parecen concentrarse mucho más en la sofisticación de sus sistemas, aunque estos sean perfectamente funcionales al poder. El trabajo analiza los condicionamientos contemporáneos de la información en salud y posibles salidas para una construcción informática alternativa que incluya el pensamiento crítico, la interculturalidad y el poder popular como ingredientes essenciales de promoción y defensa de la vida.

The long-term EU budget: size or flexibility? Bruegel Policy Contribution 2012/20, November 2012

The EU is in the process of negotiating its 2014-20 financial framework. Failure to reach an agreement would imply a delay in the preparation of the strategic plans each member state puts together to explain how it will use Structural and Cohesion Funds. Even if solutions are found – for example annual renewals of the budget based on the previous year's figures – there will be political and institutional costs. EU leaders have too often and too forcefully advocated the use of the EU budget for growth to be able to drop the idea without consequences. • The overwhelming attention paid to the size of the budget is misplaced. EU leaders should instead aim to make the EU budget more flexible, safeguard it from future political power struggles, and reinforce assessment of the impact of EU funded growth policies. • To improve flexibility a commitment device should be created that places the EU budget above continuous political disagreement. We suggest the creation of a European Growth Fund, on the basis of which the European Commission should be allowed to borrow on capital markets to anticipate pre-allocated EU expenditure, such as Structural and Cohesion Funds. Markets would thus be a factor in EU budget policymaking, with a potentially disciplining effect. Attaching conditionality to this type of disbursement appears legitimate, as capital delivered in this way is a form of assistance.

A simple model of convection with memory

There are at least three distinct time scales that are relevant for the evolution of atmospheric convection. These are the time scale of the forcing mechanism, the time scale governing the response to a steady forcing, and the time scale of the response to variations in the forcing. The last of these, tmem, is associated with convective life cycles, which provide an element of memory in the system. A highly simplified model of convection is introduced, which allows for investigation of the character of convection as a function of the three time scales. For short tmem, the convective response is strongly tied to the forcing as in conventional equilibrium parameterization. For long tmem, the convection responds only to the slowly evolving component of forcing, and any fluctuations in the forcing are essentially suppressed. At intermediate tmem, convection becomes less predictable: conventional equilibrium closure breaks down and current levels of convection modify the subsequent response.

Uncertainty assessment of a process-based integrated catchment model of phosphorus

Despite the many models developed for phosphorus concentration prediction at differing spatial and temporal scales, there has been little effort to quantify uncertainty in their predictions. Model prediction uncertainty quantification is desirable, for informed decision-making in river-systems management. An uncertainty analysis of the process-based model, integrated catchment model of phosphorus (INCA-P), within the generalised likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) framework is presented. The framework is applied to the Lugg catchment (1,077 km2), a River Wye tributary, on the England–Wales border. Daily discharge and monthly phosphorus (total reactive and total), for a limited number of reaches, are used to initially assess uncertainty and sensitivity of 44 model parameters, identified as being most important for discharge and phosphorus predictions. This study demonstrates that parameter homogeneity assumptions (spatial heterogeneity is treated as land use type fractional areas) can achieve higher model fits, than a previous expertly calibrated parameter set. The model is capable of reproducing the hydrology, but a threshold Nash-Sutcliffe co-efficient of determination (E or R 2) of 0.3 is not achieved when simulating observed total phosphorus (TP) data in the upland reaches or total reactive phosphorus (TRP) in any reach. Despite this, the model reproduces the general dynamics of TP and TRP, in point source dominated lower reaches. This paper discusses why this application of INCA-P fails to find any parameter sets, which simultaneously describe all observed data acceptably. The discussion focuses on uncertainty of readily available input data, and whether such process-based models should be used when there isn’t sufficient data to support the many parameters.

The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation - as in the context of colonial era evictions - there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of 'sites of memory', which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern 'memory', suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and 'being first'. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysing institutional partnerships in development: a contract between equals or a loaded process?

Partnerships are complex, diverse and subtle relationships, the nature of which changes with time, but they are vital for the functioning of the development chain. This paper reviews the meaning of partnership between development institutions as well as some of the main approaches taken to analyse the relationships. The latter typically revolve around analyses based on power, discourse, interdependence and functionality. The paper makes the case for taking a multianalytical approach to understanding partnership but points out three problem areas: identifying acceptable/unacceptable trade-offs between characteristics of partnership, the analysis of multicomponent partnerships (where one partner has a number of other partners) and the analysis of long-term partnership. The latter is especially problematic for long-term partnerships between donors and field agencies that share an underlying commitment based on religious beliefs. These problems with current methods of analysing partnership are highlighted by focusing upon the Catholic Church-based development chain, linking donors in the North (Europe) and their field partners in the South (Abuja Ecclesiastical Province, Nigeria). It explores a narrated history of a relationship with a single donor spanning 35 years from the perspective of one partner (the field agency).

The influence of affective statements on performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks

Consumers are often exposed to brand names presented concurrently with information such as brand claims and warnings, prior to making product choices. As implicit memory has been implicated in the consumer choice process, two experiments were conducted to assess the influence of additional information, namely simple positive and negative statements, on implicit and explicit memory tasks. In Experiment 1, the mere presence of additional statements at study significantly reduced performance on a two-alternatives forced recognition task. However, the same manipulation had no effect on implicit preference judgement task performance. The valence of the accompanying information had no effect on either task. In Experiment 2, using modified implicit and explicit choice tasks, performance on the former was unaffected by statement valence, whereas the latter task was. Hence, positive priming was obtained for brand names previously shown with negative information. The results of the experiments are discussed in relation to both implicit memory and consumer choice.

North Atlantic subtropical mode waters and ocean memory in HadCM3

A study of the formation and propagation of volume anomalies in North Atlantic Mode Waters is presented, based on 100 yr of monthly mean fields taken from the control run of the Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere GCM (HadCM3). Analysis of the temporal and. spatial variability in the thickness between pairs of isothermal surfaces bounding the central temperature of the three main North Atlantic subtropical mode waters shows that large-scale variability in formation occurs over time scales ranging from 5 to 20 yr. The largest formation anomalies are associated with a southward shift in the mixed layer isothermal distribution, possibly due to changes in the gyre dynamics and/or changes in the overlying wind field and air-sea heat fluxes. The persistence of these anomalies is shown to result from their subduction beneath the winter mixed layer base where they recirculate around the subtropical gyre in the background geostrophic flow. Anomalies in the warmest mode (18 degrees C) formed on the western side of the basin persist for up to 5 yr. They are removed by mixing transformation to warmer classes and are returned to the seasonal mixed layer near the Gulf Stream where the stored heat may be released to the atmosphere. Anomalies in the cooler modes (16 degrees and 14 degrees C) formed on the eastern side of the basin persist for up to 10 yr. There is no clear evidence of significant transformation of these cooler mode anomalies to adjacent classes. It has been proposed that the eastern anomalies are removed through a tropical-subtropical water mass exchange mechanism beneath the trade wind belt (south of 20 degrees N). The analysis shows that anomalous mode water formation plays a key role in the long-term storage of heat in the model, and that the release of heat associated with these anomalies suggests a predictable climate feedback mechanism.

Modeling distributions of immediate memory effects: No strategies needed?

Many models of immediate memory predict the presence or absence of various effects, but none have been tested to see whether they predict an appropriate distribution of effect sizes. The authors show that the feature model (J. S. Nairne, 1990) produces appropriate distributions of effect sizes for both the phonological confusion effect and the word-length effect. The model produces the appropriate number of reversals, when participants are more accurate with similar items or long items, and also correctly predicts that participants performing less well overall demonstrate smaller and less reliable phonological similarity and word-length effects and are more likely to show reversals. These patterns appear within the model without the need to assume a change in encoding or rehearsal strategy or the deployment of a different storage buffer. The implications of these results and the wider applicability of the distributionmodeling approach are discussed.

Orde Wingate, 'Guerrilla' Warfare and Long-Range Penetration, 1940-44

Major General Orde Wingate was a highly controversial figure in his time and remains so among historians. However, his eccentric and colourful personality has drawn attention away from the nature of his military ideas, the most important of which was his concept of long-range penetration, which originated from his observations of his operations in Italian-occupied Ethiopia in 1941, and evolved into the model he put into practice in the Chindit operations in Burma in 1943-44. A review of Wingate's own official writings on this subject reveals that long-range penetration combined local guerrilla irregulars, purpose-trained regular troops and airpower into large-scale offensive operations deep in the enemy rear, with the intention of disrupting his planning process and creating situations regular forces could exploit. This evolved organically from Major General Colin Gubbins' doctrine for guerrilla resistance in enemy occupied areas, and bears some resemblance to the operational model applied by US and Allied forces, post September 2001.

Food for thought: the role of dietary flavonoids in enhancing human memory, learning and neuro-cognitive performance

Emerging evidence suggests that dietary-derived flavonoids have the potential to improve human memory and neuro-cognitive performance via their ability to protect vulnerable neurons, enhance existing neuronal function and stimulate neuronal regeneration. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is widely considered to be one of the major mechanisms underlying memory acquisition, consolidation and storage in the brain and is known to be controlled at the molecular level by the activation of a number of neuronal signalling pathways. These pathways include the phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase/protein kinase B/Akt (Akt), protein kinase C, protein kinase A, Ca-calmodulin kinase and mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways. Growing evidence suggests that flavonoids exert effects on LTP, and consequently memory and cognitive performance, through their interactions with these signalling pathways. Of particular interest is the ability of flavonoids to activate the extracellular signal-regulated kinase and the Akt signalling pathways leading to the activation of the cAMP-response element-binding protein, a transcription factor responsible for increasing the expression of a number of neurotrophins important in LTP and long-term memory. One such neurotrophin is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is known to be crucial in controlling synapse growth, in promoting an increase in dendritic spine density and in enhancing synaptic receptor density. The present review explores the potential of flavonoids and their metabolite forms to promote memory and learning through their interactions with neuronal signalling pathways pivotal in controlling LTP and memory in human subjects.

The impact of flavonoids on spatial memory in rodents: from behaviour to underlying hippocampal mechanisms

Emerging evidence suggests that a group of dietary-derived phytochemicals known as flavonoids are able to induce improvements in memory, learning and cognition. Flavonoids have been shown to modulate critical neuronal signalling pathways involved in processes of memory, and therefore are likely to affect synaptic plasticity and long-term potentiation mechanisms, widely considered to provide a basis for memory. Animal dietary supplementation studies have further shown that flavonoid-rich foods are able to reverse age-related spatial memory and spatial learning impairments. A more accurate understanding of how a particular spatial memory task works and of which aspects of memory and learning can be assessed in each case, are necessary for a correct interpretation of data relating to diet-cognition experiments. Further understanding of how specific behavioural tasks relate to the functioning of hippocampal circuitry during learning processes might be also elucidative of the specific observed memory improvements. The overall goal of this review is to give an overview of how the hippocampal circuitry operates as a memory system during behavioural tasks, which we believe will provide a new insight into the underlying mechanisms of the action of flavonoids on cognition.