Constant Conversion Research Articles

Enhanced photodegradation of acetaminophen over Sr@TiO2/UiO-66-NH2 heterostructures under solar light irradiation

Novel Sr@TiO2/UiO-66-NH2 heterostructures were synthesized by a two-step solvothermal approach and tested as photocatalysts for the solar degradation of acetaminophen. Strontium titanate was used as precursor to obtain the heterostructures, resulting in Sr@TiO2 anchored and dispersed on the UiO-66-NH2. The effect of the Sr@TiO2:UiO-66-NH2 ratio was analyzed. All the heterostructures were more active than the pattern UiO-66-NH2, and the most active achieved more than 90% of conversion of acetaminophen. This enhanced degradation was ascribed to a better separation and faster transfer of charges, as confirmed by photoluminescence and electrochemical characterization. Radical trapping experiments revealed that superoxide radicals (O2•−) and to a lower extent photoinduced holes (h+) were involved in acetaminophen degradation. As a novelty, the activity and stability of the best photocatalyst were evaluated in a continuous flow reaction system, upgrading conventional short-cycle batch studies. The heterostructure maintained an almost constant high conversion of acetaminophen during the 10 h on stream of the experiment, demonstrating excellent photocatalytic performance and stability in water. Besides, the photocatalytic degradation intermediates were identified, and a corresponding pathway of ACE transformation was proposed.

Centrifugal breakout reconnection as the electron acceleration mechanism powering the radio magnetospheres of early-type stars

ABSTRACT Magnetic B-stars often exhibit circularly polarized radio emission thought to arise from gyrosynchrotron emission by energetic electrons trapped in the circumstellar magnetosphere. Recent empirical analyses show that the onset and strength of the observed radio emission scale with both the magnetic field strength and the stellar rotation rate. This challenges the existing paradigm that the energetic electrons are accelerated in the current sheet between opposite-polarity field lines in the outer regions of magnetized stellar winds, which includes no role for stellar rotation. Building on recent success in explaining a similar rotation-field dependence of H α line emission in terms of a model in which magnetospheric density is regulated by centrifugal breakout (CBO), we examine here the potential role of the associated CBO-driven magnetic reconnection in accelerating the electrons that emit the observed gyrosynchrotron radio. We show in particular that the theoretical scalings for energy production by CBO reconnection match well the empirical trends for observed radio luminosity, with a suitably small, nearly constant conversion efficiency ϵ ≈ 10−8. We summarize the distinct advantages of our CBO scalings over previous associations with an electromotive force, and discuss the potential implications of CBO processes for X-rays and other observed characteristics of rotating magnetic B-stars with centrifugal magnetospheres.

Optimization of reaction parameters by using response surface methodology (RSM) for the selective dehydration of glucose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF), a valuable platform chemical over a mesoporous TiO2 catalyst in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) medium

A highly active and selective mesoporous TiO2 was developed by the sol-gel hydrolysis technique for the selective transformation of glucose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF). The catalytic performance was tested in a glass tube reactor, and the reaction parameters were optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). The best-optimized reaction conditions were obtained using four-factors, four-responses, and the 5-level central composite design (CCD) integrated with the desirability approach. At the optimum reaction condition, RSM predicted complete conversion of glucose and a very high 5-HMF yield of ~56% in the dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) solvent. The predicted yield of other major products, including formic acid (FA) and levulinic acid (LA), was ~18% and ~2%, respectively. The empirical process model developed by RSM was validated by the experimental data generated. Experimental results demonstrated that the TiO2 catalyst developed can easily be recycled with a constant glucose conversion and 5-HMF yield. Further, a new liquid-liquid extraction method (LLE) is proposed to extract 5-HMF from the product. The results depicted that 5-HMF can easily be extracted from the product mixture with very high purity (~96%). Additionally, the Power-Law kinetic study suggested that the conversion of glucose over TiO2 followed the first-order kinetics, and the calculated activation energy was 67.5 kJ mol−1.

The Power of Silence, Pause, and Delay

In the 1960s, as an awkward teenager exploring how to create social relationships within my peer group, especially girls, I assumed that there had to be constant conversation with no gaps.

Quantitative Analysis of Viscoelastic Properties of Red Blood Cells using Optical Tweezers and Defocusing Microscopy.

The viscoelastic properties of erythrocytes have been investigated by a range of techniques. However, the reported experimental data vary. This is not only attributed to the normal variability of cells, but also to the differences in methods and models of cell response. Here, an integrated protocol using optical tweezers and defocusing microscopy is employed to obtain the rheological features of red blood cells in the frequency range of 1 Hz to 35 Hz. While optical tweezers are utilized to measure the erythrocyte-complex elastic constant, defocusing microscopy is able to obtain the cell height profile, volume, and its form factor a parameter that allows conversion of complex elastic constant into complex shear modulus. Moreover, applying a soft glassy rheology model, the scaling exponent for both moduli can be obtained. The developed methodology allows to explore the mechanical behavior of red blood cells, characterizing their viscoelastic parameters, obtained under well-defined experimental conditions, for several physiological and pathological conditions.

Review of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity

Review of Metagnosis:Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity Dana Howard Danielle Spencer's book, "Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity," does many things. It is a work of autotheory, putting Spencer's own embodied narrative in constant conversation with the testimony of others along with a remarkably diverse set of critical and theoretical approaches. In the book, Spencer coins a new term, "metagnosis", which occurs when one is newly diagnosed in adulthood with a lifelong condition. The book explores Spencer's own metagnostic experience involving her eyesight along with chronicling the experiences of others to highlight the ways in which newfound knowledge of a diagnosis can in itself transform us. Born with strabismus—"misaligned eyes," Spencer is practiced at negotiating the meaning of having a non-normative visual experience and presentation. For the most part, growing up with the condition and frequently subjected to medical attention because of it, Spencer remained largely unconcerned about whether or not she saw differently. But, as the book chronicles, in adulthood, after enduring subpar medical treatment and a series of frustrating surgeries, Spencer is additionally diagnosed with a different visual field condition, homonymous hemianopia, that was likely sustained in infancy, but which up until the diagnosis neither she nor her various doctors had detected. Spencer describes how she discovers in her orthoptist's office that she can see only half of the visual world of each eye. This discovery leads to a deep ambivalence on Spencer's part—which includes feelings of physical vulnerability, shame that the condition had gone unnoticed for so long, as well as relief for not having to suffer through the stigma and exclusion that may have come with the additional medical diagnosis in childhood. It also leads to a theoretical examination of the limited narrative and theoretical resources that avail us in trying to make sense of such revelatory experiences and the frustrating inexplicability that such transformative experiences can have for others. This intimate narrative approach democratizes theory. As Spencer says near the end of the book, [End Page E-1] "[k]nowledge is not simply illuminated, but is itself profoundly informed by our way of looking." [306] Metagnosis invites us to inhabit Spencer's own way of looking as she engages in critical theoretical analysis of the epistemic and practical stakes related to medical diagnosis and other identity altering revelatory discoveries. The book is also a work of profound interdisciplinary engagement, bridging conversations happening across siloed academic and cultural spaces. The book draws widely and creatively from biomedicine, medical humanities, philosophy, disability studies, cultural studies, literature, film, oral history, and personal narrative. Ultimately, Spencer argues that metagnosis, the experience, "is largely about navigating different forms of knowledge." [20] The book critically interrogates the insights growing out of multiple disciplines with respect and attention; each of these disciplines is treated as a possible source of knowledge, albeit fallible and incomplete. It will be an important resource for readers from multiple perspectives. Finally, the book is responding to a kind of epistemic injustice, that is, to a systemic and distinctive wrong done to people in their capacity as knowers and inquirers.1 Specifically, the book habituates us as readers to attend to and work towards mitigating the hermeneutical injustice we (and others) may face as biomedical subjects—that is, as people to be diagnosed. Hermeneutical injustice, a term popularized by Miranda Fricker and critically developed by theorists like José Medina, Luvell Anderson, and Kristie Dotson, is the phenomenon where a person is unfairly disadvantaged in their capacities to make sense of their own experience.2 Hermeneutical injustice happens when certain stories remain untold, not merely because people are systemically excluded from and discredited within the collective discursive community, but also because -as a result of this exclusion and discredit - people lack the shared language to actually tell their stories in a way that makes sense to them. At its core, the book's project is to identify and provide a new shared language. The book offers us the narrative resources needed to make sense of a distinctive kind of diagnostic experience that has heretofore remained conceptually obscure and personally isolating. In naming the experience of metagnosis, Spencer writes...

Constructions of Artistic Creativity in the Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Artistic creativity is presently considered to be a multidimensional phenomenon that unfolds over time and is in constant conversation with the social and historical context of the artists, as well as their personal life experiences. This article adopts a narrative perspective and explores Vincent van Gogh’s understanding of the constructs of creativity as reflected in his letters to his brother Theo, friends, and other family members. To inquire into van Gogh’s correspondence, narrative thematic analysis was employed. Findings highlight the artist’s constructs around creativity, which seem to depict elements of both modern and post-modern views of creativity. Major themes include creativity as (a) a developmental, dynamic learning process characterized by dedication and persistence; (b) a relational process in the context of people and nature; (c) an embodied action; (d) an oscillation between asceticism and socio-cultural participation, (e) suffering, and (f) a larger-than-life force. With this study, we join the conversation of scholars around recent developments in the field of creativity, calling for a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches to this complex and multifaceted construct. Moreover, we hope to move beyond the ‘mad genius’ stereotype and myths around psychopathology and artistic creativity, as exemplified in the present analysis of van Gogh’s correspondence.

Black bodies at risk: Exploring the corporeal iconography of the anti-police brutality movement

Black bodies at risk are in constant conversation with each other. The Black witness who films a fatal police encounter on her phone is talking to the Black victim, promising not to leave him in his final moments. The distant Black witness who sees that video then talks back to the witness and the victim, creating powerful imagery that amplifies the tragic footage. In this manner, those working under the broad banner of the Black Lives Matter movement have reimagined a dynamic Black visual public sphere, where moral arguments about police brutality are sustained through an assemblage of strategic visual appeals. In this essay, I argue that this call-and-response of Black corporeal iconography forms the vanguard of embodied protest journalism in the 21st century. I explain how the concepts of “strong objectivity,” which is rooted in feminist standpoint theory, help validate and liberate the flesh witnessing of the marginalized. Moreover, I offer two broad categories of imagery that Black activists create most often in response to fatal police shootings: historic juxtapositions and symbolic deaths.

Rapid Aging as a Key to Understand Deactivation of Ni/Al2O3 Catalysts Applied for the CO2 Methanation

We developed a rapid aging method for Ni/Al2O3 methanation catalysts mimicking the real aging in the actual application. The method is based on hydrothermal deactivation of the catalyst at 600 or 700 °C, which leads to a catalyst with nearly constant conversion after a much shorter time period compared to normal aging. The hydrothermally aged catalysts are characterized by N2 adsorption, X-ray powder diffraction, temperature-programmed reduction and H2 chemisorption. The catalytic performance of the aged catalysts is comparable to the one of a catalyst deactivated in a long-term measurement with up to 720 h on stream. The time needed for reaching a stable conversion can be diminished by rapid aging by a factor of 10. The investigations also showed that the long-term deactivation is caused by Ni particle sintering and that the support pores limit the Ni particle size.Graphical

Isokinetic analysis of reaction onsets

Kinetic studies of chemical reactions typically assume a constant fractional conversion of reactants to products, α, at a particular time, t, or temperature, T, during the reaction. This constant (iso) conversion approach cannot provide both Ea and A of the Arrhenius rate constant, k = A exp[-Ea/RT], without specifying an algebraic model or value for the reaction mechanism, f(α), or its integral F(α), which are rarely known a priori. A new isoconversion rate approach eliminates the reaction model from consideration by specifying f(α) =1 at the reaction onset, so that the rate of conversion, dα/dt = k, is the same in isothermal and nonisothermal experiments. This equal (iso) kinetic approach reduces the kinetic problem to the relationship between time and temperature at the reaction onset, and allows for the determination of Ea and A for the initial step of a potentially complex chemical reaction by measuring the change in the onset temperature Tonset with heating rate, β = dT/dt, in nonisothermal experiments, or the change in onset time tonset with temperature in isothermal experiments. In a test of the new theory, oxidation onset times of the reaction of hydrocarbons with oxygen at constant temperature (tonset) were calculated for a wide range of materials and experimental conditions using isothermal and nonisothermal values for Ea and A, and found to be in quantitative agreement with experimental values of the oxidation induction (onset) time (OIT).

Mesoporous Co3O4 with large specific surface area derived from MCM-48 for catalytic oxidation of toluene

As one of the most promising candidates for the catalytic combustion of volatile organic compounds, crystalline cobalt oxide is one of the most used and cost-effective catalyst. We present here a mesoporous Co3O4 catalyst with large specific surface area of 182.5 ​m2/g derived from MCM-48 with a specific surface area of 1470.9 ​m2/g, giving the T90 (the temperature required for achieving a toluene conversion of 90%) of 229 ​°C and the apparent activation energy (Ea) of 17.53 ​kJ/mol for the oxidation of toluene, both of which are much lower than the Co3O4 catalysts prepared by using SBA-15 and MCM-41 as hard template (T90 ​~ ​260 ​°C, Ea ​~ ​30 ​kJ/mol). Constant complete conversion of toluene over M48-Co3O4 was observed for 60 ​h, suggesting its superior stability for toluene combustion. Characterization results indicated the large specific surface area, higher Co3+/Co2+ ratio as well as abundant surface-active oxygen exposed for easy accessibility of reactant molecules contribute simultaneously to the good catalytic oxidation performance of M48-Co3O4. Particularly, 400 ​°C was viewed to be the optimal calcination temperature for keeping the mesoporous structures of catalyst as much as possible. The reaction intermediates of toluene oxidation over M48-Co3O4 were detected based on both GC-MS and in-situ DRIFTS, demonstrating the formation of the benzyl alcohol, benzaldehyde, benzoic acid, itaconic anhydride and maleic anhydride, acetone, and acetic acid, etc., as the main intermediates.

Integration of a Diselenide Unit Generates Fluorogenic Camptothecin Prodrugs with Improved Cytotoxicity to Cancer Cells.

A diselenide/disulfide unit was introduced into camptothecin (CPT), and two selenoprodrugs (e.g., CPT-Se3 and CPT-Se4) were identified to show improved potency in killing cancer cells and inhibiting tumor growth in vivo. Interestingly, the intrinsic fluorescence of CPT was severely quenched by the diselenide bond. Both the selenoprodrugs were activated by glutathione with a nearly complete recovery of CPT's fluorescence. The activation of prodrugs was accompanied by the production of selenol intermediates, which catalyzed the constant conversion of glutathione and oxygen to oxidized glutathione and superoxides. The diselenide unit is widely employed in constructing thiol-responsive materials. However, the selenol intermediates were largely ignored in the activation process prior to this study. Our work verified that integration of the diselenide unit may further enhance the parent drug's efficacy. Also, the discovery of the fluorescence quenching property of the diselenide/disulfide bond further shed light on constructing novel theranostic agents.

Anharmonicity in compliance formalism: Potential constants and interaction coordinates

AbstractAt the harmonic level, compliance constants are the inverse force constant matrix elements. In the present work, conversion of anharmonic force constants to compliance constants has been revisited and several new variants of the existing equations have been suggested. The reverse conversion of anharmonic compliance constants to force constants is addressed. The change in the internal coordinate (Ri) for constrained optimization is written as a monotonic polynomial function of the change in another chosen constrained internal coordinate (Rk) and the expansion coefficients extracted “directly” are the interaction coordinates (ICs). New expressions for computing the cubic and quartic anharmonic ICs using compliance constants are presented and the obtained numerical values are compared with the ICs extracted by the “direct” method. The work also highlights an effective way of extracting the diagonal harmonic and anharmonic compliance and force/relaxed force constants characterizing the bond in diatomic molecules and pseudo diatomic fragments in a molecule. The ability to compute the mentioned numerical values is likely to open up new possibilities for useful chemical applications.

Porous Pyrene Organic Cage with Unusual Absorption Bathochromic-Shift Enables Visible Light Photocatalysis

Porous Pyrene Organic Cage with Unusual Absorption Bathochromic-Shift Enables Visible Light Photocatalysis

Cation deviated stoichiometry Ca1.1ZrO3 perovskite as an efficient ozonation catalyst for m-cresol wastewater degradation

Highly efficient and stable catalysts for continuous catalytic ozonation of organic pollutants are of great significance in industrial applications. Perovskites have been seen as promising environmental catalysts because of their tunable defect structures and electronic properties. This work reports on A-site cation stoichiometry deviation as an effective engineering strategy to improve the crystallinity of perovskite CaZrO3, as well as its catalytic ozonation activity. High pure phase Ca1.1ZrO3 nanocrystals were successfully synthesized using a co-precipitation calcination method and evaluated as ozonation catalysts for m-cresol degradation. Surprisingly, Ca1.1ZrO3 exhibits a higher total organic carbon (TOC) removal rate, ozone utilization rate, and conversion rate of m-cresol than the stoichiometric of CaZrO3 and other conventional transition metal catalysts. In addition, Ca1.1ZrO3 shows an almost constant conversion rate of m-cresol (100%) and TOC removal rate (∼82%) during uninterrupted 100-h catalytic ozonation m-cresol degradation, demonstrating its excellent catalytic stability. These outstanding catalytic activity and stability toward ozonation are attributed to the synergistic meliorated oxygen octahedron structure, including Zr cation and contiguous coordinated oxygen, by introducing a non-stoichiometry defect into the perovskite. Thus, Ca1.1ZrO3 presents an advanced oxidation process of reactive oxygen species (·OH, O2·-, 1O2). These results were verified by in situ X-ray diffraction, in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, electron paramagnetic resonance, and density functional theory. This work strongly believes that Ca1.1ZrO3 can be an efficient, stable, and an economic catalyst for catalytic ozonation.

A Framework for Characterizing Commercial Solid Oxide Electrolysis Stacks Using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Equivalent Circuit Modeling

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is a powerful diagnostic tool used in a wide range of applications, including solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs). While EIS measurements on single cell level are commonplace, implementation of EIS on stack level remains limited, primarily due to the extremely low impedance of large-footprint cells, which imposes stringent demands on the impedance spectrometer and experimental setup (1). Furthermore, compared to single-cell EIS data, stack-level data reported in the literature are rarely subjected to the same degree of equivalent circuit modeling, making a detailed analysis of underlying electrochemical processes difficult.Here, we report a framework for analyzing stack-level impedance spectroscopy data. The quality of the acquired data is first verified using Kramers-Kronig transformations (2), followed by the application of distribution of relaxation times (DRT) and analysis of the difference of impedance spectra (ADIS) methods to experimental data collected under a set of pre-determined operating conditions (electrochemical test procedure) (3-4). DRT and ADIS results were incorporated into the complex non-linear least squares (CNLS) fitting procedure and the validity of the chosen equivalent circuit model was confirmed by reconstruction of Nyquist, Bode, the individual electrochemical contributions, and DRT plots of the fitted data.The developed framework was successfully implemented on a commercial 75-cell SOEC stack (TSP-1) developed by Haldor Topsoe (5). An electrochemical impedance spectrum is recorded simultaneously on all 13 cell groups in the stack using Zahner instrumentation. In this work, the electrochemical impedance data obtained from a state-of-the-art TSP-1 stack, containing three different types of Ni/YSZ based cells, is reported. The stack was initially investigated by EIS, using an electrochemical test procedure including CO2 electrolysis under constant conversion, H2O electrolysis under constant conversion, variations in the pO2 on the oxygen electrode, and finally temperature variations in CO2 electrolysis operation. This electrochemical test procedure was performed to develop an equivalent circuit model for the stack. Afterward, the stack was subjected to a degradation in steam electrolysis under 580 mA/cm2 (70% conversion), with an impedance spectrum being recorded every 24 hours. The operational point for this degradation test was chosen to match the real-life operation point of these stacks and hence to give a realistic image of any potential degradation. The developed framework and the equivalent circuit model developed for the stack was finally used to model the EIS data obtained during the degradation test. The modeling of these EIS data utilizes the full potential of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and help identify any degradation mechanisms taking place in the stack, an analysis not previously reported on stack level.(1) R. R. Mosbæk, J. Hjelm, R. Barfod, and P. V. Hendriksen. ECS transactions, 35, 1 (2011).(2) B. Boukamp, J. Electrochem. Soc., 142, 1885 – 1894 (1995).(3) S. H. Jensen, A. Hauch, P.V. Hendriksen, M. Mogensen, N. Bonanos, and T. Jacobsen. Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 154(12), B1325-B1330, (2007)(4) H. Schichlein, and E. Ivers-Tiffee. Journal of Applied Electrochemistry, 32, 875-882, (2002).(5) J. Rass-Hansen, P. Blennow, T. Heiredal-Clausen, R. Küngas, T. Holt Nørby, and S. Primdahl, Proceedings of the 12th European SOFC & SOE Forum, 318-325 (2016). Figure 1

Bi-Functional Catalyst/Sorbent for a H2-Rich Gas from Biomass Gasification

The aim of this work is to identify the effect of the CaO phase as a CO2 sorbent and mayenite (Ca12Al14O33) as a stabilizing phase in a bi-functional material for CO2 capture in biomass syngas conditioning and cleaning at high temperature. The effect of different CaO weight contents is studied (0, 56, 85, 100 wt%) in sorbents synthesized by the wet mixing method. These high temperature solid sorbents are upgraded to bi-functional compounds by the addition of 3 or 6 wt% of nickel chosen as the metal active phase. N2 adsorption, X-ray diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, temperature-programmed reduction analyses and CO2 sorption study were performed to characterize structural, textural, reducibility and sorption properties of bi-functional materials. Finally, sorption-enhanced reforming of toluene (chosen as tar model), of methane then of methane and toluene with bi-functional compounds were performed to study the best material to improve H2 content in a syngas, provided by steam biomass gasification. If the catalytic activity on the sorption enhanced reforming of methane exhibits a fast fall-down after 10–15 min of experimental test, the reforming of toluene reaches a constant conversion of 99.9% by using bi-functional materials.

Surface decorated magnetic nanoparticles with Mn-porphyrin as an effective catalyst for oxidation of sulfides

Mn-porphyrin complex was anchored coordinatively to silica-coated surface of magnetic nanoparticles (SMNP). Afterward, a heterogeneous nanocatalyst (Fe3O4@SiO2-MnTCPP) has been characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). A thermal stability up to around 350[Formula: see text]C was verified for prepared nanocatalyst based on thermogravimetric analysis. Finally, the catalytic performance of magnetically recoverable Mn-catalyst was exploited in the green oxidation of different sulfides with urea hydrogen peroxide (UHP) in the presence of imidazole as co-catalyst in ethanol under heterogeneous conditions. The eco-friendly property of ethanol strongly induced us to employ it as the reaction solvent in this oxidation system. Complete conversion ([Formula: see text]99) of sulfides to the corresponding sulfoxide or sulfones was obtained for ethyl phenyl sulfide, phenyl vinyl sulfide, diallyl sulfide, thiocyanatoethane, 2-ethyl mercaptoethanol and tetrahydrothiophene. Moreover, the recovered catalysts keep constant conversion yield up to at least three cycles.

Spread Body and Exposed Body

The question of the body spans across the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, from Noli me tangere, to Corpus and Jacques Derrida’s dialogue with Nancy in On Touching. In constant conversation with Christianity (“This is my body” or Dis-Enclosure), corporeality in Nancy can be summarised using the figure of the “exposed body (corps ex-peausé)”: a demonstration of the surface of the skin (peau) and an exposition of the self to the other in the sense of a “staging” (Corpus). In my work, the concept of the “spread body,” situated between Descartes’ “extended body” and Husserl’s “lived body,” is also one of a confrontation with the “This is my body” of Christianity (The Wedding Feast of the Lamb). In confronting one with the other, it is a matter of seeing how my expansion of the body, says something different than, or articulates differently, Jean-Luc Nancy’s exposition of the body, this time drawn from the biological side though nevertheless without ceasing to be intentional. It is certainly a matter of philosophy, but also of ethics, in the possibility of describing such a body, especially in the suffering situation of palliative care (Ethics of the Spread Body).

INFERNO: Catastrophically Queer

Queer lives are in constant conversation with failure. But what use is this to queer folk? This paper considers the queer performance rave INFERNO’s takeover of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. In an examination of the rave’s serendipitous network of deep affective relations, gestures, and affordances I articulate how failure functions within such a space. Moving past binary orientations of failure against or as a preference to success I examine Nick Finegan’s ‘Theseus on the Heap’ (2019) – a hellish collage of ancient Greek myth and tragedy. I put forward the following thesis. By performing failure as a modality, the performers and rave participants explored a tension between the failure of and their re-emergance. By cleaving to these moments from the rave I hope this paper offers some lines of flight away from normate models of success-failure but also encourages a return to the ephemera of queer performance and live art in these times of pandemic and catastrophe.