Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Painters – Finland“

ABSTRACTResearch undertaken between 1960 to 1990 into what was once a rock painting tradition in Finland, lacked a clear understanding of parallels between the painted figures found at rock painting locations in the southern and central areas of the country, and the motifs painted on the heads of Sámi shaman divination drums from Lapland. However, due to the discovery and analysis of the content of more rock painting sites in Finland from 1990 up to the present, a more comprehensive framework has emerged in which scholars from across different academic disciplines have discovered many more similar characteristics linking the rock paintings and drum symbolism. These recent findings point towards the survival of a nature based sacrificial religion from the Stone Age era in Finland. The source of this was shamanistic in its essence, and is seen portrayed on rock and boulder formations by hunters similarly to how figures were illustrated on drum heads by the Sámi shamans from the nomadic era of the 17th and 18th centuries in Lapland. This more recent recognition strengthens the argument for Sámi involvement in the creation of rock paintings in Finland.

Werner von Hausen met Emile Bernard in Cairo in 1895, in Laren (Netherlands) in 1906, and again in Paris in 1906–1908. Evidence of these encounters is found in portraits, press articles and in the artists’ correspondence. These scattered fragments contain hitherto unknown biographical elements and make it possible to reconstruct a major influence on the artistic production and thought of the Finnish painter. Werner von Hausen thus turns out to be a protagonist of Antimodernism in Finland, a classical painter and author of memoirs, reviews and a manifesto defending a vision of art that did not conform to the expectations of his time.

ABSTRACTA new, extensive examination of figures with horns and triangular shaped heads in prehistoric rock paintings in Finland reveals remarkable parallels with similar attributes on the Radien and Akka groups of spirits, pictured as male and female powers of the sky, earth and underworld, painted on the heads of indigenous Sámi noaidi drums from Swedish and Norwegian Sápmi during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What makes this particular study of interest is that the cultural context or origins of rock paintings in Finland remains ambiguous. They are contextualised as being ‘Finnish’ according to academic literature. This paper explores these theories further and presents the findings of this investigation. In light of these findings, a re-examination and re-interpretation of the cultural context of rock paintings in Finland concerning Sámi pre-Christian religion and cultural heritage is prompted.

The purpose of the study, carried out on the basis of numerous unpublished documents, is to present the various useful activities of Alexei Petrovich Bogolyubov, a painter and an Actual State Councilor in the Naval Ministry. A.P. Bogolyubov began his service as a midshipman on January 8, 1841, and worked actively in the Naval Ministry for about 55 years. More than 90 documents from various funds were found in the Russian Archives of the Navy, including the artist’s autographs. The recently discovered album of original drawings made by the artist in 1862 and 1864 is of greatest value. Professor of marine painting, a member of the Council of the Imperial Academy of Arts, A.P. Bogolyubov trained talented apprentice artists who continued his work at the Naval Ministry and brought fame to Russia at numerous international art exhibitions. He performed important practical work (visual drawings of the shores, entrances to the ports and skerry-type channels) and for many decades made it safe for the sailors to navigate through the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland; he created the Art Museum named after Radishchev and the Art and Craft School in Saratov; by the order of the emperors Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, Bogolyubov painted about a hundred of marine battle scenes covering the history of the Russian Fleet from its origin under Peter the Great up to the visit of the Russian squadron to Cherbourg in 1896. New archival documents testify to all the glorious deeds of A.P. Bogolyubov

Before the mid-nineteenth century there were few subjects in the altarpiece tradition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in which the central figures accompanying Christ were female. Seldom used or new motifs involving female characters now emerged behind the altar. Most of the altarpieces with central women figures were painted in Finland at the turn of the twentieth century by the artist Alexandra Frosterus-Såltin (1837–1916). In the nineteenth century Frosterus-Såltin was the only artist in Finland who realized the motif of ‘Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene’ in her altarpieces. In her final representation of the theme, the altarpiece in the church of the Finnish Jepua commune, she chose an unusual approach to the motif. My interest in the subject lies in the motif’s affective nature – the ways in which altarpieces in general have been actively used to evoke feelings. Moreover, I consider the influence that Alexandra Frosterus-Såltin, a significant agent in Finnish sacral art, had on consolidating the position of women’s agency in the Finnish altarpiece tradition. I examine the motif in relation to the cultural and political atmosphere of the era, especially the changing gender roles and the understanding of women’s social agency as the women’s movement emerged.

The oeuvre of beloved Polish painter Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936) reflected the patriotic Neo-Romantic landscape trend of the fin-de-siècle prevalent in Germany and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden). It should be considered in the context of Nordic visual culture for two reasons: (1) until the affiliation of Central and Eastern European nations with the Soviet Union in the wake of World War Two, nations bordering the Baltic formed a single, fluid territory of cultural exchange, and (2) Ruszczyc’s oeuvre displays significant commonalities with dominant patriotic and Neo-Romantic trends of progressive artists around the Baltic Sea, where landscape became a vehicle for expressing dreams and emotions, as well as love of homeland. This article situates Ruszczyc’s national and artistic identity at the crossroads of cultures and artistic impulses, regional as well as international. Ruszczyc was born in Bohdanów near Vilnius (now Belarus) to a Polish father and a Danish mother. Like many Polish artists from the Russian partition, he was educated at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied with Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898) and Arkhip Kuindzhi (1878–1910). He also travelled to Sweden. Ruszczyc was influenced by the Russian art circle Mir Iskusstva (World of Art, est. 1898) and is often compared with Nordic (e.g., Akseli Gallen-Kallela; Finnish, 1865–1931) and German (e.g., Otto Modersohn; 1865–1943) artists. His visions of nature are sometimes raw monumental images of the northern landscape or fairy-tale fantasies containing symbolic allusiveness and a mythical, poetic element that evoke intimate memories of the land of his childhood. In his paintings, Ruszczyc presented the changeability of seasons, orchards, soil and streams, clouds formations, and tree trunks with palpable emotion. By exposing the material substance of nature, his paintings also reveal its mystical aspect, its ability to transform in accordance with the cyclical, cosmic rhythm of growth, maturation, death, and rebirth.

This article focuses on nationalist political rhetoric in two historical periods in Finland. We analysed the rhetorical changes and continuities in anticommunist newspaper articles from the past (1930s) and in anti-Islam blogs in the present (2010s). We identified two similar discourses in the political rhetoric of both eras, each discourse constructed around two different Others: the external Other, the stranger from the outside world, and the internal Others, those within our own society. Our analysis identified some significant differences pertaining to the form of the rhetoric in the two studied time periods. The writers in the past used unproblematic and blatant rhetoric that often relied on metaphorical and hyperbolic expressions. The present-day bloggers painted a negative picture of the Other more often than did their counterparts of the 1930s by using factuality-enhancing strategies such as giving details, citing statistics, and drawing on expert knowledge. Importantly, moreover, the present-day discourse was characterised by defensive and counterattacking rhetorical formulations, as illustrated by the extensive denials and reversals of racism. Our analysis suggests that the discourse of Otherness seems to require much more rhetorical work and justifying proclamations in the present than in the past nationalist political rhetoric.

Abstract. Danish auroral science history begins with the early auroral observations made by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe during the years from 1582 to 1601 preceding the Maunder minimum in solar activity. Included are also the brilliant observations made by another astronomer, Ole Rømer, from Copenhagen in 1707, as well as the early auroral observations made from Greenland by missionaries during the 18th and 19th centuries. The relations between auroras and geomagnetic variations were analysed by H. C. Ørsted, who also played a vital role in the development of Danish meteorology that came to include comprehensive auroral observations from Denmark, Iceland and Greenland as well as auroral and geomagnetic research. The very important auroral investigations made by Sophus Tromholt are outlined. His analysis from 1880 of auroral observations from Greenland prepared for the significant contributions from the Danish Meteorological Institute, DMI, (founded in 1872) to the first International Polar Year 1882/83, where an expedition headed by Adam Paulsen was sent to Greenland to conduct auroral and geomagnetic observations. Paulsen's analyses of the collected data gave many important results but also raised many new questions that gave rise to auroral expeditions to Iceland in 1899 to 1900 and to Finland in 1900 to 1901. Among the results from these expeditions were 26 unique paintings of the auroras made by the artist painter, Harald Moltke. The expedition to Finland was headed by Dan la Cour, who later as director of the DMI came to be in charge of the comprehensive international geomagnetic and auroral observations made during the Second International Polar Year in 1932/33. Finally, the article describes the important investigations made by Knud Lassen during, among others, the International Geophysical Year 1957/58 and during the International Quiet Sun Year (IQSY) in 1964/65. With his leadership the auroral and geomagnetic research at DMI reached a high international level that came to be the background for the first Danish satellite, Ørsted, successfully launched in 1999 and still in operation.

1 Seasonality of poisonings was studied among 28 692 cases reported during the years 1980-1982 in Finland with special reference to recurring peak months over years. Poisonings predominated in the summer. For all age-groups peaks of envenomations, plant poisonings and pesticide poisonings recurred between June and September. 2 Among children aged 0-6 years, there were in addition recurrent peaks in poisonings by tobacco between June and August, by corrosive agents in September and by vitamins, trace elements and external medicines in October. Among children aged 7-15 years, fertilizer poisonings peaked recurrently in August. Among adults, poisonings by petroleum products peaked recurrently in July and December, psychopharmacologic drugs in July and October, paints, glues and plastics in November, alcohols in December and antimicrobial drugs in August and October. 3 Of all poisonings, 33% occurred in July, August or September in contrast to the expected 25%. Preventive efforts should thus be intensified during the summer.

The article deals with youth lyrics of Edith Södergran — a prominent poet-modernist of Swedish descent who was born and went to school in St. Petersburg. Edith Södergrans’ professional oeuvres were written in the Swedish language and published in Finland, her earliest poems being composed in several languages: German, French, Swedish and Russian yet never published in her lifetime. It was at St Peter’s School — Sankt-Petri-Schule that Edith Södergran commenced poetic exercises. Waxcloth Notebook from 1907–1909 — Vaxvukshäftet — where she recorded her first uneven, and heterogeneous in form and metrics, verses is decisive in comprehending her mature modernist lyrics of world value. The article suggests that some of the poems have a character of exercises associated with the curriculum in versification. Poetry chosen is composed in various versification systems. Analysis of seven poems from Waxcloth Notebook demonstrates Södergran’s natural ease for drawing emphatical images and for discovering inner feelings at the same time. Her quick eye and rooted insight combined with native ability and cleverness to render colors and to bring dynamic movement or slow it down is highly convincing in verses dedicated to her native St. Petersburg in German and in her first poems in Swedish. Her unschooled talent evolved by early poetic experiments and aesthetic sense advanced by St. Petersburg prepared further transformation of Södergran as self-sustained word painter and reformer of versification in the Swedish language.

The article is dedicated to the formation of Valaam’s own school of painting for monks and novices of the monastery. This process consisted of several stages connected to both the historical development of the monastery itself, as well as the expanding influence of the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts. The official establishment of the painting school, which trained artists according to academic methods, dates back to the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The entire preceding history of the monastery paved the way for the inauguration of the school. In particular, the monastery gathered a carefully selected collection of engravings and reproductions of famous religious paintings, art manuals, human anatomy atlases and picturesque copies of popular works of art. Construction of the new Transfiguration Cathedral, to be supposedly painted by monastery artists, provided the main impetus for the eventual opening of the school. Gifted Valaam monks Alipiy (Konstantinov) and Luka (Bogdanov), as well as a student of the Russian Academy of Arts, V. A. Bondarenko, taught at the monastery’s school. Among some of the most diligent students of the school were hegumen Gavrill (Gavrilov), the main proponent of its establishment and its trustee, along with monk Fotiy (Yablokov), the future head of the icon painting workshop. The school continued to operate until the monks of the Valaam Monastery were forced to flee to Finland as a result of hostilities that broke out in the archipelago during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939–1940.

The article examines the genres of the vocal and the choral symphony in connection with the author’s vocal symphony Finland for soprano, tenor and orchestra set to Evgeny Baratynsky’s poem with the same title. It also discusses the issue of expression of the literary text in vocal music, as viewed by a number of influential 19th and 20th century composers, music theorists and artists. Among the greatest examples of the vocal symphony are Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie. These works combine in an organic way the features of the symphony and the song cycle. The genre of the choral symphony started with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and includes such works as Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, Scriabin’s First Symphony and Mahler’s Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies. Both genres exemplify composers’ attempts to combine the most substantial genre of instrumental music embodying the composers’ philosophical worldviews with that of vocal music, which expresses the emotional content of the literary texts set to music. The issue of expressivity in music is further elaborated in examinations of various composers’ approaches to it. Wagner claimed that the purpose of music was to express the composers’ emotional experience and especially the literary texts set to music. Stravinsky expressed the view that music in its very essence is not meant to express emotions. He called for an emotionally detached approach to music and especially to text settings in vocal music. Schoenberg pointed towards a more introversive and abstract approach to musical expression and text setting in vocal music, renouncing outward depiction for the sake of inner expression. Similar attitudes to this position were held by painter Wassily Kandinsky and music theorist Theodor Adorno. The author views Schoenberg’s approach to be the most viable for 20th and early 21st century music.

A substantial number of cartels in the European Union are detected and enforced by the national competition authorities (NCAs). The effectiveness of the domestic enforcement has been subject to extensive review and debates, which have recently culminated and resulted in the proposal for the ECN Directive. The current discussions are mostly limited to the number of enforcement activities, the quantity of imposed fines and their height and deterrence. An empirical assessment of the court procedures in which those fines were challenged and the consequences thereof received minimal attention, despite its importance. The Dutch example, more in particular the difference between the fines as issued by the NCA and those remaining after court review, shows that the mere reference to the number of cases sanctioned paints a distorted picture and an analysis of the rates of litigation and successful litigation is indispensable for veraciously assessing the NCA’s effectiveness. In light thereof, this article analyses the frequency of (successful) litigation and the reasons for annulments in cases of cartel fines in ten Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom). Public policy makers, such as the European Commission, could benefit from this data gathered in order to analyse the effectiveness of the NCAs. Moreover, the analysis is valuable for future research, since the depiction of the trends and differences can form the basis for further research to explain the percentages, trends and developments – as the author is doing for the Netherlands.

According to the requirements of international law, the protective elements of documents confirming an identity or its special status and give the right to cross the state border must correspond to the maximum level of security. Modern expert practice testifies to the presence of a number of shortcomings in the protection of a passport of a citizen of Ukraine for traveling abroad with a contactless electronic carrier. The main way to forge passport documents is to make unauthorized changes to the original data page. The main identifier, on the data page, is the bearer’s photographic image. Therefore, it is subject to unauthorized changes in the first place. The main changes are made in the photographic image of the bearer and the duplicate image. The solution to the problem of their additional protection is possible by introducing additional special means. In particular, destructive holograms and Transparent Window technology (from Trüb, Gemalto Group (Sealys Window Lock)). Making any changes leaves noticeable traces that are easily identified by a simple visual method, without the use of special devices. In addition, for supplemental protection, it is advisable to apply the document number by laser perforation to the bearer’s photographic image. When mechanically interfering with the photographic image, the license plate is damaged, which leaves noticeable traces, which are determined by a simple visual method (look at the clearance). Some of these solutions have already been implemented in today’s passport documents of Lithuania, the Netherlands and Finland. Special attention should be paid to the contactless electronic data carrier based on RFID technology (RFID device). Its disadvantage is an external antenna (RFID antenna), which is performed by traditional technology - copper (copper substrate) engraving. Such an antenna is easily susceptible to mechanical damage if the document is handled carelessly. Because of this, it becomes difficult to verify the identity of the bearer. Offenders, specially disabling the antenna, use this disadvantage. Currently, the most economical way of making antennas for RFID devices is printing with conductive inks (printing method). The cost of conductive paints is lower than that of traditional technologies using metal substrates. In addition, conductive paints have a much higher resistance to mechanical damage than their counterparts from copper substrates. The proposed innovative means of protection, which have already been tested in the identification documents of the states of the European Union. They are capable of preventing unauthorized changes required by offenders. It is advisable to single out the following areas as a direction for further research: laser technologies; holography; printing and technical properties of polymeric materials.

Vanda Juhansoo. Artist or Eccentric Woman?Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design18.01.–01.03.2020, Tartu City Museum 19.06.–26.09.2021.Exhibition curated by: Andreas Kalkun (Estonian Literary Museum)and Rebeka Põldsam, graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio. Vanda Juhansoo (1889–1966) was by education a porcelain painter and furniture designer; she was, however, known as a textile and craft artist, traveller, polyglot, notable art teacher, interior decorator, advocate of women’s craft, soroptimist and gardener. Sometimes she was also known as the ‘Witch of Valgemetsa’. She graduated from the Central School of Applied Arts Ateneum in Finland, which makes her one of the first Estonian women artists with a higher education at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though Vanda Juhansoo specialised in ceramics and furniture design, as a student she received the most recognition (as well as travel grants) for her embroidery. From then on, Vanda spent her next thirty summers travelling in Europe. Between 1912 and 1945, she exhibited her ceramics, embroidered doilies and curtains in various places, including the first ever Estonian women artists’ show in 1939. Vanda Juhansoo worked with the Kodukäsitöö limited company, that had been established in 1927 with the aim of reducing unemployment among women. Alongside craft and women’s magazines, the Kodukäsitöö was the most significant promoter of women’s craft in Estonia, regularly organising exhibition-sales and taking Estonian craft to international shows. Unfortunately, most of Vanda Juhansoo’s oeuvre was so ephemeral that there is very little trace of it now. The Karilatsi Open Air Museum near Vanda’s home in Valgemetsa and the collection of the Estonian National Museum hold items given to the museum by Vanda’s cousin’s family, which Vanda herself most likely wore – these are made to fit her petite size and there are photos of Vanda wearing these garments. Her signature style used floral motifs embroidered onto the thin textiles she wove herself. Like a painter, she spent hours embroidering, casting ethnographic patterns aside when creating her original designs. Even though the Estonian National Museum has exhibited Vanda Juhansoo’s embroidered cardigans as examples of Estonian folk art, these are, in fact, clearly original artistic designs. After World War II, Vanda stopped exhibiting and publishing her patterns in craft magazines. Instead, she committed herself to teaching drawing and supervised a number of children’s art classes in Tartu that produced many wellknown artists. The memory of Vanda has largely been kept alive by her students, who remember her as a particularly bright and optimistic person. In addition to her embroidery, Vanda’s original style remained visible as she expressed it in her memorable multicoloured hair nets and abundant jewellery, as well as in the striking Valgemetsa summer house and garden. The curators tried to trace back and recreate some of the wonderful world that Vanda created all around herself with her designs, handicraft, paintings, photos and memories from museums, archives, and from people who knew her. Looking at the life, work and legacy of Vanda Juhansoo, the exhibition asked: What were the choices for women artists in Estonia at the beginning of the 20th century? Why are Vanda’s works found mainly in the collections of ethnographic memory institutions rather than in art museums? Why did Vanda become the so-called ‘Witch of Valgemetsa’ and not a recognised applied artist? In the present review, the reception of the exhibition is summarised and juxtaposed with the few studies on Vanda Juhansoo’s textile work from the perspective of craft studies and the history of applied art.

Vanda Juhansoo. Artist or Eccentric Woman?Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design18.01.–01.03.2020, Tartu City Museum 19.06.–26.09.2021.Exhibition curated by: Andreas Kalkun (Estonian Literary Museum)and Rebeka Põldsam, graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio. Vanda Juhansoo (1889–1966) was by education a porcelain painter and furniture designer; she was, however, known as a textile and craft artist, traveller, polyglot, notable art teacher, interior decorator, advocate of women’s craft, soroptimist and gardener. Sometimes she was also known as the ‘Witch of Valgemetsa’. She graduated from the Central School of Applied Arts Ateneum in Finland, which makes her one of the first Estonian women artists with a higher education at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though Vanda Juhansoo specialised in ceramics and furniture design, as a student she received the most recognition (as well as travel grants) for her embroidery. From then on, Vanda spent her next thirty summers travelling in Europe. Between 1912 and 1945, she exhibited her ceramics, embroidered doilies and curtains in various places, including the first ever Estonian women artists’ show in 1939. Vanda Juhansoo worked with the Kodukäsitöö limited company, that had been established in 1927 with the aim of reducing unemployment among women. Alongside craft and women’s magazines, the Kodukäsitöö was the most significant promoter of women’s craft in Estonia, regularly organising exhibition-sales and taking Estonian craft to international shows. Unfortunately, most of Vanda Juhansoo’s oeuvre was so ephemeral that there is very little trace of it now. The Karilatsi Open Air Museum near Vanda’s home in Valgemetsa and the collection of the Estonian National Museum hold items given to the museum by Vanda’s cousin’s family, which Vanda herself most likely wore – these are made to fit her petite size and there are photos of Vanda wearing these garments. Her signature style used floral motifs embroidered onto the thin textiles she wove herself. Like a painter, she spent hours embroidering, casting ethnographic patterns aside when creating her original designs. Even though the Estonian National Museum has exhibited Vanda Juhansoo’s embroidered cardigans as examples of Estonian folk art, these are, in fact, clearly original artistic designs. After World War II, Vanda stopped exhibiting and publishing her patterns in craft magazines. Instead, she committed herself to teaching drawing and supervised a number of children’s art classes in Tartu that produced many wellknown artists. The memory of Vanda has largely been kept alive by her students, who remember her as a particularly bright and optimistic person. In addition to her embroidery, Vanda’s original style remained visible as she expressed it in her memorable multicoloured hair nets and abundant jewellery, as well as in the striking Valgemetsa summer house and garden. The curators tried to trace back and recreate some of the wonderful world that Vanda created all around herself with her designs, handicraft, paintings, photos and memories from museums, archives, and from people who knew her. Looking at the life, work and legacy of Vanda Juhansoo, the exhibition asked: What were the choices for women artists in Estonia at the beginning of the 20th century? Why are Vanda’s works found mainly in the collections of ethnographic memory institutions rather than in art museums? Why did Vanda become the so-called ‘Witch of Valgemetsa’ and not a recognised applied artist? In the present review, the reception of the exhibition is summarised and juxtaposed with the few studies on Vanda Juhansoo’s textile work from the perspective of craft studies and the history of applied art.

Article is devoted to the study of landscapes by Russian artists of the mid-19th century from the collection of the New Valaam Monastery in Finland. The unique miraculously preserved collection was the most valuable addition to the ideas about the domestic painters’ work from nature on Valaam, and until recently it had no scientific description and has not been exhibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Kunsten og maleriets fortolkning af kroppen i begyndelsen af 1900-tallet. Artiklen beskriver kunstnerens fremstilling af mandekroppen som et æstetisk objekt ofte med naturen som motiv.Nordic Painters and the new Body.The thesis of this article is that in the period around the turn of the century there was a decisive new departure in the perception of time and space in Nordic countries. This was expressed in the very movement of the body in time and space, in the areas of sport and physical exercise amongst others. It is also true of the representations of such movements, that is to say in literature and art. The article interprets the new knowledge of the being and the living space of the body in the years after 1900, including its relation to the pictorial arts. Of the Nordic painters who took sport and the body as their theme, four have been selected here. In Norway, Edvard Munch was working his way out of the straitjacket of self-obsession during the years around 1910 and for that reason became for a short period sun-worshipper and vitalist. Between 1910-12 Magnus Enckell from Finland painted a series of outdoor pictures full of lyricism and light depicting naked people on the margin between land and water. J.F.Willumsen travelled from Denmark to southern Italy in 1902 to create a set of photographs of naked boys bathing, which he later translated to large-scale oil paintings. Finally, there is Eugène Jansson from Sweden, perhaps the greatest sports enthusiast of them all. After 1910 he became increasing interested in power sport as a motif, exploring the compositional possibilities of the body and its ability to provide variation and harmony. The article demonstrates a marked difference in the perception of the body and its movement in the work of these four painters. At the same time there is a fundamental similarity in their enthusiastic and at the same time fearful fascination for corporeality and its new incarnation, which is so characteristic for the first two decades of the 20th century.

In 1931, the Finnish painter Juho Rissanen (1873-1950) travelled to the tourist city Biskra in Algeria, then spending there the winter season, a most agreeable time in North Africa. It is situated on the verge of the Saharan desert, and ever since Algeria had become a French colony in the early nineteenth century, the city hosted hordes of tourists. (Algeria became independent as late as in 1962.) Biskra was known for its sulphate baths, which were supposed to improve health. But as several travellers and painters have observed, it was also the perfect spot where to hire a camel and a driver for a journey into an unwelcoming desert. Algerian Sahara had in fact been the target of many earlier nineteenth century Orientalists, and the country’s status as a French colony made its sights relatively accessible to foreigners. Rissanen was one of those following in the footsteps of earlier itinerants. The authenticity of the city as the visitors saw it is, however, a complex question. The travellers usually lived at the same hotel near the baths and stayed mostly in the company of each other. The locals in their turn – a travel account of the time explains – were always ready to pose wherever a Kodak camera would turn up, and as a result, costume studies were produced and camels painted. All foreigners regarded camel excursion as the climax of the stay. In Finland, Rissanen is best known for his late nineteenth- and early twentieth century portraits of Finnish rural types, let be that he later turned to other motifs and techniques. Even today, the latter part of his production is much lesser known than the celebrated highlights. Chronic anxiety about health constantly led the painter to warmer climates; he spent his final years in Florida after having sauntered around the Mediterranean, e.g. Southern France, in the interwar years. The aim of my article is threefold: firstly, to investigate Rissanen’s motifs for travelling to Biskra; secondly, to show that Rissanen’s encounter with the city was purely touristic, in line with its reputation as a travel destination in colonial France; and thirdly, to present its outcome as an example of late Orientalist painting. To sum up, I consider the reception of Rissanen’s later art production, in order to situate his Biskra-pictures within a larger context. Unfortunately, I have, so far, only been able to locate a handful of watercolours now belonging to Kuopio Art Museum. The Kuopio collection also contains Rissanen’s letters to his friend, the physician Emil Suihko, as well as to the art historian Onni Okkonen, among others. In his correspondence, Rissanen lingers on Biskra. The works I have found depict craftsmen sitting in the streets and women wearing colourful, local dresses. Needless to say, even Rissanen proved his love of the desert by drawing camels. It is another matter that these ubiquitous animals of course could be spotted in the streets, too. Interestingly, in an interview made shortly after Biskra and published in a 1931 issue of the Finnish magazine Konstrevyn, Rissanen says very little of why and how he painted in Northern Africa. Virtually, the whole text deals with touristic trivia. Keywords: Juho Rissanen (1873-1950), Biskra, French Orientalism, tourism, 20th century visual arts

Daugavpils Region Artists Association (DRAA) is a professional creative organization, which now comprises 37 artists from different generations, schools and professional industry: painters, graphic artists, sculptors, textile artists, potters, stage designers, etc. DRAA was founded in 1998. Organization is to promote conditions for creativity, to promote the association's creative work, to defend artists' creative freedom, moral, economic, social rights and professional interests. In its 15 years of existence, Daugavpils Region Artists Association organized exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, promoted the development of visual culture in Latgale and combined local professional artists in their own activities. Besides to those artists actively developed their own individual artistic work through exhibitions, participation in international and Latvian plenaries, residencies and master classes. Significant work has been done documenting the artists' creative work. Artistic activity of the group has seen more active and less saturated periods. At this time DRAA has become significant in the context of Latvian art and has created interest among partners in Lithuania, Belarus, France, etc. Due to the personal initiative DRAA artists exhibited their works in group exhibitions and had solo exhibitions in Lithuania, Belarus, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Austria, Poland, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Uzbekistan, Finland, Switzerland, Italy. During DRAA existence the artists held around 150 solo exhibitions and participated in over 500 group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. In period from 1998 to 2013th DRAA implemented various activities related to art, which positively influenced and enriched the cultural life of Daugavpils, contributed to the city and state recognition of cultural space. A leading role in driving of this process belongs to the personalities in the DRAA group – to its leaders Līga Čible and Romualds Gibovskis. Group of artists could achieve its aims only if state and local government will provide a moral and material support in order to develop the area of education, the arts process documentation and work procurement issues. Only cooperation between different institutions can create an attractive and modern cultural facilities on the eastern border. Article aims to collect information on the artists DRAA professional activities from 1998 to 2013th year describe the group of main areas of activity and reflect the most significant achievements.

This article describes and explains the reasons for the rise and establishment ofprogramme-based promotion of workplace innovation in Finland during the last 20 years.Several ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that have simultaneously promoted the consolidation ofthese efforts are presented. The author also examines the Finnish programmes and ‘Nordicexceptionalism’ in a broader European context, referring to the overall under-resourcingof workplace innovation activities in European public policies so far. At the end of thearticle, new challenges to workplace development deriving from the rapid reshaping ofworking life are discussed. Despite the rather gloomy picture that is painted of how debateon a good working life has been flagging in many European countries recently, the authorbelieves that the significance of workplace innovations as one of the driving forces of the‘second wave’ of ICT-based productivity growth will increase in the future. The author alsowelcomes the European Commission’s new initiative, the EUWIN project, as an importantindication that workplace innovations are also seen as increasingly important from theperspective of industrial policy in Europe.

AbstractFormaldehyde is one of the most important intermediate chemicals and has been produced industrially since 1889. Formaldehyde is a key feedstock in several industries like resins, polymers, adhesives, and paints, making it one of the most valuable chemicals in the world. However, not many studies have been dedicated to reviewing the production of this economically important product. In this review paper, we study the leading commercial processes for formaldehyde production and compare them with recent advancements in catalysis and novel processes. This paper compares, in extensive detail, the reaction mechanisms and kinetics of water ballast process (or BASF process), methanol ballast process, and Formox process. The thermodynamics of the reactions involved in the formaldehyde production process was investigated using HSC Chemistry™ software (Outotec Oyj, Espoo, Finland). Exergy analysis was carried out for the natural gas to methanol process and the methanol ballast process for formaldehyde production. The former process was simulated using Aspen HYSYS™ and the latter using Aspen Plus™ software (Aspen technology, Burlington, MA, USA). The yield and product specifications from the simulation results closely matched with published experimental data. The exergy efficiencies of the natural gas to synthesis gas

For the past twenty years, academics and other social commentators have, by and large, shared the view that the phase of modernity through which we are currently passing is defined by two interrelated catalysts of change: the physical movement of people and the virtual movement of information around the globe. As we enter the second decade of the new millennium, it is certainly a timely moment to reflect upon the ways in which the prognoses of the scholars and scientists writing in the late twentieth century have come to pass, especially since—during the time this special issue has been in press—the revolutions that are gathering pace in the Arab world appear to be realising the theoretical prediction that the ever-increasing “flows” of people and information would ultimately bring about the end of the nation-state and herald an era of transnationalism (Appadurai, Urry). For writers like Arjun Appadurai, moreover, the concept of diaspora was key to grasping how this new world order would take shape, and how it would operate: Diasporic public spheres, diverse amongst themselves, are the crucibles of a postnational political order. The engines of their discourse are mass media (both interactive and expressive) and the movement of refugees, activists, students, laborers. It may be that the emergent postnational order proves not to be a system of homogeneous units (as with the current system of nation-states) but a system based on relations between heterogeneous units (some social movements, some interest groups, some professional bodies, some non-governmental organizations, some armed constabularies, some judicial bodies) ... In the short run, as we can see already, it is likely to be a world of increased incivility and violence. In the longer run, free from the constraints of the nation form, we may find that cultural freedom and sustainable justice in the world do not presuppose the uniform and general existence of the nation-state. This unsettling possibility could be the most exciting dividend of living in modernity at large. (23) In this editorial, we would like to return to the “here and now” of the late 1990s in which theorists like Arjun Appaduri, Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Robertson and others were “imagining” the consequences of both globalisation and glocalisation for the twenty-first century in order that we may better assess what is, indeed, coming to pass. While most of their prognoses for this “second modernity” have proven remarkably accurate, it is their—self-confessed—inability to forecast either the nature or the extent of the digital revolution that most vividly captures the distance between the mid-1990s and now; and it is precisely the consequences of this extraordinary technological revolution on the twin concepts of “glocality” and “diaspora” that the research featured in this special issue seeks to capture. Glocal Imaginaries Appadurai’s endeavours to show how globalisation was rapidly making itself felt as a “structure of feeling” (Williams in Appadurai 189) as well as a material “fact” was also implicit in our conceptualisation of the conference, “Glocal Imaginaries: Writing/Migration/Place,” which gave rise to this special issue. This conference, which was the culmination of the AHRC-funded project “Moving Manchester: Literature/Migration/Place (2006-10)”, constituted a unique opportunity to gain an international, cross-disciplinary perspective on urgent and topical debates concerning mobility and migration in the early twenty-first century and the strand “Networked Diasporas” was one of the best represented on the program. Attracting papers on broadcast media as well as the new digital technologies, the strand was strikingly international in terms of the speakers’ countries of origin, as is this special issue which brings together research from six European countries, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The “case-studies” represented in these articles may therefore be seen to constitute something of a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of how Appadurai’s “glocal imaginary” is being lived out across the globe in the early years of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the collection proves that his hunch with regards to the signal importance of the “mass-media” in redefining our spatial and temporal coordinates of being and belonging was correct: The third and final factor to be addressed here is the role of the mass-media, especially in its electronic forms, in creating new sorts of disjuncture between spatial and virtual neighborhoods. This disjuncture has both utopian and dystopian potentials, and there is no easy way to tell how these may play themselves out in the future of the production of locality. (194) The articles collected here certainly do serve as testament to the “bewildering plethora of changes in ... media environments” (195) that Appadurai envisaged, and yet it can clearly also be argued that this agent of glocalisation has not yet brought about the demise of the nation-state in the way (or at the speed) that many commentators predicted. Digital Diasporas in a Transnational World Reviewing the work of the leading social science theorists working in the field during the late 1990s, it quickly becomes evident that: (a) the belief that globalisation presented a threat to the nation-state was widely held; and (b) that the “jury” was undecided as to whether this would prove a good or bad thing in the years to come. While the commentators concerned did their best to complexify both their analysis of the present and their view of the future, it is interesting to observe, in retrospect, how the rhetoric of both utopia and dystopia invaded their discourse in almost equal measure. We have already seen how Appadurai, in his 1996 publication, Modernity at Large, looks beyond the “increased incivility and violence” of the “short term” to a world “free from the constraints of the nation form,” while Roger Bromley, following Agamben and Deleuze as well as Appadurai, typifies a generation of literary and cultural critics who have paid tribute to the way in which the arts (and, in particular, storytelling) have enabled subjects to break free from their national (af)filiations (Pearce, Devolving 17) and discover new “de-territorialised” (Deleuze and Guattari) modes of being and belonging. Alongside this “hope,” however, the forces and agents of globalisation were also regarded with a good deal of suspicion and fear, as is evidenced in Ulrich Beck’s What is Globalization? In his overview of the theorists who were then perceived to be leading the debate, Beck draws distinctions between what was perceived to be the “engine” of globalisation (31), but is clearly most exercised by the manner in which the transformation has taken shape: Without a revolution, without even any change in laws or constitutions, an attack has been launched “in the normal course of business”, as it were, upon the material lifelines of modern national societies. First, the transnational corporations are to export jobs to parts of the world where labour costs and workplace obligations are lowest. Second, the computer-generation of worldwide proximity enables them to break down and disperse goods and services, and produce them through a division of labour in different parts of the world, so that national and corporate labels inevitably become illusory. (3; italics in the original) Beck’s concern is clearly that all these changes have taken place without the nation-states of the world being directly involved in any way: transnational corporations began to take advantage of the new “mobility” available to them without having to secure the agreement of any government (“Companies can produce in one country, pay taxes in another and demand state infrastructural spending in yet another”; 4-5); the export of the labour market through the use of digital communications (stereotypically, call centres in India) was similarly unregulated; and the world economy, as a consequence, was in the process of becoming detached from the processes of either production or consumption (“capitalism without labour”; 5-7). Vis-à-vis the dystopian endgame of this effective “bypassing” of the nation-state, Beck is especially troubled about the fate of the human rights legislation that nation-states around the world have developed, with immense effort and over time (e.g. employment law, trade unions, universal welfare provision) and cites Zygmunt Bauman’s caution that globalisation will, at worst, result in widespread “global wealth” and “local poverty” (31). Further, he ends his book with a fully apocalyptic vision, “the Brazilianization of Europe” (161-3), which unapologetically calls upon the conventions of science fiction to imagine a worst-case scenario for a Europe without nations. While fourteen or fifteen years is evidently not enough time to put Beck’s prognosis to the test, most readers would probably agree that we are still some way away from such a Europe. Although the material wealth and presence of the transnational corporations strikes a chord, especially if we include the world banks and finance organisations in their number, the financial crisis that has rocked the world for the past three years, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ascendancy of Al-Qaida (all things yet to happen when Beck was writing in 1997), has arguably resulted in the nations of Europe reinforcing their (respective and collective) legal, fiscal, and political might through rigorous new policing of their physical borders and regulation of their citizens through “austerity measures” of an order not seen since World War Two. In other words, while the processes of globalisation have clearly been instrumental in creating the financial crisis that Europe is presently grappling with and does, indeed, expose the extent to which the world economy now operates outside the control of the nation-state, the nation-state still exists very palpably for all its citizens (whether permanent or migrant) as an agent of control, welfare, and social justice. This may, indeed, cause us to conclude that Bauman’s vision of a world in which globalisation would make itself felt very differently for some groups than others came closest to what is taking shape: true, the transnationals have seized significant political and economic power from the nation-state, but this has not meant the end of the nation-state; rather, the change is being experienced as a re-trenching of whatever power the nation-state still has (and this, of course, is considerable) over its citizens in their “local”, everyday lives (Bauman 55). If we now turn to the portrait of Europe painted by the articles that constitute this special issue, we see further evidence of transglobal processes and practices operating in a realm oblivious to local (including national) concerns. While our authors are generally more concerned with the flows of information and “identity” than business or finance (Appaduri’s “ethnoscapes,” “technoscapes,” and “ideoscapes”: 33-7), there is the same impression that this “circulation” (Latour) is effectively bypassing the state at one level (the virtual), whilst remaining very materially bound by it at another. In other words, and following Bauman, we would suggest that it is quite possible for contemporary subjects to be both the agents and subjects of globalisation: a paradox that, as we shall go on to demonstrate, is given particularly vivid expression in the case of diasporic and/or migrant peoples who may be able to bypass the state in the manufacture of their “virtual” identities/communities) but who (Cohen) remain very much its subjects (or, indeed, “non-subjects”) when attempting movement in the material realm. Two of the articles in the collection (Leurs & Ponzanesi and Marcheva) deal directly with the exponential growth of “digital diasporas” (sometimes referred to as “e-diasporas”) since the inception of Facebook in 2004, and both provide specific illustrations of the way in which the nation-state both has, and has not, been transcended. First, it quickly becomes clear that for the (largely) “youthful” (Leurs & Ponzanesi) participants of nationally inscribed networking sites (e.g. “discovernikkei” (Japan), “Hyves” (Netherlands), “Bulgarians in the UK” (Bulgaria)), shared national identity is a means and not an end. In other words, although the participants of these sites might share in and actively produce a fond and nostalgic image of their “homeland” (Marcheva), they are rarely concerned with it as a material or political entity and an expression of their national identities is rapidly supplemented by the sharing of other (global) identity markers. Leurs & Ponzanesi invoke Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the “rhizome” to describe the way in which social networkers “weave” a “rhizomatic path” to identity, gradually accumulating a hybrid set of affiliations. Indeed, the extent to which the “nation” disappears on such sites can be remarkable as was also observed in our investigation of the digital storytelling site, “Capture Wales” (BBC) (Pearce, "Writing"). Although this BBC site was set up to capture the voices of the Welsh nation in the early twenty-first century through a collection of (largely) autobiographical stories, very few of the participants mention either Wales or their “Welshness” in the stories that they tell. Further, where the “home” nation is (re)imagined, it is generally in an idealised, or highly personalised, form (e.g. stories about one’s own family) or through a sharing of (perceived and actual) cultural idiosyncrasies (Marcheva on “You know you’re a Bulgarian when …”) rather than an engagement with the nation-state per se. As Leurs & Ponzanesi observe: “We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets obscured as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties initiate subcultures and offer resistance to mainstream cultural forms.” Both the articles just discussed also note the shading of the “national” into the “transnational” on the social networking sites they discuss, and “transnationalism”—in the sense of many different nations and their diasporas being united through a common interest or cause—is also a focus of Pikner’s article on “collective actions” in Europe (notably, “EuroMayDay” and “My Estonia”) and Harb’s highly topical account of the role of both broadcast media (principally, Al-Jazeera) and social media in the revolutions and uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world (spring 2011). On this point, it should be noted that Harb identifies this as the moment when Facebook’s erstwhile predominantly social function was displaced by a manifestly political one. From this we must conclude that both transnationalism and social media sites can be put to very different ends: while young people in relatively privileged democratic countries might embrace transnationalism as an expression of their desire to “rise above” national politics, the youth of the Arab world have engaged it as a means of generating solidarity for nationalist insurgency and liberation. Another instance of “g/local” digital solidarity exceeding national borders is to be found in Johanna Sumiala’s article on the circulatory power of the Internet in the Kauhajoki school shooting which took place Finland in 2008. As well as using the Internet to “stage manage” his rampage, the Kauhajoki shooter (whose name the author chose to withhold for ethical reasons) was subsequently found to have been a member of numerous Web-based “hate groups”, many of them originating in the United States and, as a consequence, may be understood to have committed his crime on behalf of a transnational community: what Sumiala has defined as a “networked community of destruction.” It must also be noted, however, that the school shootings were experienced as a very local tragedy in Finland itself and, although the shooter may have been psychically located in a transnational hyper-reality when he undertook the killings, it is his nation-state that has had to deal with the trauma and shame in the long term. Woodward and Brown & Rutherford, meanwhile, show that it remains the tendency of public broadcast media to uphold the raison d’être of the nation-state at the same time as embracing change. Woodward’s feature article (which reports on the AHRC-sponsored “Tuning In” project which has researched the BBC World Service) shows how the representation of national and diasporic “voices” from around the world, either in opposition to or in dialogue with the BBC’s own reporting, is key to the way in which the Commission has changed and modernised in recent times; however, she is also clear that many of the objectives that defined the service in its early days—such as its commitment to a distinctly “English” brand of education—still remain. Similarly, Brown & Rutherford’s article on the innovative Australian ABC children’s television series, My Place (which has combined traditional broadcasting with online, interactive websites) may be seen to be positively promoting the Australian nation by making visible its commitment to multiculturalism. Both articles nevertheless reveal the extent to which these public service broadcasters have recognised the need to respond to their nations’ changing demographics and, in particular, the fact that “diaspora” is a concept that refers not only to their English and Australian audiences abroad but also to their now manifestly multicultural audiences at home. When it comes to commercial satellite television, however, the relationship between broadcasting and national and global politics is rather harder to pin down. Subramanian exposes a complex interplay of national and global interests through her analysis of the Malayalee “reality television” series, Idea Star Singer. Exported globally to the Indian diaspora, the show is shamelessly exploitative in the way in which it combines residual and emergent ideologies (i.e. nostalgia for a traditional Keralayan way of life vs aspirational “western lifestyles”) in pursuit of its (massive) audience ratings. Further, while the ISS series is ostensibly a g/local phenomenon (the export of Kerala to the rest of the world rather than “India” per se), Subramanian passionately laments all the progressive national initiatives (most notably, the campaign for “women’s rights”) that the show is happy to ignore: an illustration of one of the negative consequences of globalisation predicted by Beck (31) noted at the start of this editorial. Harb, meanwhile, reflects upon a rather different set of political concerns with regards to commercial satellite broadcasting in her account of the role of Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya in the recent (2011) Arab revolutions. Despite Al-Jazeera’s reputation for “two-sided” news coverage, recent events have exposed its complicity with the Qatari government; further, the uprisings have revealed the speed with which social media—in particular Facebook and Twitter—are replacing broadcast media. It is now possible for “the people” to bypass both governments and news corporations (public and private) in relaying the news. Taken together, then, what our articles would seem to indicate is that, while the power of the nation-state has notionally been transcended via a range of new networking practices, this has yet to undermine its material power in any guaranteed way (witness recent counter-insurgencies in Libya, Bahrain, and Syria).True, the Internet may be used to facilitate transnational “actions” against the nation-state (individual or collective) through a variety of non-violent or violent actions, but nation-states around the world, and especially in Western Europe, are currently wielding immense power over their subjects through aggressive “austerity measures” which have the capacity to severely compromise the freedom and agency of the citizens concerned through widespread unemployment and cuts in social welfare provision. This said, several of our articles provide evidence that Appadurai’s more utopian prognoses are also taking shape. Alongside the troubling possibility that globalisation, and the technologies that support it, is effectively eroding “difference” (be this national or individual), there are the ever-increasing (and widely reported) instances of how digital technology is actively supporting local communities and actions around the world in ways that bypass the state. These range from the relatively modest collective action, “My Estonia”, featured in Pikner’s article, to the ways in which the Libyan diaspora in Manchester have made use of social media to publicise and support public protests in Tripoli (Harb). In other words, there is compelling material evidence that the heterogeneity that Appadurai predicted and hoped for has come to pass through the people’s active participation in (and partial ownership of) media practices. Citizens are now able to “interfere” in the representation of their lives as never before and, through the digital revolution, communicate with one another in ways that circumvent state-controlled broadcasting. We are therefore pleased to present the articles that follow as a lively, interdisciplinary and international “state-of-the-art” commentary on how the ongoing revolution in media and communication is responding to, and bringing into being, the processes and practices of globalisation predicted by Appadurai, Beck, Bauman, and others in the 1990s. The articles also speak to the changing nature of the world’s “diasporas” during this fifteen year time frame (1996-2011) and, we trust, will activate further debate (following Cohen) on the conceptual tensions that now manifestly exist between “virtual” and “material” diasporas and also between the “transnational” diasporas whose objective is to transcend the nation-state altogether and those that deploy social media for specifically local or national/ist ends. Acknowledgements With thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for their generous funding of the “Moving Manchester” project (2006-10). Special thanks to Dr Kate Horsley (Lancaster University) for her invaluable assistance as ‘Web Editor’ in the production of this special issue (we could not have managed without you!) and also to Gail Ferguson (our copy-editor) for her expertise in the preparation of the final typescript. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. Beck, Ulrich. What is Globalization? Trans. Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity, 2000 (1997). Bromley, Roger. Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Pearce, Lynne, ed. Devolving Identities: Feminist Readings in Home and Belonging. London: Ashgate, 2000. Pearce, Lynne. “‘Writing’ and ‘Region’ in the Twenty-First Century: Epistemological Reflections on Regionally Located Art and Literature in the Wake of the Digital Revolution.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 13.1 (2010): 27-41. Robertson, Robert. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Urry, John. Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge, 1999. Williams, Raymond. Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.

IntroductionIn 2011, Four Corners — the flagship current affairs program of the Australian national broadcaster, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) — aired an investigative report on the conditions in Indonesian slaughterhouses. Central to the report was a focus on how Australian cows were being killed for human consumption. Moral outrage ensued. The Federal Government responded with a temporary ban on the live export of cattle to Indonesia. In 2010 the Australian Government initiated legal action in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opposing Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean, following a sustained period of public opposition. This article pays close attention to expressions of public opposition to the killing of what have come to be referred to as our cows and our whales, and the response of the Federal Government.Australia’s recent history with the live export of farmed animals and its transformation into an anti-whaling nation provides us with a foundation to analyse these contemporary disputes. In contrast to a focus on “Australian cow making” (Fozdar and Spittles 76) during the live export controversy, this article investigates the processes through which the bodies of cows and whales became sites for the mapping of Australian identity and nationhood – in other words, a relational construction of Australianness that we can identify as a form of animal nationalism (Dalziell and Wadiwel). What is at stake are claims about desired national self-image. In what we might consider as part of a history of cows and whales is in many ways a ‘history of people with animals in it” (Davis 551). In other words, these disputes are not really about cows and whales.The Live Export IndustryAustralia is the largest exporter of live farmed animals, primarily sheep and cows, to the Middle East and Southeast Asia respectively (Phillips and Santurtun 309). The live export industry is promoted and supported by the Federal Government, with an explicit emphasis on the conditions experienced by these farmed animals. According to the Government, “Australia leads the world in animal welfare practices … [and] does not tolerate cruelty towards animals and will not compromise on animal welfare standards” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). These are strong and specific claims about Australia’s moral compass. What is being asserted is the level of care and concern about how Australia’s farmed animals are raised, transported and killed.There is an implicit relationality here. To be a ‘world leader’ or to claim world’s best practice, there must be some form of moral or ethical measure to judge these practices against. We can locate these more clearly and directly in the follow-up sentence on the above claim: “Our ongoing involvement in the livestock export trade provides an opportunity to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). The enthusiasm expressed in this statement manifests in explicitly seeking to position Australia as an exporter of moral progress (see Caulfield 76). These are cultural claims about us.In its current form the Australian live export industry dates back to the early 1960s, with concerns about the material conditions of farmed animals in destination countries raised from the outset (Caulfield 72; Villanueva Pain 100). In the early 1980s animal activists formed the Australian Federation of Animal Societies to put forward a national unified voice. Protests and political lobbying lead to the formation of a Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare, reflecting what Gonzalo Villanueva has referred to as a social and political landscape that “appeared increasingly favourable to discussing animal welfare” (Transnational 89-91).The Select Committee’s first report focussed on live export and explicitly mentioned the treatment of Australian farmed animals in the abattoirs of destination countries. The conditions in these facilities were described as being of a lower “standard of animal welfare” to those in Australia (Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare xiii). These findings directly mirror the expressions of concern in the wake of the 2011 controversy.“A Bloody Business”On 30 May 2011, Four Corners aired a report entitled ‘A Bloody Business’ on the conditions in Indonesian slaughterhouses. The investigation followed-up on footage provided by Animals Australia and Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA Australia). Members from these groups had travelled to Indonesia in order to document conditions in slaughterhouses and prepare briefing notes which were later shared with the ABC. Their aim was to increase public awareness of the conditions Australian farmed cattle faced in Indonesia, provide a broader indictment of the live export industry, and call for an end the practice. The nationwide broadcast which included graphic footage of our cows being killed, enabled broader Australia to participate from the comfort of their own homes (see Della Porta and Diani 177-8).The program generated significant media coverage and public moral outrage (Dalziell and Wadiwel 72). Dr Bidda Jones, Chief Scientist of RSPCA Australia, referred to “28,000 radio stories, 13,000 TV mentions and 3,000 press stories” making it one of the top five national issues in the media for five weeks. An online petition created by the activist organisation GetUp! collected more than 260,000 signatures over a period of three days and $300,000 was raised for campaign advertising (Jones 102). Together, these media reports and protest actions influenced the Federal Government to suspend live exports to Indonesia. A front-page story in The Age described the Federal Government as having “caved in to public and internal party pressure” (Willingham and Allard). In her first public statement about the controversy, Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Government’s intent: “We will be working closely with Indonesia, and with the industry, to make sure we can bring about major change to the way cattle are handled in these slaughter houses” (Willingham and Allard).The Prime Minister’s statement directly echoed the claims made on the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources website introduced above. Implicit is these statements is a perceived ability to bring about “major change” and an assumption that we kill better. Both directly align with claims of leading the world in animal welfare practices and the findings of the 1985 Select Committee report. Further, the controversy itself was positioned as providing an “opportunity to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources).Four Corners provided a nationwide platform to influence decision-makers (see Della Porta and Diani 168-9). White, Director of Strategy for Animals Australia, expressed this concisely:We should be killing the animals here under Australian conditions, under our control, and then they should only be shipped as meat products, not live animals. (Ferguson, Doyle, and Worthington)Jones provided more context, describing the suffering experienced by “Australian cattle” in Indonesia as “too much,” especially when “a clear, demonstrated and successful alternative to the live export of animals” was already available (“Broader”; Jones 188). Implicit in these calls for farmed cows to be killed in Australia was an inference to technical and moral progress, evoking Australia’s “national self-image” as “a modern, principled culture” (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84). The clean, efficient and modern processes undertaken in Australia were relationally positioned against the bloody practices conducted in the Indonesian facilities. In other words, we kill cows in a nicer, more humane and better way.Australia and WhalingAustralia has a long and dynamic history with whaling (Salter). A “fervently” pro-whaling nation, the “rapidly growing” local industry went through a modernisation process in the 1950s (Day 19; Kato 484). Operations became "clean and smooth,” and death became "instant, swift and painless”. As with the live export controversy, an inference of a nicer, more humane and better way of killing was central the Australian whaling industry (Kato 484-85). Enthusiastic support for an Australian whaling industry was superseded within three decades by what Charlotte Epstein describes as “a dramatic historical turnabout” (Power 150). In June 1977, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) came to Canberra, and protests were organised across Australia to coincide with the meeting.The IWJ meeting was seen as a political opportunity. An IWC meeting being held in the last English-as-first-language nation with a commercial whaling operation provided an ideal target for the growing anti-whaling movement (Epstein, Power 149). In parallel, the opportunity to make whaling an electoral issue was seen as a priority for locally based activists and organisations (Pash 31). The collective actions of those campaigning against the backdrop of the IWC meeting comprised an array of performances (Tarrow 29). Alongside lobbying delegates, protests were held outside the venue, including the first use of a full-sized replica inflatable sperm whale by anti-whaling activists. See Image 1. The symbol of the whale became a signifier synonymous for the environment movement for decades to follow (see Epstein, Power 110-11). The number of environmental organisations attending exceeded those of any prior IWC meeting, setting in place a practice that would continue for decades to follow (M’Gonigle 150; Pash 27-8).Image 1: Protest at Australia’s last whaling station August 28, 1977. Photo credit: Jonny Lewis Collection.Following the IWC meeting in Canberra, activists packed up their equipment and prepared for the long drive to Albany in Western Australia. Disruption was added to their repertoire (Tarrow 99). The target was the last commercial whaling operation in Australia. Two months later, on August 28, demonstrations were held at the gates of the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company. Two inflatable Zodiac boats were launched, with the aim of positioning themselves between the whales being hunted and the company’s harpoon vessels. Greenpeace was painted on the side — the first protest action in Australia under the organisation’s banner (Pash 93-94).In 1978, Prime Minister Fraser formally announced an Inquiry into the future of whaling in Australia, seeking to position Australia as being on the right side of history, “taking a decisive step forward in the human consciousness” (Epstein, World 313). Underpinning announcement was a (re)purposing of whales bodies as a site for the mapping of relational constructions of Australian identity and nationhood:Many thousands of Australians — and men, women and children throughout the world — have long felt deep concern about the activities of whalers… I abhor any such activity — particularly when it is directed against a species as special and intelligent as the whale.(Qtd. in Frost vii)The actions of those protesting against whaling and the language used by Fraser in announcing the Inquiry signalled Australia’s becoming as the first nation in which “ethical arguments about the intrinsic value of the whale” displaced “scientific considerations of levels of endangerment” (Epstein, Power 150). The idea of taking action for whales had become about more than just saving their lives, it was an ethical imperative for us.Standing Up for (Our) WhalesThe Inquiry into “whales and whaling” provided specific recommendations, which were adopted in full by Prime Minister Fraser:The Inquiry’s central conclusion is that Australian whaling should end, and that, internationally, Australia should pursue a policy of opposition whaling. (Frost 206)The inquiry found that the majority of Australians viewed whaling as “morally wrong” and as a nation we should stand up for whales internationally (Frost 183). There is a direct reference here to the moral values of a civilised community, what Arne Kalland describes as a claim to “social maturity” (130). By identifying itself as a nation on the right side of the issue, Australia was pursuing a position of moral leadership on the world stage. The Whale Protection Act (1980) replaced the Whaling Act (1960). Australia’s policy of opposition to whaling was “pursued both domestically and internationally though the IWC and other organizations” (Day 19).Public opposition to whaling increased with the commencement of Japan’s scientific research whaling program in the Southern Ocean, and the dramatic actions of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Daily Telegraph which ran a series of articles under the banner of “our whales” in June 2005 (see, for example, Hossack; Rehn). The conservative Federal Government embraced the idea, with the Department of the Environment and Heritage website including a “Save Our Whales” page. Six months out from the 2007 federal election, opposition leader Kevin Rudd stated “It's time that Australia got serious when it comes to the slaughter of our whales” (Walters). As a “naturally more compassionate, more properly developed” people, we [Australians] had a duty to protect them (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84).Alongside oft-repeated claims of Australia’s status as a “world leader” and the priority placed on the protection of whales nationally and internationally, saveourwhales.gov.au wristbands were available for order from the government website — at no charge. By wearing one of these wristbands, all Australians could “show [their] support for the protection of whales and dolphins” (Department of the Environment and Heritage). In other words, the wearer could join together with other Australians in making a clear moral and ethical statement about both how much whales mean to us and that we all should stand up for them. The wristbands provided a means to individually and collectively express this is what we do in unobtrusive everyday way.Dramatic actions in the Southern Ocean during the 2008/09 whaling season received a broader audience with the airing of the first season of the reality TV series Whale Wars, which became Animal Planets most viewed program (Robé 94). As with A Bloody Business, Whale Wars provided an opportunity for a manifestly larger number of people to eyewitness the plight of whales (see Epstein, Power 142). Alongside the dramatised representation of the risky and personally sacrificial actions taken by the crew, the attitudes expressed reflected those of Prime Minister Fraser in 1977: protecting special and intelligent whales was the right and civilised thing to do.These sentiments were framed by the footage of activists in the series. For example, in episode four of season two, Lockhart McClean, Captain of the MV Gojira referred to Japanese whalers and their vessels as “evil” and “barbaric”, and their practices outdated. The drama of the series revolved around Sea Shepherd patrolling the Southern Ocean, their attempts to intervene against the Japanese fleet and protect our whales. The clear undercurrent here is a claim of moral progress, situated alongside an enthusiasm to export it. Such sentiments were clearly echoed by Bob Brown, a respected former member of federal parliament and spokesperson for Sea Shepherd: “It’s just a gruesome, bloody, medieval, scene which has no place in this modern world” (Japanese Whaling).On 31 May 2010 the Federal Government initiated proceedings against Japan in the ICJ. Four years later, the Court found in their favour (Nagtzaam, Young and Sullivan).Conclusion, Claims of Moral LeadershipHow the 2011 live export controversy and opposition to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean have unfolded provide us with an opportunity to explore a number of common themes. As Dalziell and Wadiwell noted with regard to the 2011 live export controversy, our “national self-image” was central (84). Both disputes encompass claims about us about how we want to be perceived. Whereas our cows and whales appear as key players, both disputes are effectively a ‘history of people with animals in it” (Davis 551). In other words, these disputes were not really about the lives of our farmed cows or whales.The Federal Government sought to reposition the 2011 live export controversy as providing (another) opportunity "to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries,” drawing from our own claimed worlds-best practices (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). The “solution” put forward by White and Jones solution was for Australian farmed cows to be killed here. Underpinning both was an implicit claim that we kill cows in a nicer, more humane and better way: "Australians are naturally more compassionate, more properly developed; more human” (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84).Similarly, the Federal Government’s pursuit of a position of world-leadership in opposing whaling was rooted in claims of our moral progress as a nation. Having formally recognised the specialness of whales in the 1970s, it was our duty to pursue their protection internationally. We could individually and collectively express national identity on our wrists, through wearing a government-provided saveourwhales.gov.au wristband. Collectively, we would not stand by and let the "gruesome, bloody, medieval” practice of Japanese whaling continue in our waters (“Japanese”). Legal action undertaken in the ICJ was the penultimate pronouncement.In short, expressions of concerns for our cows whales positioned their bodies as sites for the mapping of relational constructions of our identity and nationhood.Author’s NoteFor valuable comments on earlier drafts, I thank Talei Vulatha, Ben Hightower, Scott East and two anonymous referees.References“Broader Ban the Next Step: Animal Group.” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 2011. 11 July 2018 <https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/broader-ban-the-next-step-animal-group-20110608-1frsr.html>.Caulfield, Malcolm. Handbook of Australian Animal Cruelty Law. North Melbourne: Animals Australia, 2009.Dalziell, Jacqueline, and Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel. “Live Exports, Animal Advocacy, Race and ‘Animal Nationalism’.” Meat Culture. Ed. Annie Potts. Brill Academic Pub., 2016. 73-89.Day, David. The Whale War. Random House, Inc., 1987.Della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani. Social Movements: An Introduction. 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