Spaces of Freedom

The predicaments of the current global climate bring a new poignancy and focus to architecture. Emiliano Gandolfi , the curator of the much lauded ‘Experimental Architecture’ exhibition in the Padiglione Italia at the 2008 Venice Biennale, outlines how an emerging group of designers are redefining architecture as they seek to provide solutions that identify people's needs and address the exigencies of global warning, the environmental crisis and migration. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Graciela Iturbide’s Cholos/as Series: Images of Cross-Border Identities

This article looks at Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s Cholos/as series taken on both sides of the border: in Los Angeles in 1986 and in Tijuana in 1989. The cholos/as, or gang members, have a complex relationship to Mexico; this response grows in part from the constructed nature of the border in general – a symbolic and relatively recent division between nations that does not represent lived reality or divisions between identities and cultures. As an outsider, Iturbide inserts visual cues throughout the series that tie the cholos/as’ lifestyle to its Mexican roots and historical legacies, thus recuperating the mexicanidad, or Mexican identity, that exists in the borderlands. The narrative thrust of this series is strong, foregrounding female agency and matrilineal family structures over traditional, heteropatriarchal conceptions of family; complex negotiations of personal identity; and generally emphasising the social ties of border communities and subcultural groups through a distinct aesthetic style that intervenes in traditional photographic genres like studio portraiture. Iturbide’s images form an origin story for the topicality of the US–Mexico border at the present moment and demonstrate that the issues of the border have been a critical point of inquiry for artists since the 1980s.     

Temporal pattern of toxicity in runoff from the Tijuana River Watershed

Samples were collected from the Tijuana River under both dry weather (baseflow) conditions and during wet weather, and tested for toxicity using Ceriodaphnia dubia tests. Toxicity of waters in the Tijuana River was generally low under baseflow conditions, but increased markedly during high flow runoff events. In order to determine the temporal pattern of toxicity during individual rain events, sequential grab samples were collected using an autosampler at 5-7 h intervals after the start of the rain event, and tested for acute toxicity. In all cases, peak toxicity values (ranging from 2.8 to 5.8TU) for each storm occurred within the first 1-2 h of initiation of the rain event, and were statistically higher (using the 95% CL) for each of the pre-storm base flow values. However, there was no statistically significant correlation (p<0.05) between flow rate and toxicity when all storm data was pooled. Additionally, we used toxicity identification evaluation (TIE) procedures to attempt to identify the classes of chemicals that account for this early storm toxicity. Solid phase extraction was the only treatment that showed consistent and significant (P<0.05) removal of toxicity. These TIEs, conducted on the most toxic sample of the river's flow during runoff events, suggest that non-polar organics may be responsible for such toxicity. The temporal pattern of toxicity, both during a given storm event and seasonally, indicates that wash-off from the watershed by rainfall may deplete the supply of toxicity available for wash-off in subsequent events, so that a clearly consistent relationship between flow and toxicity was not evident.