Статті в журналах з теми "Pierre (Cathedral)"

The ‘Gregorian Reform’ or ‘Gregorian Revolution’ is a model of top–down ecclesiastical change that assumes that local bishops suddenly became, to some extent, agents of Rome. One striking illustration of this is the portrayal of the ‘new Gregorian bishop’, based largely on Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130), presented by Pierre Toubert in his classic Structures du Latium médiéval (1973), and now reprised by Jacques Dalarun (2003). This article, employing an unedited collection of miracles, re-examines Toubert's treatment of Berardus and reveals a reforming saint who belongs less to Rome and more to his idiosyncratic cathedral of Santa Sabina.

Silicified granites were used to build the Romanesque monuments in the city of Ávila, Spain. The building stones comprise two types of granite based on their technical properties and colour: Bleeding Stone (Piedra Sangrante) and Ochre Granite (Caleño). They were used as a facing stone in the city´s Romanesque monuments of the 12th century (e.g. the cathedral and church of San Pedro), and the famous city walls that constitute the best example of military Romanesque Spanish architecture. During the Gothic and Renaissance periods of the 13th and 15th centuries, silicified granites were used mainly to build ribbed vaults, the voissoirs of the arches, and elements of the windows in the monuments of Ávila. Silicified granites are found in the intermediate and upper part of a complex palaeoweathering zone or mantle developed on the Iberian Hercynian Basement which underlies much of the western Iberian Peninsula. The silicification occurred during tropical conditions in the Mesozoic. The weathered mantle was truncated by Alpine tectonic movements during the Tertiary, and its remnants were unconformably overlain by more recent sediments in the western and southern part of the Duero Basin and along the northern edge of the Amblés Valley graben. The historical, and now protected, quarry is located in a village called La Colilla, about 5 km from the city of Ávila. Currently, this stone is exploited only for restoration work performed in the city, for example the Walls of Ávila, and the church of San Pedro. The resource is limited and being depleted, so the stone will be scarce in the near future. Consequently, these silicified granites should be recognized as a Global Heritage Stone Resource. The specific technical properties of these stones and their historic use, decay patterns, durability, and suitability for conservation treatments combine to support its designation as a Global Heritage Stone Resource.RÉSUMÉDes granites silicifiés ont été utilisés pour construire les monuments romans dans la ville d’Ávila, en Espagne. Les pierres de construction comprennent deux types de granite selon leurs propriétés techniques et leur couleur : Bleeding Stone (Piedra sangrante) et Ochre Granite (Caleño). Ils ont été utilisés comme pierre de revêtement de monuments romans du 12ème siècle de la ville (par exemple la cathédrale et de l'église de San Pedro), et pour les célèbres remparts de la ville qui constituent le meilleur exemple de l'architecture espagnole romane militaire. Durant les périodes gothique et Renaissance des 13e et 15e siècles, les granites silicifiés ont été utilisés principalement pour construire des croisés d'ogives, des voussoirs d’arcs et des éléments de fenêtres des monuments d’Ávila. Les granites silicifiés se trouvent dans la partie intermédiaire et supérieure d'une zone complexe de paléo-altération ou de manteau développée sur le socle ibérique hercynien qui supporte une grande partie de la péninsule ibérique occidentale. La silicification s’est produite dans des conditions tropicales au Mésozoïque. Le matériau mantélique altéré a été tronqué par des mouvements tectoniques alpins au cours du Tertiaire, et ses restes ont été recouverts en discordance par des sédiments plus récents dans la partie ouest et sud du bassin de Duero, et le long de la bordure nord de la vallée en graben d’Amblés. L’ancienne carrière, maintenant protégée, est située dans un village appelé La Colilla, à environ 5 km de la ville d’Ávila. Actuellement, cette pierre est exploitée uniquement pour les travaux de restauration effectués dans la ville, par exemple les murs d’Ávila, et l'église de San Pedro. La ressource est limitée et en voie d'épuisement, de sorte que la pierre sera rare dans un proche avenir. Par conséquent, ces granites silicifiés devraient être reconnus en tant que pierre du Patrimoine mondial des ressources en pierre. Les propriétés techniques spécifiques de ces pierres et leur valeur historique, leurs modes de désintégration, leur durabilité et leur pertinence pour la conservation patrimoniale justifient leur désignation en tant que roche du Patrimoine mondial des ressources en pierre. Traduit par le Traducteur

This paper examines the museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages and its relationship with Soulages, the city of Rodez, the Forirail Garden (which is the site of the museum), and the ideas and practices realised by Catalan architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta (RCR). The Musée Soulages is defined by the colour black and the luminous fluidity of steel as designed by RCR Arquitectes; it is also aligned with an environmental ecology that literally and figuratively represents the town of Rodez with its Notre-Dame Cathedral. The central thesis is that the Musée Soulages inducts the visitor into a role of active participation and exchange in an atmosphere of transcendental logic, and, ultimately, a new way to experience black as a colour rather than the lack of one. A visitor to the Musée Soulages becomes part of a theatrical event in which two actors —one French abstract painter, three Catalan architects—communicate in physical terms about the metaphysical environment, and the relationship between the scenographic and the tectonic in architecture. The Musée Soulages is a fascinating metaphorical representation of not only Pierre Soulages's character and his work, but also of the role of the built environment and material culture that is intertwined with the body of Soulages's expressive works. This essay focuses on the material and symbolic gestures created by Pierre Soulages and RCR Arquitectes to maintain and promote their particular world views, and examines the ways in which their expressive mediums and ideas are by turn harmonious and contradictory.

The construction of St.-Maclou after 1432 revitalized architecture in Rouen and Normandy for the next 90 years. Both the patrons and the architect played a significant role in the emergence of this new style. The architecture has been attributed to the Parisian master Pierre Robin, but the stylistic evidence based on a unique vocabulary of forms suggests that the St.-Maclou master was trained in the Norman Vexin and had a knowledge of architecture of Germany, Flanders, and central Europe. The parish church was also modeled on several monumental features found at the cathedral of Rouen including the interior and transept elevations, the lantern tower, and the western porch. This ambitious project, undertaken by the merchant class families of the parish during the English occupation, reflects both a desire to assume the duties of the old orders of the city and a conscious rejection of contemporary English-influenced architecture constructed during the occupation. One of these families, the Dufours, assisted the French king, Charles VII, in the recapitulation of Rouen in 1449. Thus, the retrospective and hence conservative reference to the Rayonnant parts of the cathedral of Rouen may have reflected a nostalgia for the architectural style associated with Louis IX and a golden age of French royalty. Using both stylistic and documentary evidence, this article attempts to identify the role of the patrons and architect in the development of the style of St.-Maclou.

ResumenA principios de septiembre de 1931, mediante carta privada remitida por B. Breslow -en cal­idad de Representante Comercial de la URSS en Francia-, Le Corbusier (y Pierre) reciben la in­vitación a participar en el concurso del Palacio de los Soviets de Moscú. Un edificio que, además de encarnar la voluntad de las masas trabajadoras rusas debía convertirse, de manera análoga, allí donde ya se hallaba construida la catedral del Salvador, en el monumento artístico-arquitectónico de la maltrecha capital soviética. Así, sirviéndonos del proyecto como instrumento, el escrito tra­tará de poner en relación dos de los materiales más íntimos en la vida y obra de Le Corbusier: sus agendas de Moscú y la correspondencia del atelier. Todo ello, con el único fin de desvelar algunas de las claves más desconocidas del comportamiento del arquitecto; ya no al frente de este proyecto concreto, sino sobre todo aquello que lo rodeaba: ya fueran los clientes, sus ayudantes o Pierre.AbstractIn early september 1931, on a private letter dispatched by B. Breslow -acting as Comercial Representative of the URSS in France-, Le Corbusier (and Pierre) received the invitation to partici­pate in the contest of the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow. A building that would not only enbodies russian´s working class will, but also should become in the same way, there where the Salvador cathedral was built, in the artistic-architectural monument of the struggling soviet capital. So, us­ing the project as an instrument, the note will try to put in relation two of the most intimate materi­als in the life and work of Le Corbusier: his Moscow diaries and the atelier correspondence. All of this, with the sole purpose of revealing some of the most unknown keys to the architect behavior; not at the front of this specific project, but above all that surrounded it: whether the clients, their assistants or Pierre.

The necropolis at the Cathedral Hill in Vyazma is mainly dated to the late 13th c. AD, and likely contains burials of the citizens of a high social status. A complete and well-preserved skeleton of a 35–40 year old female was excavated from Burial 15 of the necropolis. Almost all the bones of both upper and lower limbs were deformed due to excessive deposits of bone (periostitis) in the diaphyseal and metaphyseal areas. A combination of macroscopic and radiological – x-ray and microfocus computed tomography – has revealed that the lesions were likely manifestations of the Pierre-Marie-Bamberger syndrome, or secondary hypertrophic osteoarthropathy (HOA). This bone pathology accompanies some chronic diseases of the lungs and pleura (including benign and malignant tumors, tuberculous lesions, etc.), mediastinum and heart, and also, less frequently, other organs and systems. The exact disease that caused the observed bone lesions cannot be determined due to the absence of soft tissues. However, a detailed description of the skeletal manifestation of this pathology, in our opinion, can facilitate the detection and interpretation of periostitis of this type and localization in archeological remains of varying preservation and completeness. Noteworthy, this syndrome is, in 80% of clinical cases, associated with various lung diseases.

As the recent clashes in Mexico City's metropolitan cathedral show, it is not just clericalism that is making an apparent comeback in post-priístaMexico: clericalism's faithful alter ego, anticlericalism—provoked to violence when clanking church bells disturbed a political rally in thezócaloin November 2007—is also stirring anew. This dialectical affinity between rival ideological traditions goes back a long way, as historic clashes over church bells—auditory symbols of institutional jurisdiction and influence—remind us: and yet, as Alan Knight points out, neither the terrain, nor the terms, of the dispute between clericalism/anticlericalism have been mapped out with enough clarity by Mexicanist historians. The 1910-40 revolution, for instance, is associated with various anticlericalisms— be it the protestant variety studied by Jean-Pierre Bastian; the constitutionalists' liberal clerophobia, irrupting circa 1914; masonic, spiritist, or popular anticlericalisms; or the “socialist” god-burning of the 1930s which climaxed in the iconoclasm studied by Adrian Bantjes. This trajectory— from priest-baiting to dechristianization within a generation—makes it tempting to posit an irreligious revolution, whose anticlericalism was a precursory form of mature godlessness. Some revolutionaries, like Tomás Garrido Canabal in Tabasco, encouraged such a conflation by using anticlerical restrictions—especially state licensing of priests, enshrined in constitutional Article 130—in a vindictive and secularizing way: squeezing the clergy so hard that priests were eradicated, not just rubber-stamped by the state. Such figures clearly hoped that persecuting priests would fatally minebelief: the day would come, Adalberto Tejeda hoped in 1926, when religion would expire and churches become places of recreation for apostate Indians. The Roman Catholic clergy, meanwhile, was fond of denouncing anticlericals as deicides, if not devils, and reinforced its own position by encouraging the association of anticlericalism with anti-Catholicism in the minds of the faithful.

La fete Natale Petri de cathedra pouvait avoir ses origines dans un contexte d'une fete paienne de la Cara cognatio ou Caristia, qui cloturait par un banquet de la famille les six jours de Parentalia (commemoration annuelle des morts). Mais elle n'etait pas une commemoration funéraire liee au martyre de S. Pierre et son culte dans les catacombes ou au Vatican. Elle celebrait plutot s. Pierre comme garant de l'enseignement et de l'unite. En effet, le mot cathedra n'evoque pas seulement le siege vide pour le défunt dans les ceremonies funeraires, comme l'a constaté Th. Klauser, mais aussi la chair du docteur et son dignite.

In 1751, Jerzy August Mniszech purchased a plot in Długie Ogrody Street: the area where a large -scale residence was erected. Its designer was most probably Pierre Ricaud de Tirregaille. An important element in shaping the spatial composition of the entire palace and garden ensemble was formed by the main gate, characterized by an extremely dynamic, sculptural form, typical of Rococo art. At the top of the gate and on the fence posts there were figures: personifications of Minerva and Ceres, four putti representing the seasons and vases. At the beginning, the article presents the history and style of the sculptures. Then the question of attribution is discussed. In literature, Johann Heinrich Meissner is the most frequently indicated creator of the entire sculptural ensemble. This attribution, in view of the shortage of sources, requires confrontation with other, preserved works of the artist. Johann Heinrich Meissner (1701–1770) was born in Królewiec. He was present in Gdańsk, where from 1726 he owned a valued workshop. Having lived in the Old Town, near the Church of St Catherine, in 1755 he moved to Długie Ogrody where he located his studio, so he was a direct witness to the project carried out for Jerzy August Mniszech. Meissner’s workshop created, among other things, garden sculptures and elements of temple decorations. Among the sacred implementations, mention should be made of the decoration of the main altar in the Cathedral in Frombork, which includes four full -figure angelic figures, vases, flames and garlands made of pine wood. Meissner was also responsible for the statues of angels from the organ front in Gdańsk’s Church of St Mary, expanded in 1757–60. The soft modelling of forms precisely emphasizes the anatomy. Figures’ gestures are naturalistic. The sculptures in front of the Mniszech Palace are stylistically different from them: strongly stylized, exaggerated, they feature vibrating surface characteristic of the Rococo. Their authorship should therefore be associated with another sculpture workshop operating in Gdańsk in the mid -18th century. Another thread is the symbolic diagram of the fence decoration. In order to understand the ideological meaning of the figures in question, it is necessary to juxtapose them with the iconography found in Gdańsk’s art (e.g. Minerva decorated the façade of the Great Armory and the hall of the Main Town Hall, while the statues of Ceres were placed at the tops of tenement houses) and with European trends.

Abstrak Gereja Katolik Roh Kudus Katedral Denpasar memiliki simbol yang digunakan sebagai dekorasi interior. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan dekorasi salib Gereja Katolik Roh Kudus Katedral Denpasar Bali dengan teori C.S. Peirce. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif kualitatif, dengan metode pengumpulan data observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi. Sumber data utama penelitian ini adalah Salib Altar pada salib Gereja Katolik Roh Kudus Katedral Denpasar. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa salib altar gereja tersebut menyerupai bentuk Kayon Bali. Salib altar ini ditempatkan di belakang altar menghadap ke umat, berwarna keemasan dengan ornamen tanaman anggur, dan enam bentuk manusia malaikat. Interpretantnya salib altar menyerupai kayon Bali, memiliki tiga fungsi sesuai isi Alkitab, bagian awal kayon Bali adalah pembuka dan penutup pementasan wayang sedangkan di Alkitab melambangkan Yesus pada Awal dan Akhir. Kedua, kayon Bali berfungsi sebagai tanda pergantian babak sedangkan di Alkitab sebagai pengganti kurban persembahan pada perjanjian lama. Ketiga, kayon Bali sebagai lambang gunung, angin, hutan, dan lainnya, pada Alkitab melambangkan tempat Yesus disalibkan di Bukit Golgota. Representamentnya salib altar mengabungkan kebudayaan Bali dan simbol kekristenan, terjadi akulturasi dengan budaya lokal Bali. Simpulannya salib altar menyerupai bentuk kayon Bali yang memiliki makna sesuai dengan isi Alkitab, dan merupakan akulturasi budaya lokal Bali dengan kekristenan. Kata Kunci: Gereja Katedral, Kayon Bali, Semiotika Peirce, Salib Altar AbstractIn the Denpasar Cathedral Holy Spirit Catholic Church there are symbols used as interior decorations. This study aims to explain the decoration of the cross of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Denpasar Bali Cathedral, with the theory of C.S. Peirce. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach, with data collection methods of observation, interviews, and documentation. The main data source of this research is the Altar Cross on the cross of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Denpasar Cathedral. The results showed that the church altar cross resembled the shape of a Balinese Kayon. This altar cross is placed behind the altar facing the congregation, golden in color with vine ornaments, and six human angelic shapes. The interpretation of the altar cross resembles a Balinese kayon, has three functions according to the Bible, the beginning of the Balinese kayon is the opening and closing of the wayang performance, while in the Bible it symbolizes Jesus at the Beginning and the End. Second, the Balinese kayon serves as a sign of changing stages, while in the Bible it is a substitute for sacrifices in the Old Testament. Third, the Balinese kayon as a symbol of mountains, wind, forests, and others, in the Bible symbolizes the place where Jesus was crucified on Golgotha Hill. The representation of the altar cross combines Balinese culture and symbols of Christianity, acculturating local Balinese culture. In conclusion, the altar cross resembles the shape of a Balinese kayon which has a meaning according to the Bible, and is an acculturation of local Balinese culture with Christianity. Keywords: Altar Cross, Cathedral Church, Kayon Bali, Peirce Semiotics

Space is a concept central to music. Particular spaces can be seen as the enablers and analogues of social configurations for music-making. Thus, for example, concert halls, clubs or cathedrals determine significant aspects of the social and auditory presence of heard music, in terms of concepts such as proximity, separation, resonance, silence, community. Recording technologies have forced us to reconsider musical space as a much more complex phenomenon, including the possible presence of imaginary spaces. Bearing in mind Henri Lefebvre’s assertion that space must be ‘produced’, and starting from Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of spatial development, this article considers the ‘materiality’ of space and the implications of such materiality for thinking about music and sound. Taking the recent reconstruction of the Denman exponential horn at the British Science Museum as an emblem, in relation to the recent resurgence of interest in historic sound recording practices, space is considered in relation to current discussions of material culture.

<p>In this work it is presented the prospective and visualization efficiency of the 3D laser scanner as a tool applied to the elaboration of a preventive conservation plan of the ceramic done by Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol in the gothic cathedral of Mallorca .The usage of this technique has enabled its investigation regarding digital information storage and metrology of the whole surface and plastic elements in it. This ways it is determined the creation of a multidisciplinary and interactive database with documental, technical and prescriptive content in order to compose the preventive conservation plan.</p>

El conjunto de inscripciones funerarias de la catedral de Roda constituye con sus 225 letreros el obituario en piedra más importante conocido. El objeto de este artículo es presentar los inicios de una investigación monográfica del conjunto. El taller comienza su actividad entre 1200-1230 para finalizar en últimas décadas del XIV. Se determinan las distintas etapas del taller epigráfico, así como las principales manos que intervienen en cada etapa, con especial relieve sobre la grafía del maestro de Roda. Estudiar su génesis, la forma y evolución de sus grafías es la metodología a seguir en orden a poner de relieve su valor historiográfico.AbstractThe epigraphic collection of the cathedral of Roda with its 225 signs makes up the most important stone obituary known. The purpose of this article is to present the initial results of a monographic research of the whole complex. The workshop begins its activity between 1200-1230 to end in the last decades of the fourteenth century. The different stages of the epigraphic workshop will be established as well as the main cutters’ hands involved in each stage, with special emphasis on the script of the Master of Roda. In order to highlight its historical importance, the methodology adopted will include the study of the genesis of the various scripts, as well as their form and evolution.

Jeanette Winterson's beautiful memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Is a biography of a reader, a book about reading—reading for your life. In addition to the Bible, there are six books in the Plymouth Brethren Winterson household, and they are all nonfiction. Jeanette's mother, Mrs. Winterson, bans the reading of fiction, so young Jeanette reads in secret, in the outside lavatory or under covers at night, carefully depositing each read book under her mattress until it floats so dangerously high that it threatens to reveal the habit considered so vicious by her mother but that is sustaining Jeanette. Mrs. Winterson reads the Bible; young Jeanette has a memory of Jane Eyre read aloud in her mother's good reading voice, but Mrs. Winterson doctors it (with the skill of a clever reader, an astute stylist) so that Jane marries St. John Rivers and goes off to the mission with him. T. S. Eliot makes her cry in Accrington Public Library because his lines “This is one moment / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy” (from Murder in the Cathedral; qtd. in Winterson 39) give her hope that she will survive the moment she is in, and so does Gertrude Stein saying to Alice B. Toklas: “Right or wrong, this is the road and we are on it” (from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; qtd. in Winterson 130). Jeanette Winterson claims that she “puts herself inside books for safe-keeping” and that “a tough life needs a tough language” (36, 40). The people around her have that tough language. She hears lines that she later locates in Shakespeare, a writer she regards as “not part of the alphabet, any more than black is a colour” (115). When she is homeless and living in her Mini, supporting herself at the local sixth-form college by working at the weekend market and the local library, she reads “English Literature A-Z,” in the order in which it is shelved at the Accrington Public Library (115–30). Books are home when she is homeless (61); they are doses of medicine (42), saving people from isolation and the suffering that comes from feeling that nothing about their life is recognizable to others or intelligible to themselves, from being castaways from the tribe of human.

En 1917 se le encargó al arquitecto británico sir Edwin Lutyens que hiciera diseños para los cementerios de guerra en el continente. El resultado fue casi 1000 cementerios y monumentos diseñados por Lutyens y otros arquitectos en Bélgica, norte de Francia y varios lugares de Asia. Bajo el liderazgo del director del Museo Británico, los arquitectos optaron por un estilo común, con la libertad de hacer variaciones individuales para cada cementerio relacionado con su contexto. Como resultado de estas dos ideas opuestas, hay dos elementos principales en cada cementerio, la ‘Piedra de Guerra’ diseñada por Lutyens y la Cruz del Sacrificio de Blomfield. Para los soldados desaparecidos, se erigieron enormes monumentos con sus nom- bres en las paredes como único recuerdo. Los cementerios más pequeños fueron diseñados por jóvenes arquitectos que estuvieron en el ejército durante la guerra. Hay lápidas en lugar de cruces para cada tumba según las diferentes condiciones religiosas de los soldados. Para Lutyens, el concepto de cementerio se basaba en la idea de una catedral verde, una iglesia al aire libre, rodeada de árboles como columnas. Esta idea se inspiró en la conocida arquitecta paisajista Getrude Jekyll. Gracias al mantenimiento por parte de la Commonwealth War Graves Commission, los cementerios todavía están en perfecto estado y juegan un papel importante en el recuerdo de la Primera Guerra Mundial. Already in 1917, the British architect sir Edwin Lutyens was asked to make designs for warcemeteries on the continent. In the end this resulted in almost 1000 cemeteries and monuments designed by Lutyens and other architects in Belgium, Northern France and other locations in Asia. Under leadership of the director of the British Museum, the architects have chosen for a common style, with the freedom to make individual variations for each cemetery related to the site. As a result of two opposing ideas there are two main elements on each cemetery, the War Stone designed by Lutyens and the Cross of Sacrifice by Blomfield. For the soldiers which were not found huge monuments were erected with their names on walls as their only surviving memory. The smaller cemeteries were designed by young architects who were in the army during the war. There are headstones instead of crosses for each grave due to the different religious background of the soldiers. For Lutyens the concept of a cemetery was based on the idea of green cathedral, a church in the open air, surrounded by trees as columns. For this idea he took advice from the well-known landscape architect Getrude Jekyll. Because of the maintenance by de Commonwealth War Graves Commission Still the cemeteries are still in perfect state and play an important role in the remembrance of the First World War.

The immediacy of visual experience has always appeared as an indicator of verifiability of a presence. However, architecture as a bodily presence seems to be a reality that does not need verification. Yet there remains the issue of sacral architecture, which strives for the transcendent. What can be a medium in the experience of theophany? Sacral experience of Gothic architecture is very suitable for such observations. However, as I hope to demonstrate, only one theory seems to have actually approached the understanding of interconnections between the Holy Presence and the experience of it on an architectonic level. Precisely, it is Hans Jantzen’s (1881-1967) programmatic theory of “a diaphanic structure”. Term “diaphaneia” was first introduced by Jantzen in his article “Über den gotischen Kirchenraum” (1927). By that time the word had been used in near-esoteric circles (from Jacob Boehme to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and James Joyce). Jantzen’s seminal article is dedicated to the space of the Gothic cathedral, which he sees as ritual-liturgical. It is this multilayered space, he argues, that has a “diaphanic structure”. In his late texts (from the 1950 and 1960s) diaphaneia is explored as a universal way of keeping in view the horizon of the invisible presence. Sedlmayr's perception of Jantzen's ideas shows that optical diaphaneia should be complemented with somatic diaphaneia (through “baldachin”, in Sedlmayr's structuralist terms). The ultimate question is if diaphaneia is merely a means of “spiritualisation” of both the cathedral per se and architectural theory. Although architecture keeps silent, an architectural theorist speaks: using Derrida’s words, diaphaneia becomes diaphonie.

The famous anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that there is an “unnatural idea of inborn culture, of a gift of culture, bestowed on certain people by Nature.” [1] Bourdieu is arguing that people, who have not been born into a higher class, or who cannot receive a high level of education, are unable to appreciate and understand art. The study of art history is expensive, and often involves extremely high travel costs, thus making it inaccessible to anybody who does not enjoy the means to pursue it. How can we address this accessibility problem in the study of art history? Is there any way to bring art to the people who do not possess “inborn culture?” Bourdieu wrote his book on art and class in 1984, at a time when the computer, and its democratizing potential, was a new and little -understood invention. My research proposes that modern technology provides an answer to this problem, which has plagued the discipline of art history. This presentation will examine three research projects that I’ve been working on at Queen’s. Each project uses digital technologies to improve the general public’s knowledge and access to art. The projects are all different: the first focuses on creating a digital model of 18th - century Canterbury Cathedral based on a book from W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections, the second project works on understanding Herstmonceux Castle and medieval England through technology, and the third involves image processing for art historical investigations. Despite their differences, each project makes art accessible to people who do not possess Bourdieu’s definition of “inborn culture.”

Se utilizaron tobas volcánicas de alta porosidad para construir los muros de mampostería de la Catedral de la ciudad de Aguascalientes, en el centro de México. En la actualidad, la mampostería de piedra muestra evidencias de deterioro, principalmente en la parte inferior de las paredes exteriores debido al efecto de la humedad y la contaminación ambiental que está causando daños tales como microdescamación, descamación y pátina. Se realizaron estudios petrológicos que incluyeron difractometría de rayos X y análisis petrofísico como determinaciones de porosidad, densidad y densidad aparente, así como un levantamiento de daños de piedra para obtener información sobre los tipos de rocas utilizados para elaborar los muros de mampostería, sus características petrológicas y daños físicos. No se desarrollaron pruebas compresionales debido a la falta de muestras de piedra pero hay datos reportados para estas piedras por otros autores. Los resultados permiten identificar el tipo de piedra más propenso a deteriorarse, el mecanismo de deterioro de la piedra, y los factores que aceleran el deterioro. Aunque los resultados tienen un uso pragmático para las obras de restauración de la Catedral de la ciudad de Aguascalientes, la metodología aplicada podría ser utilizada para determinar la vulnerabilidad de las rocas a deteriorarse en edificios patrimoniales en cualquier lugar del exterior.

Dégueulasse is French slang for “disgusting,” derived in 1867 from the French verb dégueuler, to vomit. Despite its vulgar status, it is frequently used by almost every French speaker, including foreigners and students. It is also a term that has often been employed to describe the 1973 cult film, La Grande bouffe [Blow Out], by Marco Ferreri, which recounts in grotesque detail the gastronomic suicide of four male protagonists. This R-rated French-Italian production was booed, and the director spat on, at the 26th Cannes Film Festival—the Jury President, Ingrid Bergman, said it was the most “sordid” film she’d ever seen, and is even reported to have vomited after watching it (Télérama). Ferreri nevertheless walked away with the Prix FIPRESCI, awarded by the Federation of International Critics, and it is apparently the largest grossing release in the history of Paris with more than 700,000 entries in Paris and almost 3 million in France overall. Scandal sells, and this was especially seemingly so 1970s, when this film was avidly consumed as part of an unholy trinity alongside Bernardo Bertolucci’s Le Dernier Tango à Paris [Last Tango in Paris] (1972) and Jean Eustache’s La Maman et la putain [The Mother and the Whore] (1973). Fast forward forty years, though, and at the very moment when La Grande bouffe was being commemorated with a special screening on the 2013 Cannes Film Festival programme, a handful of University of Melbourne French students in a subject called “Matters of Taste” were boycotting the film as an unacceptable assault to their sensibilities. Over the decade that I have been showing the film to undergraduate students, this has never happened before. In this article, I want to examine critically the questions of taste that underpin this particular predicament. Analysing firstly the intradiegetic portrayal of taste in the film, through both gustatory and aesthetic signifiers, then the choice of the film as a key element in a University subject corpus, I will finally question the (dis)taste displayed by certain students, contextualising it as part of an ongoing socio-cultural commentary on food, sex, life, and death. Framed by a brief foray into Bourdieusian theories of taste, I will attempt to draw some conclusions on the continual renegotiation of gustatory and aesthetic tastes in relation to La Grande bouffe, and thereby deepen understanding of why it has become the incarnation of dégueulasse today. Theories of Taste In the 1970s, the parameters of “good” and “bad” taste imploded in the West, following political challenges to the power of the bourgeoisie that also undermined their status as the contemporary arbiters of taste. This revolution of manners was particularly shattering in France, fuelled by the initial success of the May 68 student, worker, and women’s rights movements (Ross). The democratization of taste served to legitimize desires different from those previously dictated by bourgeois norms, enabling greater diversity in representing taste across a broad spectrum. It was reflected in the cultural products of the 1970s, including cinema, which had already broken with tradition during the New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and became a vector for political ideologies as well as radical aesthetic choices (Smith). Commonly regarded as “the decade that taste forgot,” the 1970s were also a time for re-assessing the sociology of taste, with the magisterial publication of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979, English trans. 1984). As Bourdieu refuted Kant’s differentiation between the legitimate aesthetic, so defined by its “disinterestedness,” and the common aesthetic, derived from sensory pleasures and ordinary meanings, he also attempted to abolish the opposition between the “taste of reflection” (pure pleasure) and the “taste of sense” (facile pleasure) (Bourdieu 7). In so doing, he laid the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding the apparently incommensurable choices that are not the innate expression of our unique personalities, but rather the product of our class, education, family experiences—our habitus. Where Bourdieu’s theories align most closely with the relationship between taste and revulsion is in the realm of aesthetic disposition and its desire to differentiate: “good” taste is almost always predicated on the distaste of the tastes of others. Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (“sick-making”) of the tastes of others. “De gustibus non est disputandum”: not because “tous les goûts sont dans la nature,” but because each taste feels itself to be natural—and so it almost is, being a habitus—which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes (Bourdieu). Although today’s “Gen Y” Melbourne University students are a long way from 1970s French working class/bourgeois culture clashes, these observations on taste as the corollary of distaste are still salient tools of interpretation of their attitudes towards La Grande bouffe. And, just as Bourdieu effectively deconstructed Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the 18th “century of taste” notions of universality and morality in aesthetics (Dickie, Gadamer, Allison) in his groundbreaking study of distinction, his own theories have in turn been subject to revision in an age of omnivorous consumption and eclectic globalisation, with various cultural practices further destabilising the hierarchies that formerly monopolized legitimate taste (Sciences Humaines, etc). Bourdieu’s theories are still, however, useful for analysing La Grande bouffe given the contemporaneous production of these texts, as they provide a frame for understanding (dis)taste both within the filmic narrative and in the wider context of its reception. Taste and Distaste in La Grande bouffe To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla […] Enough with feelings, I want to make a physiological film (Celluloid Liberation Front). Marco Ferreri’s statements about his motivations for La Grande bouffe coincide here with Bourdieu’s explanation of taste: clearly the director wished to depart from psychological cinema favoured by contemporary critics and audiences and demonstrated his distaste for their preference. There were, however, psychological impulses underpinning his subject matter, as according to film academic Maurizio Viano, Ferrari had a self-destructive, compulsive relation to food, having been forced to spend a few weeks in a Swiss clinic specialising in eating disorders in 1972–1973 (Viano). Food issues abound in his biography. In an interview with Tullio Masoni, the director declared: “I was fat as a child”; his composer Phillipe Sarde recalls the grand Italian-style dinners that he would organise in Paris during the film; and, two of the film’s stars, Marcello Mastroianni and Ugo Tognazzi, actually credit the conception of La Grande bouffe to a Rabelaisian feast prepared by Tognazzi, during which Ferreri exclaimed “hey guys, we are killing ourselves!” (Viano 197–8). Evidently, there were psychological factors behind this film, but it was nevertheless the physiological aspects that Ferreri chose to foreground in his creation. The resulting film does indeed privilege the physiological, as the protagonists fornicate, fart, vomit, defecate, and—of course—eat, to wild excess. The opening scenes do not betray such sordid sequences; the four bourgeois men are introduced one by one so as to establish their class credentials as well as display their different tastes. We first encounter Ugo (Tognazzi), an Italian chef of humble peasant origins, as he leaves his elegant restaurant “Le Biscuit à soupe” and his bourgeois French wife, to take his knives and recipes away with him for the weekend. Then Michel (Piccoli), a TV host who has pre-taped his shows, gives his apartment keys to his 1970s-styled baba-cool daughter as he bids her farewell, and packs up his cleaning products and rubber gloves to take with him. Marcello (Mastroianni) emerges from a cockpit in his aviator sunglasses and smart pilot’s uniform, ordering his sexy airhostesses to carry his cheese and wine for him as he takes a last longing look around his plane. Finally, the judge and owner of the property where the action will unfold, Philippe (Noiret), is awoken by an elderly woman, Nicole, who feeds him tea and brioche, pestering him for details of his whereabouts for the weekend, until he demonstrates his free will and authority, joking about his serious life, and lying to her about attending a legal conference in London. Having given over power of attorney to Nicole, he hints at the finality of his departure, but is trying to wrest back his independence as his nanny exhorts him not to go off with whores. She would rather continue to “sacrifice herself for him” and “keep it in the family,” as she discreetly pleasures him in this scene. Scholars have identified each protagonist as an ideological signifier. For some, they represent power—Philippe is justice—and three products of that ideology: Michel is spectacle, Ugo is food, and Marcello is adventure (Celluloid Liberation Front). For others, these characters are the perfect incarnations of the first four Freudian stages of sexual development: Philippe is Oedipal, Michel is indifferent, Ugo is oral, and Marcello is impotent (Tury & Peter); or even the four temperaments of Hippocratic humouralism: Philippe the phlegmatic, Michel the melancholic, Ugo the sanguine, and Marcello the choleric (Calvesi, Viano). I would like to offer another dimension to these categories, positing that it is each protagonist’s taste that prescribes his participation in this gastronomic suicide as well as the means by which he eventually dies. Before I develop this hypothesis, I will first describe the main thrust of the narrative. The four men arrive at the villa at 68 rue Boileau where they intend to end their days (although this is not yet revealed). All is prepared for the most sophisticated and decadent feasting imaginable, with a delivery of the best meats and poultry unfurling like a surrealist painting. Surrounded by elegant artworks and demonstrating their cultural capital by reciting Shakespeare, Brillat-Savarin, and other classics, the men embark on a race to their death, beginning with a competition to eat the most oysters while watching a vintage pornographic slideshow. There is a strong thread of masculine athletic engagement in this film, as has been studied in detail by James R. Keller in “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism,” and this is exacerbated by the arrival of a young but matronly schoolmistress Andréa (Ferréol) with her students who want to see the garden. She accepts the men’s invitation to stay on in the house to become another object of competitive desire, and fully embraces all the sexual and gustatory indulgence around her. Marcello goes further by inviting three prostitutes to join them and Ugo prepares a banquet fit for a funeral. The excessive eating makes Michel flatulent and Marcello impotent; when Marcello kicks the toilet in frustration, it explodes in the famous fecal fountain scene that apparently so disgusted his then partner Catherine Deneuve, that she did not speak to him for a week (Ebert). The prostitutes flee the revolting madness, but Andréa stays like an Angel of Death, helping the men meet their end and, in surviving, perhaps symbolically marking an end to the masculinist bourgeoisie they represent.To return to the role of taste in defining the rise and demise of the protagonists, let me begin with Marcello, as he is the first to die. Despite his bourgeois attitudes, he is a modern man, associated with machines and mobility, such as the planes and the beautiful Bugatti, which he strokes with greater sensuality than the women he hoists onto it. His taste is for the functioning mechanical body, fast and competitive, much like himself when he is gorging on oysters. But his own body betrays him when his “masculine mechanics” stop functioning, and it is the fact that the Bugatti has broken down that actually causes his death—he is found frozen in driver’s seat after trying to escape in the Bugatti during the night. Marcello’s taste for the mechanical leads therefore to his eventual demise. Michel is the next victim of his own taste, which privileges aesthetic beauty, elegance, the arts, and fashion, and euphemises the less attractive or impolite, the scatological, boorish side of life. His feminized attire—pink polo-neck and flowing caftan—cannot distract from what is happening in his body. The bourgeois manners that bind him to beauty mean that breaking wind traumatises him. His elegant gestures at the dance barre encourage rather than disguise his flatulence; his loud piano playing cannot cover the sound of his loud farts, much to the mirth of Philippe and Andréa. In a final effort to conceal his painful bowel obstruction, he slips outside to die in obscene and noisy agony, balanced in an improbably balletic pose on the balcony balustrade. His desire for elegance and euphemism heralds his death. Neither Marcello nor Michel go willingly to their ends. Their tastes are thwarted, and their deaths are disgusting to them. Their cadavers are placed in the freezer room as silent witnesses to the orgy that accelerates towards its fatal goal. Ugo’s taste is more earthy and inherently linked to the aims of the adventure. He is the one who states explicitly: “If you don’t eat, you won’t die.” He wants to cook for others and be appreciated for his talents, as well as eat and have sex, preferably at the same time. It is a combination of these desires that kills him as he force-feeds himself the monumental creation of pâté in the shape of the Cathedral of Saint-Peter that has been rejected as too dry by Philippe, and too rich by Andréa. The pride that makes him attempt to finish eating his masterpiece while Andréa masturbates him on the dining table leads to a heart-stopping finale for Ugo. As for Philippe, his taste is transgressive. In spite of his upstanding career as a judge, he lies and flouts convention in his unorthodox relationship with nanny Nicole. Andréa represents another maternal figure to whom he is attracted and, while he wishes to marry her, thereby conforming to bourgeois norms, he also has sex with her, and her promiscuous nature is clearly signalled. Given his status as a judge, he reasons that he can not bring Marcello’s frozen body inside because concealing a cadaver is a crime, yet he promotes collective suicide on his premises. Philippe’s final transgression of the rules combines diabetic disobedience with Oedipal complex—Andréa serves him a sugary pink jelly dessert in the form of a woman’s breasts, complete with cherries, which he consumes knowingly and mournfully, causing his death. Unlike Marcello and Michel, Ugo and Philippe choose their demise by indulging their tastes for ingestion and transgression. Following Ferreri’s motivations and this analysis of the four male protagonists, taste is clearly a cornerstone of La Grande bouffe’s conception and narrative structure. It is equally evident that these tastes are contrary to bourgeois norms, provoking distaste and even revulsion in spectators. The film’s reception at the time of its release and ever since have confirmed this tendency in both critical reviews and popular feedback as André Habib’s article on Salo and La Grande bouffe (2001) meticulously demonstrates. With such a violent reaction, one might wonder why La Grande bouffe is found on so many cinema studies curricula and is considered to be a must-see film (The Guardian). Corpus and Corporeality in Food Film Studies I chose La Grande bouffe as the first film in the “Matters of Taste” subject, alongside Luis Bunuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, and Laurent Bénégui’s Au Petit Marguery, as all are considered classic films depicting French eating cultures. Certainly any French cinema student would know La Grande bouffe and most cinephiles around the world have seen it. It is essential background knowledge for students studying French eating cultures and features as a key reference in much scholarly research and popular culture on the subject. After explaining the canonical status of La Grande bouffe and thus validating its inclusion in the course, I warned students about the explicit nature of the film. We studied it for one week out of the 12 weeks of semester, focusing on questions of taste in the film and the socio-cultural representations of food. Although the almost ubiquitous response was: “C’est dégueulasse!,” there was no serious resistance until the final exam when a few students declared that they would boycott any questions on La Grande bouffe. I had not actually included any such questions in the exam. The student evaluations at the end of semester indicated that several students questioned the inclusion of this “disgusting pornography” in the corpus. There is undoubtedly less nudity, violence, gore, or sex in this film than in the Game of Thrones TV series. What, then, repulses these Gen Y students? Is it as Pasolini suggests, the neorealistic dialogue and décor that disturbs, given the ontologically challenging subject of suicide? (Viano). Or is it the fact that there is no reason given for the desire to end their lives, which privileges the physiological over the psychological? Is the scatological more confronting than the pornographic? Interestingly, “food porn” is now a widely accepted term to describe a glamourized and sometimes sexualized presentation of food, with Nigella Lawson as its star, and hundreds of blog sites reinforcing its popularity. Yet as Andrew Chan points out in his article “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography,” this film is where it all began: “the genealogy reaches further back, as brilliantly visualized in Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande bouffe, in which four men eat, screw and fart themselves to death” (47). Is it the overt corporeality depicted in the film that shocks cerebral students into revulsion and rebellion? Conclusion In the guise of a conclusion, I suggest that my Gen Y students’ taste may reveal a Bourdieusian distaste for the taste of others, in a third degree reaction to the 1970s distaste for bourgeois taste. First degree: Ferreri and his entourage reject the psychological for the physiological in order to condemn bourgeois values, provoking scandal in the 1970s, but providing compelling cinema on a socio-political scale. Second degree: in spite of the outcry, high audience numbers demonstrate their taste for scandal, and La Grande bouffe becomes a must-see canonical film, encouraging my choice to include it in the “Matters of Taste” corpus. Third degree: my Gen Y students’ taste expresses a distaste for the academic norms that I have embraced in showing them the film, a distaste that may be more aesthetic than political. Oui, c’est dégueulasse, mais … Bibliography Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1984. Calvesi, M. “Dipingere all moviola” (Painting at the Moviola). Corriere della Sera, 10 Oct. 1976. Reprint. “Arti figurative e il cinema” (Cinema and the Visual Arts). Avanguardia di massa. Ed. M. Calvesi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978. 243–46. Celluloid Liberation Front. “Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grande Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures.” Bright Lights Film Journal 60 (2008). 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://brightlightsfilm.com/60/60lagrandebouffe.php#.Utd6gs1-es5›. Chan, Andrew. “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3.4 (2003): 47–53. Dickie, George. The Century of Taste: The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Ebert, Roger, “La Grande bouffe.” 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-grande-bouffe-1973›. Ferreri, Marco. La Grande bouffe. Italy-France, 1973. Freedman, Paul H. Food: The History of Taste. U of California P, 2007. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Winsheimer and Donald C. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1999. Habib, André. “Remarques sur une ‘réception impossible’: Salo and La Grande bouffe.” Hors champ (cinéma), 4 Jan. 2001. 11 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/030101/salo-bouffe.html›. Keller, James R. “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism.” Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2006: 49–59. Masoni, Tullio. Marco Ferreri. Gremese, 1998. Pasolini, P.P. “Le ambigue forme della ritualita narrativa.” Cinema Nuovo 231 (1974): 342–46. Ross, Kristin. May 68 and its Afterlives. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Smith, Alison. French Cinema in the 1970s: The Echoes of May. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Télérama: “La Grande bouffe: l’un des derniers grands scandales du Festival de Cannes. 19 May 2013. 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.telerama.fr/festival-de-cannes/2013/la-grande-bouffe-l-un-des-derniers-grands-scandales-du-festival-de-cannes,97615.php›. The Guardian: 1000 films to see before you die. 2007. 17 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/1000-films-to-see-before-you-die› Tury, F., and O. Peter. “Food, Life, and Death: The Film La Grande bouffe of Marco Ferreri in an Art Psychological Point of View.” European Psychiatry 22.1 (2007): S214. Viano, Maurizio. “La Grande Abbuffata/La Grande bouffe.” The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower Press, 2004: 193–202.

IntroductionI have been studying the creation of Metro style train travel in Sydney for over a decade. My focus has been on the impact that media has had on the process (see Richardson, “Curatorial”; “Upheaval”; “Making”). Through extensive expert, public, and media research, I have investigated the coalitions and alliances that have formed (and disintegrated) between political, bureaucratic, news media, and public actors and the influences at work within these actor-networks. As part of this project, I visited an underground Métro turning fifty in Montreal, Canada. After many years studying the development of a train that wasn’t yet tangible, I wanted to ask a functional train the simple ethnomethodological/Latourian style question, “what do you do for a city and its people?” (de Vries). Therefore, in addition to research conducted in Montreal, I spent ten days wandering through many of the entrances, tunnels, staircases, escalators, mezzanines, platforms, doorways, and carriages of which the Métro system consists. The purpose was to observe the train in situ in order to broaden potential conceptualisations of what a train does for a city such as Montreal, with a view of improving the ideas and messages that would be used to “sell” future rapid rail projects in other cities such as Sydney. This article outlines a selection of the pathways wandered, not only to illustrate the power of social research based on physical wandering, but also the potential power the metaphorical and conceptual wandering an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) assemblage affords social research for media communications.Context, Purpose, and ApproachANT is a hybrid theory/method for studying an arena of the social, such as the significance of a train to a city like Montreal. This type of study is undertaken by following the actors (Latour, Reassembling 12). In ANT, actors do something, as the term suggests. These actions have affects and effects. These might be contrived and deliberate influences or completely circumstantial and accidental impacts. Actors can be people as we are most commonly used to understanding them, and they can also be texts, technological devices, software programs, natural phenomena, or random occurrences. Most significantly though, actors are their “relations” (Harman 17). This means that they are only present if they are relating to others. These relations and the resulting influences and impacts are called networks. A network in the ANT sense is not as simple as the lines that connect train stations on a rail map. Without actions, relations, influences, and impacts, there are no actors. Hence the hyphen in actor-network; the actor and the network are symbiotic. The network, rendered visible through actor associations, consists of the tenuous connections that “shuttle back and forth” between actors even in spite of the fact their areas of knowledge and reality may be completely separate (Latour Modern 3). ANT, therefore, may be considered an empirical practice of tracing the actors and the network of influences and impacts that they both help to shape and are themselves shaped by. To do this, central ANT theorist Bruno Latour employs a simple research question: “what do you do?” This is because in the process of doing, somebody or something is observed to be affecting other people or things and an actor-network becomes identifiable. Latour later learned that his approach shared many parallels with ethnomethodology. This was a discovery that more concretely set the trajectory of his work away from a social science that sought explanations “about why something happens, to ontological ones, that is, questions about what is going on” (de Vries). So, in order to make sense of people’s actions and relations, the focus of research became asking the deceptively simple question while refraining as much as possible “from offering descriptions and explanations of actions in terms of schemes taught in social theory classes” (14).In answering this central ANT question, studies typically wander in a metaphorical sense through an array or assemblage (Law) of research methods such as formal and informal interviews, ethnographic style observation, as well as the content analysis of primary and secondary texts (see Latour, Aramis). These were the methods adopted for my Montreal research—in addition to fifteen in-depth expert and public interviews conducted in October 2017, ten days were spent physically wandering and observing the train in action. I hoped that in understanding what the train does for the city and its people, the actor-network within which the train is situated would be revealed. Of course, “what do you do?” is a very broad question. It requires context. In following the influence of news media in the circuitous development of rapid rail transit in Sydney, I have been struck by the limited tropes through which the potential for rapid rail is discussed. These tropes focus on technological, functional, and/or operational aspects (see Budd; Faruqi; Hasham), costs, funding and return on investment (see Martin and O’Sullivan; Saulwick), and the potential to alleviate peak hour congestion (see Clennell; West). As an expert respondent in my Sydney research, a leading Australian architect and planner, states, “How boring and unexciting […] I mean in Singapore it is the most exciting […] the trains are fantastic […] that wasn’t sold to the [Sydney] public.” So, the purpose of the Montreal research is to expand conceptualisations of the potential for rapid rail infrastructure to influence a city and improve communications used to sell projects in the future, as well as to test the role of both physical and metaphorical ANT style wanderings in doing so. Montreal was chosen for three reasons. First, the Métro had recently turned fifty, which made the comparison between the fledgling and mature systems topical. Second, the Métro was preceded by decades of media discussion (Gilbert and Poitras), which parallels the development of rapid transit in Sydney. Finally, a different architect designed each station and most stations feature art installations (Magder). Therefore, the Métro appeared to have transcended the aforementioned functional and numerically focused tropes used to justify the Sydney system. Could such a train be considered a long-term success?Wandering and PathwaysIn ten days I rode the Montreal Métro from end to end. I stopped at all the stations. I wandered around. I treated wandering not just as a physical research activity, but also as an illustrative metaphor for an assemblage of research practices. This assemblage culminates in testimony, anecdotes, stories, and descriptions through which an actor-network may be glimpsed. Of course, it is incomplete—what I have outlined below represents only a few pathways. However, to think that an actor-network can ever be traversed in its entirety is to miss the point. Completion is a fallacy. Wandering doesn’t end at a finish line. There are always pathways left untrodden. I have attempted not to overanalyse. I have left contradictions unresolved. I have avoided the temptation to link paths through tenuous byways. Some might consider that I have meandered, but an actor-network is never linear. I can only hope that my wanderings, as curtailed as they may be, prove nuanced, colourful, and rich—if not compelling. ANT encourages us to rethink social research (Latour, Reassembling). Central to this is acknowledging (and becoming comfortable with) our own role as researcher in the illumination of the actor-network itself.Here are some of the Montreal pathways wandered:First Impressions I arrive at Montreal airport late afternoon. The apartment I have rented is conveniently located between two Métro stations—Mont Royal and Sherbrooke. I use my phone and seek directions by public transport. To my surprise, the only option is the bus. Too tired to work out connections, I decide instead to follow the signs to the taxi rank. Here, I queue. We are underway twenty minutes later. Travelling around peak traffic, we move from one traffic jam to the next. The trip is slow. Finally ensconced in the apartment, I reflect on how different the trip into Montreal had been, from what I had envisaged. The Métro I had travelled to visit was conspicuous in its total absence.FloatingIt is a feeling of floating that first strikes me when riding the Métro. It runs on rubber tyres. The explanation for the choice of this technology differs. There are reports that it was the brainchild of strong-willed mayor, Jean Drapeau, who believed the new technology would showcase Montreal as a modern world-scale metropolis (Gilbert and Poitras). However, John Martins-Manteiga provides a less romantic account, stating that the decision was made because tyres were cheaper (47). I assume the rubber tyres create the floating sensation. Add to this the famous warmth of the system (Magder; Hazan, Hot) and it has a thoroughly calming, even lulling, effect.Originally, I am planning to spend two whole days riding the Métro in its entirety. I make handwritten notes. On the first day, at mid-morning, nausea develops. I am suffering motion sickness. This is a surprise. I have always been fine to read and write on trains, unlike in a car or bus. It causes a moment of realisation. I am effectively riding a bus. This is an unexpected side-effect. My research program changes—I ride for a maximum of two hours at a time and my note taking becomes more circumspect. The train as actor is influencing the research program and the data being recorded in unexpected ways. ArtThe stained-glass collage at Berri-Uquam, by Pierre Gaboriau and Pierre Osterrath, is grand in scale, intricately detailed and beautiful. It sits above the tunnel from which the trains enter and leave the platform. It somehow seems wholly connected to the train as a result—it frames and announces arrivals and departures. Other striking pieces include the colourful, tiled circles from the mezzanine above the platform at station Peel and the beautiful stained-glass panels on the escalator at station Charlevoix. As a public respondent visiting from Chicago contends, “I just got a sense of exploration—that I wanted to have a look around”.Urban FormAn urban planner asserts that the Métro is responsible for the identity and diversity of urban culture that Montreal is famous for. As everyone cannot live right above a Métro station, there are streets around stations where people walk to the train. As there is less need for cars, these streets are made friendlier for walkers, precipitating a cycle. Furthermore, pedestrian-friendly streets promote local village style commerce such as shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants. So, there is not only more access on foot, but also more incentive to access. The walking that the Métro induces improves the dynamism and social aspects of neighbourhoods, a by-product of which is a distinct urban form and culture for different pockets of the city. The actor-network broadens. In following the actors, I now have to wander beyond the physical limits of the system itself. The streets I walk around station Mont Royal are shopping and restaurant strips, rich with foot traffic at all times of day; it is a vibrant and enticing place to wander.Find DiningThe popular MTL blog published a map of the best restaurants the Métro provides access to (Hazan, Restaurant).ArchitectureStation De La Savane resembles a retro medieval dungeon. It evokes thoughts of the television series Game of Thrones. Art and architecture work in perfect harmony. The sculpture in the foyer by Maurice Lemieux resembles a deconstructed metal mace hanging on a brutalist concrete wall. It towers above a grand staircase and abuts a fence that might ring a medieval keep. Up close I realise it is polished, precisely cut cylindrical steel. A modern fence referencing another time and place. Descending to the platform, craggy concrete walls are pitted with holes. I get the sense of peering through these into the hidden chambers of a crypt. Overlaying all of this is a strikingly modern series of regular and irregular, bold vertical striations cut deeply into the concrete. They run from floor to ceiling to add to a cathedral-like sense of scale. It’s warming to think that such a whimsical train station exists anywhere in the world. Time WarpA public respondent describes the Métro:It’s a little bit like a time machine. It’s a piece of the past and piece of history […] still alive now. I think that it brings art or form or beauty into everyday life. […] You’re going from one place to the next, but because of the history and the story of it you could stop and breathe and take it in a little bit more.Hold ups and HostagesA frustrated General Manager of a transport advocacy group states in an interview:Two minutes of stopping in the Métro is like Armageddon in Montreal—you see it on every media, on every smartphone [...] We are so captive in the Métro [there is a] loss of control.Further, a transport modelling expert asserts:You’re a hostage when you’re in transportation. If the Métro goes out, then you really are stuck. Unfortunately, it does go out often enough. If you lose faith in a mode of transportation, it’s going to be very hard to get you back.CommutingIt took me a good week before I started to notice how tired some of the Métro stations had grown. I felt my enthusiasm dip when I saw the estimated arrival time lengthen on the electronic noticeboard. Anger rose as a young man pushed past me from behind to get out of a train before I had a chance to exit. These tendrils of the actor-network were not evident to me in the first few days. Most interview respondents state that after a period of time passengers take less notice of the interesting and artistic aspects of the Métro. They become commuters. Timeliness and consistency become the most important aspects of the system.FinaleI deliberately visit station Champ-de-Mars last. Photos convince me that I am going to end my Métro exploration with an experience to savour. The station entry and gallery is iconic. Martins-Manteiga writes, “The stained-glass artwork by Marcelle Ferron is almost a religious experience; it floods in and splashes down below” (306). My timing is off though. On this day, the soaring stained-glass windows are mostly hidden behind protective wadding. The station is undergoing restoration. Travelling for the last time back towards station Mont Royal, my mood lightens. Although I had been anticipating this station for some time, in many respects this is a revealing conclusion to my Métro wanderings.What Do You Do?When asked what the train does, many respondents took a while to answer or began with common tropes around moving people. As a transport project manager asserts, “in the world of public transport, the perfect trip is the one you don’t notice”. A journalist gives the most considered and interesting answer. He contends:I think it would say, “I hold the city together culturally, economically, physically, logistically—that’s what I do […] I’m the connective tissue of this city”. […] How else do you describe infrastructure that connects poor neighbourhoods to rich neighbourhoods, downtown to outlying areas, that supports all sorts of businesses both inside it and immediately adjacent to it and has created these axes around the city that pull in almost everybody [...] And of course, everyone takes it for granted […] We get pissed off when it’s late.ConclusionNo matter how real a transportation system may be, it can always be made a little less real. Today, for example, the Paris metro is on strike for the third week in a row. Millions of Parisians are learning to get along without it, by taking their cars or walking […] You see? These enormous hundred-year-old technological monsters are no more real than the four-year-old Aramis is unreal: They all need allies, friends […] There’s no inertia, no irreversibility; there’s no autonomy to keep them alive. (Latour, Aramis 86)Through ANT-based physical and metaphorical wanderings, we find many pathways that illuminate what a train does. We learn from various actors in the actor-network through which the train exists. We seek out its “allies” and “friends”. We wander, piecing together as much of the network as we can. The Métro does lots of things. It has many influences and it influences many. It is undeniably an actor in an actor-network. Transport planners would like it to appear seamless—commuters entering and leaving without really noticing the in-between. And sometimes it appears this way. However, when the commuter is delayed, this appearance is shattered. If a signal fails or an engine falters, the Métro, through a process mediated by word of mouth and/or social and mainstream media, is suddenly rendered tired and obsolete. Or is it historic and quaint? Is the train a technical problem for the city of Montreal or is it characterful and integral to the city’s identity? It is all these things and many more. The actor-network is illusive and elusive. Pathways are extensive. The train floats. The train is late. The train makes us walk. The train has seeded many unique villages, much loved. The train is broken. The train is healthy for its age. The train is all that is right with Montreal. The train is all that is wrong with Montreal. The artwork and architecture mean nothing. The artwork and architecture mean everything. Is the train overly limited by the tyres that keep it underground? Of course, it is. Of course, it isn’t. Does 50 years of history matter? Of course, it does. Of course, it doesn’t. It thrives. It’s tired. It connects. It divides. It’s functional. It’s dirty. It’s beautiful. It’s something to be proud of. It’s embarrassing. A train offers many complex and fascinating pathways. It is never simply an object; it lives and breathes in the network because we live and breathe around it. It stops being effective. It starts becoming affective. Sydney must learn from this. My wanderings demonstrate that the Métro cannot be extricated from what Montreal has become over the last half century. In May 2019, Sydney finally opened its first Metro rail link. And yet, this link and other ongoing metro projects continue to be discussed through statistics and practicalities (Sydney Metro). This offers no affective sense of the pathways that are, and will one day be, created. By selecting and appropriating relevant pathways from cities such as Montreal, and through our own wanderings and imaginings, we can make projections of what a train will do for a city like Sydney. We can project a rich and vibrant actor-network through the media in more emotive and powerful ways. Or, can we not at least supplement the economic, functional, or technocratic accounts with other wanderings? Of course, we can’t. Of course, we can. 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