Learning Arts Organisations: Innovation through a Poetics of Relation

Arts organisations have had to reimagine their ways of working, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has severely challenged the venue-based sectors and exposed the fragility of the existing business model of the ‘receiving house’. We use a specific example to address the following question: In what sense can artists lead organisational innovation, learning and change? We analyse Riffing the Archive: Building a Relation by MARIE ANTOINETTE (MA), an artist duo from Portugal, and their collaboration with the Barn, a multi-art centre in Banchory, Scotland, during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021. Édouard Glissant, a Martinique-born poet and philosopher, underpins both MA’s practice and our analysis. We draw on the key concepts of his relational philosophy, including archipelago, opacity, and disaffiliation, to clarify how MA work, what they have offered the Barn and what they can offer to other art organisations seeking innovation and organisational learning. MA’s nuanced approach, informed by Glissant, reconfigures the relationship between the artists and the art organisation and challenges existing assumptions through discontinuous and new thinking, while building a non-confrontational relationship with the Barn. It contributes to both organisational studies and arts research by highlighting the significance of MA’s approach to organisational innovation.

The Origins of Trust: Humans’ Reliance on Communicative Cues Supersedes Firsthand Experience During the Second Year of Life

How do people learn about things that they have never perceived or inferred—like molecules, miracles or Marie-Antoinette? For many thinkers, trust is the answer. Humans rely on communicated information, sometimes even when it contradicts blatantly their firsthand experience. We investigate the early ontogeny of this trust using a non-verbal search paradigm in four main studies and three supplementary studies (N = 208). Infants and toddlers first see where a reward is, and then an in-formant communicates to them that it is in another location. We use this general experimental set-up to assess the role of age, informants’ knowledge, cue’s familiarity, and communicative context on trust in communicated information. Results reveal that infants and toddlers quickly trust familiar and novel communicative cues from well-informed adults. When searching for the reward, they follow a well-informed adults’ communicative cue, even when it contradicts what they just saw. Further-more, infants are less likely to be guided by familiar and novel cues from poorly informed adults than toddlers. Thus, reliance on communication is calibrated during early childhood, up to the point of overriding evidence about informants’ knowledge. Moreover, toddlers trust much more strongly a novel cue when it is used in a communicative manner. Toddlers’ trust cannot be explained by mere compliance: it is highly reduced when communicated information is pitted against what participants currently see. Thus, humans’ strong tendency to rely on familiar and novel communicative cues emerges in infancy, and intensifies during the second year of life.

Let Them Eat Cake: Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny in Revolutionary France and Russia

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

Let Them Eat Cake: Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny in Revolutionary France and Russia

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

A Comparative Study on the Appreciation and Adoption of Dijian tushuo in China, Korea, Japan, and France

Dijian tushuo (帝鑑圖說; The Emperor's Mirror, Illustrated and Discussed) is a book compiled by Zhang Juzheng (張居正, 1525-1582), a great scholar during the late period of the Ming Dynasty of China. The book was made for the education of Wanli Emperor (萬歷帝, r.1572-1620), who rose to the throne at an early age. It contains 117 stories about the virtuous and evil deeds of previous emperors, complete with illustrations and relevant articles. After its presentation to the emperor in 1572, several editions of the book were produced by the end of the nineteenth century, and copies were distributed to neighboring countries like Korea and Japan and even to France via Jesuit missionaries. There are copies of more than twelve extant woodblock-printed and lithographic editions in East Asia, as well as copies reprinted with copper plates in France. Also, copies of the book with color illustrations remain in China and France. In Korea, colored illustrations of Dijian tushuo are kept under different titles such as Gunwang jwaumyeong (君王左右銘; The King's Motto) and Dohae yeokdae gungam (圖解歷代君鑑; The Mirror of Rulers throughout the Ages, An Illustrated Explanation) at the Gyeonggi Provincial Museum and the Jangseogak, the archive of the Academy of Korean Studies, respectively. In China, Dijian tushuo formed part of the education of the crown princes during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. More than eight different editions were made by the flourishing commercial publication industry during the two dynasties. In Joseon royal court, the book was recognized as one of the didactic books for the discipline of kingship. As for Japan, the shoguns of the Edo Bakufu used the book to advertise themselves as ideal rulers or to make Chinese royal palace genre paintings as an exotic hobby. Isidore Stanislas Henri Helman (1743~1809), a French engraver, made reprinted copies of the book amid Chinoiseries popularized in eighteenth-century France. The French edition reflects not only the public criticism of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette but also Helman’s implicit intention to receive financial support from Marie Louise Josephin de Savoie and the Count of Provence (later Louis XVIII), first in line to the throne at the time. Dijian tushuo was adopted in various countries in East Asia and Europe between the end of the sixteenth century and the early twentieth century, although the way it was used differed from country to country depending on their respective political, social, and cultural situations. However, all these countries had one thing in common– they had future rulers read the book. Perhaps, the fact that it was written for the education of the crown princes of China served as the stimulus for leaders and intellectuals alike. Studies on the ways in which books like Dijian tushuo were distributed as an aggregation of knowledge, information, and culture are thought to be significant and useful in identifying certain characteristics shared by diverse countries and in shedding light on differences in their political and social backgrounds and their art history.

PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL PASSIONS IN THE WORK OF GERMAINE DE STAËL

In this paper, I investigate the role of public opinion and De Staël’s liberal principles in relation to her psychological image of human nature. De Staël regarded the French Revolution as a new stage of human progress, in which the French people, for the first time, gained a political voice. From her position as a liberal republican, De Staël argues for political progress in the form of civil equality and liberty confirmed by law and political representation, for which public opinion serves as a political tool. I aim to demonstrate that De Staël developed a multi-layered analysis of public opinion as both an emancipatory tool for more equality, justice, and liberty, as well as a discriminating and harmful tool. According to De Staël, human passions play a crucial role in determining the employment and the effects of public opinion, as becomes clear in the case of the trial of Marie-Antoinette.