Ongoing Art Research Articles

Results of Thoracic Surgery in HIV-infected Patients

The objective: substantiation of the possibility of surgical treatment of various lung diseases in HIV-infected patients.Subjects and Methods. Comorbidities, medical history, bad habits, ongoing antiretroviral therapy (ARVT), viral load and CD4+count before and after lung surgery were assessed. Blood loss during the operation, intra- and postoperative complications was analyzed. Causes of postoperative lethality were analyzed.Results. According to results of the study, planned surgical treatment for chronic abscess, tuberculosis, cancer, mycotic pulmonary lesions and cicatricial stenosis of the trachea in HIV-infected patients is justified, and should be performed based on indications common for these diseases. This is confirmed by the level of postoperative complications in HIV-negative patients. The vast majority of complications were temporary, not severe, and were resolved by conservative treatment. Achievment of the best results is facilitated by ongoing ART.

Efficacy of Preventive Chemotherapy of Tuberculosis in HIV Infected Patients in Novosibirsk Oblast

The objective: to study the efficacy of tuberculosis preventive chemotherapy in HIV infected patients based on the data of AIDS Prevention and Control Center, which is a part of City Infectious Clinical Hospital no. 1, Novosibirsk.Subjects and Methods. 236 HIV infected patients aged 33-48 years old were enrolled in the study, they all were registered in AIDS Prevention and Control Center, City Infectious Clinical Hospital no. 1, Novosibirsk. All patients were at the stage of secondary diseases (4A, 4B, 4C), and had a pronounced degree of immunodeficiency (CD4+ from 200 to 349 cells/µl), and the ongoing ART was virologically successful. The efficacy of tuberculosis preventive chemotherapy (CTX) was analyzed in 147 patients versus 89 patients who received no tuberculosis CTX due to various reasons. For tuberculosis preventive chemotherapy, a combination drug was used, which contained isoniazid and pyrazinamide, for 3 months with daily intake. The groups of those receiving and not receiving CTX were comparable in terms of the gender, age and degree of immunodeficiency.Results. In the group receiving CTX within a year after completion of CTX, tuberculosis was diagnosed in 7/147 (4.8%) patients including: focal pulmonary tuberculosis - in 71.4% (5/7), and infiltrative pulmonary tuberculosis - in 28.6% (2/7 patients). In the group receiving no CTX, during the year, 17/89 (19.1%) tuberculosis cases were detected: focal pulmonary tuberculosis – in 29.4% (5/17), infiltrative pulmonary tuberculosis - in 47.1% (8/17), and disseminated pulmonary tuberculosis - in 23.5% (4/17). Disseminated pulmonary tuberculosis was registered only in the group who received no CTX. The relative risk (RR = 0.442 (<1)) when comparing the number of cases in the groups indicates lower likelihood to develop tuberculosis in the patients taking CTX. The odds ratio (OR = 0.212; CI 0.084-0.534) indicates that the chances of developing tuberculosis are higher in the group receiving no CTX.Conclusion. The use of a combination of isoniazid and pyrazinamide for tuberculosis preventive chemotherapy in HIV infected patients significantly reduces the risk of developing tuberculosis. Patients with severe immunodeficiency who have contraindications to tuberculosis preventive chemotherapy should be followed up jointly with a phthisiologist, the follow-up should include computed tomography for early detection of tuberculosis signs in the lungs.

“And People Shall Be Contaminated by My Doctrine”: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Assi Meshullam’s Order of the Unclean

This article discusses Assi Meshullam’s inter-discipline ongoing art project Order of the Unclean, while addressing issues of Religion, Art, Nationalism and Science embodied in the work. Using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “reparative reading” and Bruno Latour’s discussion on the concept of modernism, the article argues that Meshullam returns to the polytheistic history of the area, and provokes the tension between religious faith and heresy, not in order to “take a side” in the debating between religiosity and secularism, but to put the so-called contrasted terms in question, mark their points of mutual inclusion, and offer a complex perspective on the relationship between the sacred, the secular and the national in modern Israeli society. The study lies in an academic examination of Meshullam’s monumental work for the first time, combining knowledge and methodologies in art history, comparative religion studies and critical theories.

Geo-Fictionalising the Atomic Priesthood: Pazugoo and the Future Relic

The paper focuses on deep geological repositories, designed for safe long-term storage of nuclear waste, and analyses the RK&M project, which considers how these sites could be marked and remembered for imagined futures. The project, it is argued, mirrors some of the universalising problems of the term “Anthropocene”. Counter to this, the author describes the ongoing art research project Pazugoo, which draws on myths of flight and the earth, local to specific radioactive burial sites, generating digital designs for composite demons, which are figures of personification for the waste, buried for future unearthing, unknown by whom or by what. The addressee of the work differs from the imagined addressee of the RK&M project, offering a speculative viewpoint on the present moment, in its entanglement with deep times past and future.

Brief Report: Mortality After Loss to Follow-Up-A Linkage Study of People Living With HIV in Thailand and Malaysia.

Linkage studies have reported high rates of previously unascertained mortality among people living with HIV (PLHIV) who have been lost to follow-up (LTFU). We assessed survival outcomes among PLHIV who were LTFU in Thailand and Malaysia, through linkages to a national death registry or HIV database. Data linkages with the national death registry or national HIV database were conducted in 2020 on all PLHIV who met LTFU criteria while enrolled in care at participating HIV clinical sites. LTFU was defined as having no documented clinical contact in the previous year, excluding transfers and deaths. Survival time was analyzed using the Cox regression, stratified by site. Data linkages were performed for 489 PLHIV who had been LTFU at sites in Malaysia (n = 2) and Thailand (n = 4). There were 151 (31%) deaths after being LTFU; the mortality rate was 4.89 per 100 person-years. Risk factors for mortality after being LTFU were older age [41-50 years: hazard ratio (HR) = 1.99, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.08 to 3.68; and older than 50 years: HR = 4.93, 95% CI: 2.63 to 9.22; vs. age 30 years or younger]; receiving NRTI + PI (HR = 1.87, 95% CI: 1.22 to 2.85 vs. NRTI + NNRTI); positive hepatitis C antibody (HR = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.40 to 3.62); and having previous AIDS illness (HR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.03 to 2.05). An improved survival was seen with a higher CD4 count (CD4 351-500 cells/µL: HR = 0.40, 95%CI: 0.21-0.76; and CD4 >500 cells/µL: HR = 0.43, 95%CI: 0.25-0.75; vs. CD4 ≤200 cells/µL). Almost one-third of PLHIV who were LTFU in this cohort had died while out of care, emphasizing the importance of efforts to reengage PLHIV after they have been LTFU and ensure they have access to ongoing ART.

P-585 The (decision) tree of fertility: an innovative decision-making algorithm in assisted reproduction technique

Abstract Study question To develop a decisional algorithm able to predict pregnancy and live birth rates after controlled ovarian stimulation (COS), helping to decide whether to perform oocytes pick-up. Summary answer A systematic approach allows to identify ovarian follicles, female age and sperm motility as predictors of ART outcome, reducing the socio-economic burden of ART failure What is known already The physician needs to estimate a priori the female response after the COS phase, leaving an extreme variability in the proposed therapeutic regimens. Indeed, the most cost-effective ART management in terms of pregnancy and live birth rates is still far to be achieve and the clinical application of predictive models is still scanty, considering their limited predictive ability. A predictive model able to estimate the chances of success in the time point after ovarian stimulation and before the pick-up could guide the decision to prosecute or not the ongoing ART path Study design, size, duration A single centre, retrospective analysis of data was carried out, considering all couples attending the Fertility Centre of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Reggio Emilia (Italy). All consecutive ART cycles performed from 1998 to December 2020 were retrospectively extracted and couples fulfilling inclusion criteria were included in the final dataset with final included 12,275 ART cycles. The strong ART outcomes were considered, i.e. biochemical and clinical pregnancy and live birth rates. Participants/materials, setting, methods Couple with both partners older than 18 years and attending fresh ART cycles are available are included in the study. The ART procedure was evaluated collecting several variables, considering male parameters, COS approach and variables of COS response. The fertilization rate was calculated as the ratio between the number of fertilized oocytes and the number of either injected (ICSI method) or inseminated (IVF cycles) oocytes. Main results and the role of chance The final database included 12,275 ART cycles, consisting of 7,826 ICSI (63.8%) and 4,449 IVF (36.2%) procedures. The 87.5% of the entire cohort (10,375 couples) were treated for primary couple infertility. Linear regression analyses highlighted a relationship between number of ovarian follicles >17 mm detected at ultrasound before pick-up (OF17), embryos number and fertilization rate, and biochemical and clinical pregnancy rates (p < 0.001), but not live birth rate. Decisional Tree (DT) were created for biochemical pregnancy (statistical power–SP:80.8%), clinical pregnancy (SP:85.4%) and live birth (SP:87.2%). Thresholds for OF17 entered in all DT, while sperm motility entered the biochemical pregnancy’s model, and female age entered the clinical pregnancy and live birth DT. In case of OF17<3, the chance of conceiving was <6% for all DT. Logistic regression analyses confirmed the relationship between strong ART outcomes and those variables detected before pick-up. Interestingly, these connections appeared only when pregnancy rates were considered, suggesting that the classical statistical approach is not able to overcome the higher number of biases influencing live birth rates. In the biochemical pregnancy decision tree, alongside to OF17, sperm motility entered the model introducing the threshold of 34%. Limitations, reasons for caution In the study were included only those cycles in which all ART variables were available. During the long interval of data collection, ART technologies evolved, as well as the regulatory rules for ART access. This data heterogeneity over the years could mitigate the reliability of results. Wider implications of the findings The identification of three decision trees helping the clinician to decide whether or not to perform oocytes pick-up, continuing the ongoing ART path. In mathematical models, three predictors of ART success at a very early stage emerged, such as ovarian follicles higher than 17 mm, sperm motility and female age. Trial registration number not applicable

Transnational Queer Solidarities and Ambivalent Affects in the Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project

In this article, I examine siren eun young jung’s Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project, an ongoing contemporary art project about yeoseong gukgeuk, a Korean all-female performance form whose survival in the twenty-first century is marked by precarity. Situated at the intersections of archival documentation, ethnography, and visual art, I conceptualize the Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project as an archive of affect which establishes inter-Asian queer solidarities, mediated through reflections of my own encounters with the project at the Korea Artist Prize 2018 exhibition.

Memory Matter(s)

This essay serves as brief insight into an ongoing art project, centered on the documentation of my grandparents’ house. The aim of the project is to formalize an art-based methodology to explore the histories of a familiar place that no longer exists in its original setting. The location, my grandparents’ house in the Sarntal Valley, in the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy, was accessed and documented through a collaborative recollection of memories linked to artifacts that characterized the physical site. In this work, drawing, mapmaking, and photography are used as tools to examine the relationships between place, object, and memory, and help reconstruct an image of a site now lost in time. The research I conducted for the investigation draws on the interdisciplinary approaches and themes present in the study of contemporary archaeology.

Shifting children's attentional focus to emotions during art museum experiences.

Art exposure can influence children's emotional growth, but little is known about tools that aid emotional development in art museums. We implemented attentional and social manipulations to test whether (1) modifications to unscripted instructions and (2) caregiver prompts shape children's attentional focus towards either the emotional or elemental content (e.g., colour and medium) of paintings. These manipulations occurred within an on-going art museum education programme. Afterwards, children's (N = 60; ages 3-13 years) attentional focus towards emotions or elements was assessed by asking them to select words that best described the art. Children focused on emotion more, but the instructional manipulation successfully influenced word choices towards the targeted focus. Caregiver prompts also influenced focus towards the elements and away from emotions. These findings highlight that children's attention to art's emotional content can be altered by social context, which here was demonstrated within a museum programme.

High rate of virological failure and HIV drug resistance in semi-rural Gabon and implications for dolutegravir-based regimen efficacy.

The projected UNAIDS goal of ending AIDS by 2030 requires significant global efforts to improve current and future ART strategies. In this study, we assessed viral load (VL) suppression and acquired drug resistance, as well as future efficacy of dolutegravir-based combinations for patients living in semi-rural regions of Gabon. Eligible study participants were adults receiving ART and recruited between 2018 and 2019 in Franceville, Gabon. VL testing was conducted to assess VL suppression and HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) testing was performed to identify resistance mutations and assess their impact on ongoing and future ART regimens. We recruited 219 participants overall. The median time on ART was 27 months and 216/219 participants were on first-line ART. VL suppression (VL < 1000 copies/mL) was 57.1% (95% CI 50.5-63.8) overall; 59.4% (51.4-67.5) and 52.2% (40.3-64.2) for women and men, respectively. The overall prevalence of HIVDR was 21.9% among the study population and 67.2% among those who failed ART. Presence of both NRTI and NNRTI mutations was found in 84.6% of sequences with drug resistance mutations, and full activity of a dolutegravir-based first-line regimen including tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/lamivudine/dolutegravir was expected only for 5/39 patients with a resistant virus. This study shows a very low rate of VL suppression in a semi-rural context in Africa. Moreover, the high burden of HIVDR has affected both current and newly recommended ART strategies. Better management of ART in resource-limited settings is still a challenging ambition.

‘I Have Done Hundreds of Rock Paintings’: On the Ongoing Rock Art Tradition among Samburu, Northern Kenya

In this paper, we discuss observations from fieldwork in northern Kenya which revealed solid evidence for a vital ongoing rock art tradition among warriors of Samburu—lmurran. They make rock art during their lives as warriors, typically between the ages of 15 and 30, when they live away from their villages, herding cattle and thus representing a specific ‘community of practice’. Our findings reveal that Samburu rock art is made predominantly as a leisure occupation, while camping in shelters, as part of activities also involving the preparation of food. Typical images include domestic animals, humans (both men and women) and occasionally wild animals such as elephants and rhinos. Each age-set and new generation of lmurran is inspired by previous artwork, but they also change the tradition slightly by adding new elements, such as the recent tradition of writing letters and names close to the images. We conclude that even though rock art as such is not part of any ritual or ceremonial setting, it plays an important role as an inter-generational visual culture that transfers a common ongoing cultural engendered warrior identity through time.

The Role of Postoperative Radiation Therapy for pN2 Non–small-cell Lung Cancer

BackgroundThe role for postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) for patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with mediastinal lymph node (LN) involvement (pN2 disease) is controversial. We compared surgery alone with PORT among patients with pN2 NSCLC. We then performed subset analyses to better delineate patients that might benefit from PORT. Patients and MethodsWe conducted a propensity score (PS)-matched, inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) analysis of patients with pN2 disease from 1989 to 2016 with surgery alone or PORT. Multiple imputation with chained equations was used for missing LN data. ResultsA total of 8631 patients were included in this analysis; 4579 underwent surgery alone, and 4052 underwent PORT. Following PS matching and IPTW, there was no difference in overall survival (OS) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.99; P = .76). However, PORT improved OS among a subset of patients with a LN positive to sampled ratio ≥ 50% (HR, 0.90; P = .01). Moreover, there was a trend towards improved OS among this subset, even with chemotherapy (HR, 0.91; P = .09). ConclusionPORT is not associated with an improvement or detriment in OS for all patients with pN2 NSCLC. However, patients with a positive to sampled LN ratio ≥ 50% may benefit, regardless of chemotherapy status. Nevertheless, PORT will remain the standard of care as we await the results of the ongoing LUNG ART trial.

Follow the Plants

Through poetic glimpses of an ongoing participatory art process, Tree Memory Gathering, this essay considers the special issue theme by questioning, “How might the concept of ‘social warming’ invite new possibilities for creative-relational inquiry?” Responses unfold through three variations of social warming inspired by socially engaged art and ecopoetry. These variations—gathering, participatory bookmaking, and perforating—unsettle residual boundaries between tree bodies and human bodies, generating ecological wisdom for living and inquiring differently in the world. Perforating is theorized as an alternative to research findings in post-qualitative approaches to inquiry.

Underground imaginations, environmental crisis and subterranean cultural geographies

It is claimed that our current environmental crisis is one of the imaginations: we are in desperate need of new means to understand relations between humans and their environment. The underground was once central to the evolution of Western environmental imaginations. Yet, this has waned throughout the 20th century as eyes and minds turned up and out. After outlining some of the history of the underground as a site from which to evolve environmental imaginations, the article will explore how the underground might propagate environmental imaginations fit for pressing contemporary environmental concerns. It will do so using examples of three caves evolved through an ongoing arts practice-based research collaboration with artist Flora Parrott. Exploring these three caves, I will explore how the underground offers a powerful site for doing the imaginative work that our current environmental crisis requires, focusing in particular on the challenges of engaging lively earths and deep times (pasts and futures) that have become commonplace in the Anthropocene. To close, the article begins to reflect on the possibilities of collaborative creative geographies as a means to rethink the idea of the imagination within geography, as not just something that might be studied but that these creative practices might enable the creation of much-needed new imaginations.

Objects that Matter - Performance Art and Objects

The Study on Objects (2018-) is an ongoing art project that focuses on everyday life objects we are surrounded by. While considering the objects and working with videos, I contemplate the relationship between new materialism and performance art. Feminist new materialism offers a perspective to explore many performance art works that reveal how we are related to objects and how we deal with them.

Investigating the Next Generation of Design Researchers

This paper explores the opportunities, challenges and needs of the next generation of design researchers (NGDRs) in the United Kingdom. As part of the first author’s ongoing Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Design Leadership Fellowship, the paper reports on a series of ten NGDR workshops held across the UK, which explored the processes involved in developing, writing, and applying for an AHRC grant. The paper presents feedback from the NGDR workshop participants, who contributed to furthering our understanding of what research areas they are interested in investigating, what research-related issues they need support with, and what research opportunities they envisage for the future. Over 800 next generation design researchers attended the NGDR workshops across the UK. This paper reports on feedback from almost 200 NGDR workshop participants who articulate the highly collaborative, innovative and impactful design research they wish to undertake in the future.

Slow Digital Art History in Action: Project Cornelia’s Computational Approach to Seventeenth-century Flemish Creative Communities

This paper presents the rationale, genesis, and applications of Project Cornelia, an ongoing computational art history project developed by a cross-disciplinary team at the KU Leuven (University of Leuven). It shares practical perspectives acquired while conceptualizing and unfolding the project and discusses successes as well as challenges and setbacks. In doing so, this paper is a cautionary tale for art historians entering the digital arena. However, it is also an invitation to connect to Project Cornelia. Art historians seeking to avoid heavy start-up costs and willing to embed their research in a larger empirical and theoretical framework can easily share their data and use Cornelia’s data and tools to further their and our understanding of the genesis and governance of early modern creative communities and industries.

Creating and Performing “I Accept My Role”

This artist statement and poetic response to Ed Mabrey's poem map my ongoing journey to understanding my role in the cultural pursuit of racial justice. I begin with my initial reactions to the request to respond to Mabrey's poem as part of the Opening Session of the 2017 National Communication Association annual convention and explain my reasons for choosing to respond with an autoethnographic poem. I then trace my understandings of racism as 1) a working-class white child in a northern factory town, 2) a first-generation college student and academic, and 3) a parent of sons growing up in a racially divided southern US city. Location, relationships, power, and privilege emerge intertwined in my ongoing lived experience, art, and advocacy.

The Calais Winds took our plans away: Art therapy as shelter

Abstract This article examines the role of construction materials, story and group as alternative forms of shelter and crisis relief for refugees in transit in Calais, northern France. It draws on examples from an ongoing art therapy project delivered by Art Refuge UK since Autumn 2015, first in the large makeshift refugee camp known as ‘The Jungle’ and since in various settings in and around Calais, including a day centre for unaccompanied refugees.

Deep Blue Geomediations: Following Lapis Lazuli in Three Ecological Assemblages

Deep Blue Geomediations:Following Lapis Lazuli in Three Ecological Assemblages Patricia Pisters (bio) Stones, like us, stand at the intersection of countless lines crossing one another and receding to infinity, at the center of a field of forces too unpredictable to be measured… (Yourcenar xix) Mining the Blue Mountain: Matter-Flow of the Machinic Phylum On my desk, next to my laptop, a small piece of lapis lazuli. My eye is captured by the intense blue from its most important component, the mineral lazurite. The stone also contains white calcite specks and some metallic glistering from its pyrite elements. Looking at the play of colors, feeling the weight and the surface of the rocky material, I am reminded of Marguerite Yourcenar's words at the end of her introduction to Caillois's The Writing of Stones when she invokes stones as force fields "at the intersection of countless lines crossing one another" (Yourcenar xix). And I wonder, what are the force fields and intersecting lines "receding to infinity" contained in this small piece of earthly material? How has this ultramarine blue become "the most perfect of all colors" (Cennini 36), as described by Cennini in his famous The Craftman's Handbook of the late Middle Ages? How has lapis lazuli traveled in the world, as an aesthetic object, as a perfect pigment for the most beautiful blue, but also been implicated in economic and political forces? What kind of "geomediations" traverse this deep blue stone? And if all these forces are too unpredictable to measure, as Yourcenar contended, is there another way to uncover some of the complex entanglements of the material and immaterial dimensions of this particular aspect of the lithosphere? A good starting place might be the Blue Mountain (Koh-e-Laguard) of the Sar-e-Sang mines in East Afghanistan where since 6,000 BC the best quality lapis lazuli has been extracted from the earth. In 2009, artist Pieter Paul Pothoven traveled to Afghanistan in search for the Sar-e-Sang mines.1 Intrigued by the extreme stability of the rocky [End Page 36] material in an extremely unstable environment (Afghanistan is a contested and mediated area in geopolitics, as will be discussed below), Pothoven started his investigations by traversing the inhospitable landscape of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Badakhshan, reaching the mines after an arduous journey. He was able to buy some of the stones from the local miners and, since then, has made a series of ongoing art works that invoke both the material and spiritual qualities of the stone and question the geophysical and political dimensions of art history and contemporary media culture. These works will be my guides in uncovering some of the hidden dimensions of the blue stone. Other guidelines are offered by new materialist philosophy that acknowledges the profound connections between the human and nonhuman, inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari.2 In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari discuss mining in connection to metallurgy, miners and smiths being the first metallurgists that know how to follow and transform the forces of matter (404–415). While their remarks are mostly related to metal, Deleuze and Guattari indicate that also wood, clay, stones and minerals can be taken into account when they argue that metallurgy is not an exact science that discovers universal stable laws, since metallurgy is inseparable from several lines of variation: according to different qualities of the material itself (quality of the ore, varieties of the stones) and according to different processes of transformation (washing, polishing, grinding, mixing with wax and gum, heating, etc.). These variables make the materials both of singular order (each piece of rock is different), and according to its transformation processes, expressive of different levels of affective qualities. Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of a "machinic phylum," which they define as "materiality, natural or artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression" (409). Because of its constant flow and variation, the machinic phylum is very hard to measure indeed. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the "matter-flow can only be followed" (409).3 So let...