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Accurate chromosome segregation relies on the kinetochore, a multiprotein structure, which assembles around the centromeric region of the chromosome. Proper kinetochore-microtubule attachment is critical for the segregation of sister chromatids toward the opposite poles during mitosis. The outer kinetochore, notably the KMN network (KNL-1 complex/Mis12 complex/Ndc80 complex), links chromosomes to the mitotic spindle, in which the Ndc80 protein is a primary microtubule-binding site. Any improper attachments are recognised by the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), a surveillance pathway, which blocks premature segregation of chromosomes by preventing anaphase onset. Incorrect kinetochore-microtubule attachments lead to SAC activation, which is coupled with localisation of its components (Mph1/MPS1, Mad1, Mad2, Mad3/BubR1, Bub1 and Bub3) to the kinetochores. However, the mechanisms by which SAC components other than Bub1 and Bub3 are recruited to the kinetochore remain largely elusive. In this study, I show isolation and characterisation of an ndc80 mutant (ndc80-AK01) in fission yeast. The ndc80-AK01 mutant contains a single point mutation within an uncharacterised linker/hairpin region that connects a calponin-homology domain and a coiled-coil domain. This mutant is hypersensitive to microtubule poisons with no apparent growth defects in the absence of drugs. Subsequent analysis indicates that ndc80-AK01 is defective in SAC signalling. Localisation studies of SAC components have shown the absence of GFP-tagged Ark1, Mph1, Bub1, Bub3, Mad3, Mad2 and Mad1 from kinetochores under mitotic arrest conditions. Genetic and cell biological data indicate that the Ndc80 linker region may act as a structural platform for kinetochore recruitment of Mph1, which is one of the most upstream SAC components. Intriguingly, artificial tethering of Mph1 to the kinetochore restores checkpoint signalling in the ndc80-AK01 mutant, further confirming the function of Ndc80 as a kinetochore platform for Mph1. These data have unveiled a hitherto unknown function of the Ndc80 linker region in the SAC.

By means of critical comparison, this thesis develops new understandings of two distinguished late modernists - the architect and educator John Hejduk and the author Samuel Beckett. Hejduk once describing his praxis as 'fly-like', as if landing here and there on the skin of the discipline, and the thesis adopts this tactic as a methodological mode. Considering distinct phases in the work of both Hejduk and Beckett, this thesis reads 'lateness' as a theoretical and aesthetic term that impacted much of their work and, through this, aims to advance new understandings of their respective oeuvres. Although working in different disciplinary fields, it observes they had both characterised their work in the same way - as late and operating within an almost exhausted field. In Beckett's case, the problematic of coming late initially involved a retreat from any ascent to linguistic mastery à la James Joyce, while for Hejduk, it had to do with the depleted possibilities available to a late generation - one that came in the wake of heroic modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Reading their works from the late 1960s through the 1970s in terms of theories of cultural lateness and the vicissitudes of modernism (including late- and post-), it develops new readings of the sense of belatedness and pessimism that prevails in some of their key works. Notwithstanding the difficulty critics have had in classifying Hejduk and Beckett's works in this period, this study attempts to clarify and develop distinctions that further our understanding of them. In doing this, the thesis examines the problematic of epochal lateness through Adorno's claim of the barbarism of post- Auschwitz aesthetic production and its relation to silence. It suggests there are important correspondences between Hejduk and Beckett in their attempts to make visible what had been silenced and bear witness to a catastrophic history that negotiates culture's 'after-Auschwitz' aporia. The performative acting-out and spectral/ghostly qualities of the theatrical characters in Beckett's play Endgame (1958) is related to this - but so too is the depleted figure of the angel that emerges in Hejduk's Berlin projects. His adoption of it as emblem and of the theatrical mode of the masque is a turning point that decisively separates his late from his earlier work. The thesis concludes by considering the last works developed in the shadow of the approach of death and the type of lateness that subsists in them. It analyses the highly religious scenes (of crucifixes, crosses, monstrous and angelic figures) of Hejduk's last works Enclosures (1999-2000) and Sanctuaries (1999-2000) produced just before his death in 2000. Arguing that these works reclaim architecture as mythological and 'sacred' space, it maintains that these scenes are also evidence of a late operation. While reanimating themes of time/space and reality/fiction of the Masques (space), they also signal the type of recapitulation often identified with late style - indicative of its mythopoeic tendency. Similarly, examining Beckett's last works in relation to biography and the medical condition of aphasia, it contends these works do not necessarily represent a diminished or defective form of writing. Instead, it signals the type of irresolution that is the prerogative of late style that Beckett recognised in late Beethoven and which Adorno had theorised. Read this way, the supposed incoherence of these final written words mark the condition Beckett's literary form was striving towards from the very beginning - supplementing a literary oeuvre that had affirmed the possibilities of failure and inexpression. As an overall schema relating to Hejduk and Beckett, lateness is thus not merely a project reduced to the last few years of an individual but is instead, produced by individuals deeply impacted by distinct historical moments. In this context, and viewing modernity as a late condition, we are reminded that some significant artists manifest the style normally associated with old age in order to exceed the limitations of their epoch.

The thesis examines the relationship between Martha Stewart's rendition of domesticity and a broader cultural trend of the late 1990s U.S. domestic retreatism. It argues that the mode of construction and representation of the "domestic dream" in Stewart's programs cannot be examined outside of such concepts as class and ethnicity, whose understanding depends on the cultural, social, and political context of a given era, a context, in which they become transparent as aspects of the Western (white, patriarchal) status quo. Performing a deconstructive reading of these categories as employed by Stewart in the process of creation of her media persona, the thesis examines what the negative as well as positive reactions to "Martha Stewart" convey about the condition of American society of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

This thesis proposes a critical exchange between architecture and graffiti. Graffiti in Athens plays a key role in the expression of Greek tensions making this city an ideal place for developing such an exchange. The author acts in a three-fold manner in this research: as architectural designer, one with an impulse to survey by drawing and capable of grasping the matrix of the surfaces upon which graffiti finds an expression; as graffiti writer, somebody with some practical experience as graffitist hence partially equipped to decode the graffiti matrix placed on any given architectural matrix; and as writer on graffiti, who is interested in bringing together and working between the architectural and graffiti matrices to reveal their convergences, deviations and interdependences, and, in so doing, expose the hidden spatiality of graffiti writing. Stemming from this peculiar triple positioning, this book promotes a new situating of Athenian inscriptions. The thesis is presented as an Atlas of Athenian Inscriptions, a book of drawings of writings and writings on drawings. The Atlas offers, in both drawn and written form, a close study of four situations in which graffiti has been recorded. The thesis regards a recent significant graffiti Exhibition – in which the author is actively implicated by being invited into it as a graffiti writer and writer on graffiti – as a starting point, as its situation zero. By de-situating graffiti from its original urban and political context whilst placing it onto the gallery surfaces, this thesis argues that the Exhibition undermines graffiti’s critical potency and has transformed graffiti into an aesthetic object. However, perhaps paradoxically, presenting graffiti as an empty gesture, the Exhibition nonetheless raises questions concerning the situating role of graffiti. By including it in the Atlas together with the following more overt surface ruptures in political edifices, the Exhibition is framed as an equally political situation. The other three situations, all in Athens’ city centre, reflect three important periods in local political history and are emblematic in that they are the epicentres of historical ruptures during which they are extensively graffitied: the former Nazi Detention Centre which operates during the Axis occupation (1941-1944); the Athens Polytechnic that plays a pivotal role in the student uprising against the Greek Military Junta (1967-1974); and the Bank of Greece HQ building which is a site of recurring political expression in contemporary crisis (2010-2015). The Atlas indexes graffiti and related information from the city of Athens, the systematic organisation of which creates different graffiti-related matrices allowing us to make sense of, navigate in and reconstruct the Athenian graffiti landscape through characteristic surface environments. By placing different political situations in the same set with the Exhibition, the thesis aims to give critical voice to how graffiti is perceived. By resituating (graffiti) images, the Atlas restores broken and creates new links between them and their surfaces whilst revealing not only the spatiality of graffiti in Athens but also the spatiality of architecture of Athens as a recurring tension between the matrices of dissensus and consensus. The thesis deconstructs the mythology that architecture represents consensus and graffiti dissensus, since each is embedded in the other. Ultimately, by carefully considering graffiti’s situating character and graphic articulation, this research promotes rupture to the smoothing of its political asperity attempted by architecture, institutions and those writing on graffiti that seek to restrain it.

Thesis argument: There is a Culture of Violent Reductivism in Representing Warsaw, which means that: Warsaw is reduced to a symbol of heroism in the hands of God/History or the Expert; imagining is reduced to historic imaginary and by the same token futuristic imaginary; both based on a positivist-romanticist system of thought; the reductivism deploys philosemiotic violence (acts of offering with expectations attached); the reductivism/violence is a symptom of a ‘neurosis’ of the social national/imaginary; the reductivism stops Warsaw/Poland from imagining present and future more openly. An alternative is to represent Warsaw as a series of post-historical objects that: are discrete texts, singular images, drawings, physical objects; are paradigmatic and analogical; they move from specificity to specificity; offer different forms, where ‘form’ is non-objective and means relationship; are a series of critiques, reflections, descriptions that work as architectural hypotheses; represent three exemplar imaginaries of Warsaw (the Birth, the Rebirth, the Second Rebirth); together form a ‘distracted’ architectural archive of Warsaw’s imaginaries. In this way, the thesis posits an example of a methodology of representing Warsaw that opens the possibility for Warsaw/Poland to imagine itself differently. Key themes: Culture of violent reductivism in representing Warsaw, reduction of Warsaw to a symbol of heroism, domination of the historic futuristic imaginary, philosemi(o)tic violence, neurosis of the social imaginary (guilt), positivist romanticism, post-historical object, paradigmatic knowledge, non-objective form, seriality of representation, architectural hypothesis, three imaginaries of Warsaw, ‘distracted’ archive of imaginaries.

This thesis presents a recollection of the relation of “being” and thinking through an articulation of the gesture of etho-poetic thinking. Part I marks out a path towards such a thinking through an encounter with Martin Heidegger’s “sketch” of the self as Dasein, where his description of being-there is read as an originary language of inquiry – one which attempts to respond to the issue of being, to the questionability and groundlessness of existence stemming from simply being-in-the-world. Part I follows out a description of this language of inquiry as a pre-conceptual, pre-cognitive, attuned, bodily understanding, through chapters which unfold this sketch of Dasein. This language of inquiry is construed as a two-fold action of being begun, being sketched, and beginning, sketching-out. The final chapter of part I connects Heidegger’s articulation of “Care” to the ancient practice of “care of the self” and the transformative, etho-poetic potentiality of thinking. As the thesis proffers, it is this pre-conceptual language of inquiry which must be repeated in a resolute thinking, as Heidegger articulates it in Being and Time, seeking not to objectivise the world, to represent it, but to resonate with it. In this sense, the “purpose” of thinking is not so much the obtainment of knowledge as it is an attempt to come back into “Care” for the questionability of one’s existence. As the thesis gestures to in the conclusion, part of the attempt of the thesis is, thus, an implicit critique of the contemporary situation and discourse on thinking with its emphasis on outcomes and outputs. The thesis itself follows the two-fold structure of the language of inquiry. Whilst part I depicts Heidegger’s sketch of this originary language of inquiry, part II sketches-out this language, seeking to articulate how an etho-poetic language of inquiry can occur in writing by bringing the sketch of part one into conversation with other etho-poetic thinkers; Walter Benjamin, Henri Meschonnic, Jan Zwicky, Giorgio Agamben, Lisa Robertson. In this way, through the textual composition of the writing, the thesis presents itself as the primary example of such a language of inquiry, making it not an investigation which objectifies an etho-poetic thinking, but makes an attempt at its own performance of it.

This thesis aims to explore the temporal and material limits of architectural drawing through the question of urban representation. Challenges posed by the latter are used to put pressure on the fixity of drawing conventions, in order to expand architectural drawing’s range of concerns to the transitory conditions of space that emerge between order and event. Since the eighteenth century, the city has acted as the ground and mirror of the productive, economic, social and epistemological breaks and turns that have marked the passage to modernity. This radical transformation of the city and its modes of experience and inhabitation, combined with the visual culture that has since emerged, have raised questions of presence and representation with regards to both the city and its image in architectural drawing. This thesis aims to bring these questions into the frame of the current concerns in architectural representation, following the deconstructive and cartographic approaches that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century and the effects of a rising virtuality. As the understanding of space has shifted from the idea of an a priori extensity of vacuum versus matter to a dynamic multiplicity of relations, respectively architectural representation is understood as itself a transaction: a complex oscillation between the real and the mental. This research becomes concerned with exploring drawing as a situated experience that involves the inhabitation of both the space of the city and the drawing. Such a consideration of drawing as a distinct spatiality consequently brings to the fore a dynamic and productive reciprocity between the city and its representation. In order to engage with the intangible projective spatiality of drawing and the negotiations that take place in the movement of representation, the thesis examines the processes involved in the representation of the urban through the immersive site-specificity of installation. Installation is proposed as a way of drawing in space, and thus of foregrounding the question of the space of drawing. The thesis unfolds as a movement across the space of drawing, through a series of essays and corresponding installations which cumulatively form a survey of a city, while performing a close inquiry into the agency of the distinct elements of drawing. Edinburgh serves as both the object and the place of performance, the testing ground, for this act of observation and representation.

This thesis makes the first sustained attempt to locate post-war British art school pedagogy in relation to systems-inspired cultural practice after World War II. I explore how in the post-war era in Britain, system, cybernetic and network theories had an instrumental presence in visual arts pedagogy and practice which marked a fundamental shift in the values of cultural production. This was informed both by General System Theory, which had emerged in biology before the war (GST) and its part in the new systemic presence across culture and economy in the wake of the war. I draw out this cultural trend through the examination of student work of the period, pedagogical documents and new interview material with teachers and students. The immediate post-war years form one of the most vital periods of technological development of all time, in which the physical and biological sciences played an ever-more prominent – and integrated - part. The pedagogies of 1945-1970 incorporated a range of systemic and mechanical approaches into creative practice, which had a clear link to contemporaneous technological developments. That mechanisms, networks and systemic approaches were a fundamental aspect of visual arts pedagogies of the period is a phenomenon which has never been analysed and this is the task of this thesis. This was manifested both in the subject matter of classes and courses and in the teaching structures and models that this thesis will examine. These consist of the Basic Design movement, Groundcourse and the Hornsey protest of 1968. The presence of mechanics as process, pedagogy, practice and symbol within British art education demonstrates the evolving importance of technology within culture. With this in mind, each case study within this thesis investigates systems characteristics of British art school pedagogies during the period. The underlying aim is not to create a narrative account of each pedagogical moment, but rather to pursue the material and cultural influences which shaped their development.

This thesis investigates the way in which tensions between the discursive dominance of the nuclear model and an acknowledgement of the plurality of family forms has been embodied in popular representations of fatherhood. Based on assumptions of gendered spheres of experience that define the domestic sphere as primarily ‘feminine’, fathers occupy an uncertain position within the discourse of the nuclear family. It is this ambiguous position, when contrasted with an assumption of their ultimate dominance, which creates confusion between the symbolic figure of the absent patriarch and the literal presence of the father within family life. Television, in particular, has regularly been forced to confront this dynamic between discursive absence and literal presence, due to the centrality of the nuclear family in both the commissioning and scheduling of programmes. Television’s representation of fatherhood regularly re-asserts or undermines patriarchal privilege by representing the father as a threat to the coherence of the family unit or as an overgrown adolescent who ultimately acquiesces to the ‘natural’ domestic authority of the female. In this way, popular television is able to continue restating a model of the patriarchal nuclear family, while simultaneously acknowledging its contested status as a norm of family life. As highly negotiated attempts to move beyond these common models have proven, however, this approach threatens to replicate a limited discourse of family life through incorporating variation into a single model, rather than broadening available representations. Through an analysis of the representation of fatherhood in the domestic comedy, this thesis begins by investigating the genre’s ability to invert traditional power relationships, allowing it to explore the limits of representing a coherent model of the nuclear family. Progressing to an analysis of the representation of fatherhood in television advertising, it goes on to examine the relationship between an acknowledgement of these limitations and idealised representations of family life within consumer culture. Incorporating a close reading of the ‘Adam’ series of adverts for British Telecom, their representation of a non-nuclear family unit and the role of the father within this unit, this work also considers the potential challenges and rewards of representing alternative models. Exploring both popular and academic discourses of family life throughout, this thesis concludes with a discussion of the possibility of imagining new forms of family that successfully include the father, and the threat to this process posed by their current incorporation into pre-existing representational models.

Urban conservation and development practices are often in conflict. This thesis examines this general claim in the context of rapid urban development in East Asia through an analysis of the postcolonial historic city of Tainan, in Southern Taiwan. Following a particular line of urban conservation scholarship (Ashworth, Larkham, Conzen) this thesis argues that urban conservation is best conceived as the management of urban change, and that change should be considered as part of urban conservation policy. The aim of such urban conservation practice would be not only to maintain the historic traditions of a place, but also to promote the development of new possibilities of place. In this sense, the treatment of historical urban fabric should aim to preserve memory and tradition as much as serving as an ‘incubator’ for new senses of place. To this end, the thesis seeks to combine morphological and everyday life approaches to urban scholarship. A sense of place is not only derived from the emotional feelings, orientation or identity attached to an existing environment, but also relies on the practices of everyday life. These practices are significant aspects of urban places, but they are often difficult to map, measure and analyse. Thus, the thesis argues, mapping the morphological changes of a city is not enough for a rounded study of the everyday life dimensions of urban space. As a result, this thesis proposes that empirical approaches to everyday life are as important as morphological studies when exploring issues of urban change. The thesis builds on a number of existing approaches to this wider issue of the interrelationship between urban morphology and everyday life. In particular, it examines the Versailles School’s approach to typomorphological study. This approach to urban analysis emphasizes morphological change and its grounding in existing typological rules of everyday space, so as to continue the everyday life culture that it supports. This thesis develops methodologies based on these principles. In addition, it draws on the concepts of time-geography and heterotopic spaces as a means of specifying the representational approaches to everyday life narratives and an understanding of postcolonial complex urbanism, respectively. Following this approach, this thesis presents a series of case studies on the historic city centre of Tainan, the ancient capital of Taiwan. As a result of its colonial past, the urban blocks in that city can be understood as heterotopias in the contemporary city. Drawing on the case studies, this thesis argues that the everyday life-style in Tainan city centre is inseparable from the existing block typology and the functional conditions that reside in the coexistence of the historical and the modern urban structures. Thus, when considering urban conservation policies, the relationship between this social spatial condition and the everyday life that it supports must be carefully considered.

This thesis argues that the notion of player experience in relation to computer games is intrinsically linked to the body. Taking the idea of aesthetic experience, or sensuous experience, in computer game play as its starting point, my thesis considers computer games from within an interdisciplinary cross section of phenomenology, cultural studies and visual culture. Computer games have in a reasonably short amount of time reached a stage where they are an integral part of contemporary society: historically, economically and culturally. The current field of computer games comprises a vast array of genres, styles, stories, experiments and media. Because computer games are interactive objects, I argue that an analysis should begin with a discussion of player experience, and that this experience is inherently embodied. The embodied and temporal nature of game play means it is problematic to simply transfer established frameworks of meaning making in other audiovisual media onto computer games. The thesis attempts to understand the notion of player experience through a phenomenological reading of the interactive experience, and as such I argue that the individual, temporal and iterative aspect of this experience means computer games should not necessarily be squeezed into already established categories of earlier forms of entertainment media. Through three main chapters I explore the role of the body and embodied experience from three different points of view, roughly divided into the three aspects that make up the feedback loop of game play; hardware, software and interface. Each chapter considers the unique role and importance of the body at each point in the game play process.

The thesis analyses the discursive construction of migrants’ identities through their native language communications, using Russian-speaking migration in the UK as the case study. Material from internet forums these migrants were engaged in the years 2002-2005 forms the basis of this research. The project is concerned with the question of how Russian-speaking migrants, faced with the process of accustoming themselves to a new place of residence (UK), re-negotiate the Self, their homeland (in both real geographical terms and metaphorically through their cultural affiliations) and the Other. This study draws on theories from a range of research perspectives including hermeneutics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and ethnography. The theoretical framework developed in this thesis combines Foucault’s analysis of discourse with Lotman’s model of dialogue between cultures. The thesis also develops sampling techniques for virtual data. By examining how the dichotomy Russia vs. Europe/the West is imagined in the researched data, this study argues that the concept of Europeanism obtains positive associations, while the concept of the West retains its ambiguity for Russian-speaking migrants. The thesis identifies Europeanism as a discursive object of knowledge and examines its categorizations. The study identifies kul`tura and tsivilizatsia as grids of specifications of Europeanism, and investigates Self/Other dialectics attached to the object of knowledge. Finally, the thesis analyses the dynamics of cultural appropriation under influences of the host context, and elaborates on semiotic “translation” of new phenomena.