Margit Brünner: Constructing Atmospheres – Test-Sites for an Aesthetics of Joy

Margit Brünner holds a PhD in Visual Arts and undertakes her artistic research practice between Vienna, Austria and Adelaide Australia. Working through performative intervention, video and drawing her work investigates the spatiality of affective relations. Margit studied and undertook her Masters degree project in architecture with Hans Hollein, at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She has received several grants from the Austrian Federal Chancellery and was awarded with a MF & MH Joyner Fine Arts scholarship. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; the Architectural Biennale Venice; AEDES Gallery in Berlin; the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; and the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, amongst other places. Currently she holds a visiting research position at the University of Adelaide.

Constructing Atmospheres

Constructing Atmospheres is concerned with subjective perceptions and affections and the co-production of collective spatial realities. The book speculates upon the production of joy as a worthwhile and effective collective practice applied toward the refinement of shared spaces.

The author suggests that atmospheres precede matter, including built environments.

As a report on the artistic labour of bringing forth joyful affects, the book puts to the test Spinoza’s fundamental conception of substance as a self-creating universal principle – philosophical theory is productively entangled with concrete spatial experimentation.

Margit Brünner

art architecture design research

Constructing Atmospheres Test-Sites for an Aesthetics of Joy

“This is a really wonderful book. Backing up her theory of an aesthetics of joy with Spinoza, Bergson, and Deleuze, Margit’s very strength is a kind of pragmatic phenomenology. By offering insights into her own practice, ways of creating and experiencing atmospheres is suggested to the reader, who as a result is obviously moved.“ Gernot Böhme, Director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy; Professor for Philosophy, TU Darmstadt

ISBN 978-3-88778-462-1

Margit Brünner

AADR publishes innovative artistic, creative and historical research in art, architecture, design and related fields. www.aadr.info

CONSTRUCTING ATMOSPHERES TEST SITES FOR AN AESTHETICS OF JOY

Margit Brünner

IMPRESSUM / COLOPHON

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic information is available on the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

Margit Brünner, Constructing Atmospheres – Test Sites for an Aesthetics of Joy, 2015 ISBN 978-3-88778-462-1

© Copyright 2015

by Margit Brünner and Spurbuchverlag Publication © by Spurbuchverlag 1. print run 2015 Am Eichenhügel 4, 96148 Baunach, Germany All rights reserved.

No part of the work must in any mode (print, photocopy, microfilm, CD or any other process) be reproduced nor – by application of electronic systems – processed, manifolded nor broadcast without approval of the copyright holder.

AADR – Art, Architecture and Design Research publishes research with an emphasis on the relationship between critical theory and creative practice AADR Curatorial Editor: Dr Rochus Urban Hinkel, Stockholm Cover Design: pth-mediaberatung GmbH, Würzburg Cover Images: Image top: Margit Brünner, Atmospheric profile for Maria am Gestaade, 2003, on the 6th of October at 9.30 am. Image bottom: Margit Brünner, Atmospheric transfer, 2002, 25°03‘33’’ S | 143°07’80’ E. Photo: Urs Bette Layout: Diesseits – Kommunikationsdesign, Anke von Bremen, Düsseldorf, Germany Production: pth-mediaberatung GmbH, Würzburg, Germany

For further information on Spurbuchverlag and AADR visit www.aadr.info / www.spurbuch.de

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

2 3

This book deals with my research into atmospheres and the spatial nature of joy. What started off more than a decade ago as an investigation into how places condition emotional responses keeps evolving as an inquiry in an ever-transforming subject. Above all the book gives an account of my arts-practice and provides a theoretical framework for the production of a joyful consequence.

Most of the works I refer to in this book are part of a research-project that has been undertaken at Oratunga, a 75 square kilometre pastoral property in the outback of South Australia. However, it is premised on a series of preceding projects I executed in Austria and Australia.

I thank the ARTS AND CULTURE DIVISION OF THE FEDERAL CHANCELLERY OF AUSTRIA, for their recurring openhanded financial support, which has been invaluable to my research into atmospheres. My sincere gratitude to PROF. BERNHARD LEITNER for encouragement at a time when I didn‘t have the words for the subject of my inquiry and to PROF. HANS HOLLEIN whose appreciation for experimentation, allied with a relentless demand for conceptual rigor, sparked off this work. Over the years many people lent their expertise to the work; my special thanks go to IRMI PEER, REGINA RAMSEL, and HEIDE KINZELHOFER – I feel privileged, you offered both friendship and enthusiasm; to STEFANIE, JONNY, PAUL and NICOLE, for their inspiriting friendship and collegiality.

I would also like to thank the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA for their generous funding which allowed me to focus on this research-project uninterrupted over three years. Without the expertise and companionship of JOHN BARBOUR and LINDA MARIE WALKER it would not have come to completion; my sincere gratitude for Linda’s remarkable humour and spirited conversations and for John’s productive critique and his unshakeable confidence in my work. My heartfelt thanks go to VIRGINIA LEE, whose generosity enabled me to undertake the research at Oratunga. Thank you too, SIMONE and OLI, JOHNNY, ANNIKA, BRIGID, SIAMAK and SUE for your warm welcome. So too I wish to thank my dear friend GABRIELE SCHMÄH for her marvellous companionship at Oratunga.

I also want to include in this thanks ANTON HART for his kindness and hospitality, JAMES GEURTS, DOMENICO DE CLARIO, TERI HOSKIN and MARIA ZAGALA for their encouraging interest in my work.

I am profoundly grateful to Oratunga for teaching me joy by being an ever-serene mirror and for endowing me with an unknown silence and beauty.

Before becoming a book, Constructing Atmospheres – Test-sites for an Aesthetics of Joy, was a PhD thesis entitled, Becoming Joy: Experimental Constructions of Atmospheres, completed at the University of South Australia in 2012. I owe special thanks to my publisher DR. ROCHUS HINKEL and to DR. HÉLÈNE FRICHOT for her exquisite editorial input, generosity, and her ongoing enthusiasm for my work. A big thank you to DR. PEG RAWES for tailoring a superb preface and to PROF. GERNOT BÖHME, for his kind recommendation.

In addition I would like to thank ANKE VON BREMEN, who is a joy to work with, for a marvelous and timely layout. And I owe warm thank you to BAZON BROCK, ANDREAS KARNER, JULIE MEHRETU, ROMAN SIGNER, NICOLE SIX & PAUL PETRITSCH, GABRIELE SCHMÄH and HEIDRUN PRIMAS for giving me permission to reproduce images of their work in this book. Thank you too, EDITION BOCK, POINT CROWN PRESS and THE JOHN CAGE TRUST for kind permission to include the works of Sigmar Polke and John Cage.

I am deeply grateful to my dear parents ELISABETH and FRANZ and all of my extended family in Austria and Germany for their constant giving and sustainment. Finally, thank you URS for love, space, support, last minute aid & your meticulous eye for detail.

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS

3

PREFACE

6

INTRODUCTION

1 2 3 4 5

A summary Creative research questions Writing atmospheres A background A note on atmospheres

8 8 9 10 10 22

PRELUDE

21

WORKS

22

1

REALITY, ATMOSPHERES, BECOMING, HABITAT

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Remark on the use of Deleuzian terms Concepts of reality Atmospheres Becoming Habitat

2

SPINOZA’S GEOMETRY

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

Remark on Spinoza’s Ethics Overview What is a body?

Affecting and being affected Degrees of knowledge Tactics of joy

3

CLIMATES OF JOY

3.1 3.2

Creatings: atmospheres Expressiveness: atmospheric bodies moving [make atmospheric bodies] ‘Becoming imperceptible’: atmospheres intuit Atmospheric perception: intuition in practice 3.4.1 The Spinozist 3.4.2 Atmospheric perception 3.4.3 Nuances of intuition 3.4.4 Drift 3.4.5 Turbulence and sabotage

3.3 3.4

49 49 50 54 58 62

69 69 70 74 76 78 80

87 87 96 102 108 108 110 113 116 118

4

4 4.1

4.2 4.3

4.4

CONSTRUCTING ATMOSPHERES Nomadic discipline: atmospheric tactics 4.1.1 On the use of laguage 4.1.2 Making an atmospheric instrument 4.1.3 Moving: speed up 4.1.4 Distancing: immersing 4.1.5 Atmospheric leisure: cosmic fish 4.1.6 Amused assembly: brisk up joy 4.1.7 Frequenting boundaries: inconvenience Forwards backwards 4.2.1 Or: obstacle in the atmospheric passage Public intensities: local automata 4.3.1 Atmospheric noise 4.3.2 Atmospheric bewilderment 4.3.3 Atmospheric trade 4.3.4 Atmospheric nurture ‘Other’: rhythms in my habitat 4.4.1 Sorry, I am European 4.4.2 Diffuse moves

5

AESTHETICS OF JOY

5.1

‘My’ life, ‘just’ a drawing?

5.1.1 Field testing Oratunga’s gifts 5.2.1 Roaming 5.2.2 Other walking 5.2.3 Joylines 5.2.4 Sharing topography Evidently doing 5.3.1 Visual sounding 5.3.2 Wind drawings Prove: affected by camera 5.4.1 Sounds ‘in layers please’ 5.4.2 Couplets Contextualising 5.5.1 Interior politics 5.5.2 Profitable joy 5.5.3 Zivile Übungen

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.5

CONCLUDING REMARKS

5

121 121 126 130 130 132 134 138 142 144 148 150 151 154 154 160 162 162 166

171 171 172 176 176 180 182 182 186 188 191 192 196 198 200 200 204 208

216

Atmospheres

216

Glossary Bibliography Captions pages 19–46

219 220 224

PREFACE ‘BRISK UP JOY’

Peg Rawes Margit Brünner’s poetic travels through buildings, cities and outback land show us how life is composed of incremental, fleeting and imaginative states of joyous transience.

A figure disappears out of a window, sleeps with suitcase on the public steps of a cultural centre, lies head-first into a yellow dust-grass landscape, or stands as a speck of colour within the visual field. Figures of disappearance perhaps, but for Brünner these are atmospheric compositions of ‘what a body can do’.

Weaving images of performative wanderings – her ‘joy-lines’ – with vocabularies of ‘natural’ and ‘imaginative’ geometries that are retrieved from the philosophical writings of Baruch Spinoza and Henri Bergson, Brünner summons a practice that is composed of a plenitude of bodily, environmental, urban, ad-hoc and quotidian singularities. Like the grains of sand which shift under the body that begins the story – a modern day geometrico ordinaire – the body is always situated within a mobile ‘atmosphere’ of material change: light, vegetation, weather, urbanism and the visual vocabulary of the performer are co-constituted to form a relational set of spaces, habits and rhythms.

Spinoza’s term ‘expression’ applies here since the body and her geometry of inhabitation is drawn out through photograph, line, pen, ink and paint. But it also applies to the ontological capacity of performance to show the incremental constructions of the body in its setting: for Brünner these are necessarily relations in which human and non-human substance express the duration of a specific subject or singularity. Such encounters are therefore ecological patterns located within the overlooked and everyday natures and poetics of place-making. Veering away from the notion that geometric principles of spacemaking can only ever be understood as an axiomatic procedure, Brünner’s body-images (after Bergson) are non-teleological episodes. These event-drawings draw our attention to the internal imaginative and material integrity of a composition, which we might interpret as hidden stories of political and cultural signification that form the non-places of so much of our realms of inhabitation, especially in the built environment. But, given the internal logic of expression that flows through her work, these ‘minor geometries’ are much more accurately understood to be composed of the natural rhythms and speeds of change that, for Brünner, constitute worlds of atmospheric inhabitation.

6 7

Dust, specks, minute scales of interference and pattern: geometries that are not aggrandised into formal ‘bodies of knowledge’, but are different scales of ‘sense-reason’ which also describe ways of knowing, ways of ‘meeting the world’, and notable for their capacity to operationalize the lightness of joy. Small, ephemeral and insignificant detail is envisioned as a plenitude of qualities. Consequently, what we find in this book is a practice that accords with a Spinozistic understanding that joy registers as a fleeting moment of change or differentiation, unlike the urgent directional impulse or repetitive intensity of pursuits of pleasure that modern drives of desire tend towards. Instead, in these durée, potentia is not sublimated, but constitutes a vocabulary of body-atmospherics which express an ontology of processual life.

These life-worlds, umwelts and atmospheric habitations are then rhythmic geometries of what the body can do. Geometric parallelism is shifted into an expressive language in which the resonance between the body and its environment is prioritised, and which enable images of life to pass through. Like Gordon Matta Clark’s ‘energy-form’ drawings from 1964, their ontology is composed of possibility, rather than complete exhibition.

Brünner’s drawing out of life along stepping stones and lines of intuition reminds us that, even though we don’t live in a time of seventeenth-century divine metaphysics of ‘God-as-nature’, it is possible to be reminded that passing conjunctions between the body and twenty-first century urbanism or ‘non-human’ land can be atmospheric sites of joy.

INTRODUCTION 1. SUMMARY

Constructing Atmospheres - test sites for an aesthetics of joy is a book that is informed by a practice-led research project consisting of an exegesis and a series of art works. It is concerned with the exploration of the affective character and the potential of specific sites, and how these are synonymous with the construction of ‘selves’ that emerge in relation to them. The intention of this research is to closely examine the complex interplay between specific environments and myself, through a visual arts-practice. The term ‘atmosphere’ is a principal subject of this exploration and has complex meanings that are discussed and unfolded throughout the book. To test the hypothesis of joy as specified in the philosophical concepts of Baruch Spinoza and carried forward by Gilles Deleuze in particular, the inquiry is centred on the development of art works that bring forth states of joy in relation to environmental circumstances.

The philosophical discussion that is embedded in the activity of ‘manoeuvring atmospheres’ 1 in a theoretical, interdisciplinary framework must of necessity be fragmentary, as it consults thinkers and practitioners from different fields of knowledge. It includes Jacques Rancière’s theories of aesthetics and the scientific concepts of David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake, and the religious thinking of Hinduism and Buddhist traditions. In addition to Spinoza, I have drawn on philosophical concepts from Henri Bergson, and as a consequence on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, well known for their work on Spinoza and Bergson. These thinkers assisted me in challenging the still dominant and mainly materialistic concepts of spatial reality. Investigating the topic from within the visual arts, the work has been informed by the practice of John Cage, and it is sympathetic to the art work of Roman Signer, and, as a result of the research, corresponds with the thinking of Joseph Beuys, specifically with his concept of social sculpture.2 At its heart, this book addresses the production of collective spaces, suggesting that the processes of atmospheric exploration – inevitably involving psychological self-survey – are concrete spatial productions. Using experiential methodologies, it emphasises ‘practical’ spatial intervening’ and centres on visual translations of emotional and psychological ‘affect’ into ‘atmospheres’. I propose that the exploration into atmospheres through visual practices constitutes a refinement of the social collective fabric and may contribute positively to the quality of public space. It aims at empirically verifying and manoeuvring the philosophical concept of an ‘atmospheric reality’, namely that of an interdependently shared collective nature, through explorative experiments. These find expression in performative, art-based drawing, as well as in ordinary daily practices that are equally important. By attuning to a state of being that is invested with joy,3 this book critically examines the ethical aspect of my art practice, which addresses strategies for more sensitive ways of engaging with(in) specific physical environments.4

8 9

The art works and discussions collected here can be located across urban and rural conditions and unfolds in relation to a routine I developed of shifting between the small Australian city of Adelaide and Oratunga, a pastoral property in the Flinders Ranges.

This also enabled me to compare responses to the different atmospheres encountered and produced across different sites. Challenging an habitual belief in the distinct, visible and material boundaries between bodies in practice, the development of art works aimed to provoke significant shifts in perception capable of producing the experience of being-atmospheres, a being which I suggest is synonymous with joy. To represent the construction of joy – as being essentially a non-representable and, in the first instance, an internal activity – by visual means, was and continues to be the prime challenge of my creative research.

As a record of the visual experiments undertaken the writing summarises my related experiential insights. A high state of attention is required to get at what is experienced as atmospherically real,5 and inevitable inconsistencies emerge in the process of writing up the unrepresentable aspects of atmosheres in order to make them somehow available to a reader. Consequently I can only offer a limited depiction of atmospheres.

2. CREATIVE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. How does the experiencing subject resonate with and within a place?

Or, How are affecting and being affected mutually operating between site and self?

2. How does one attain an ‘atmospheric state’ as a precondition to explore the issue of the reciprocal exchange between affecting and being affected? 6 3. How does one navigate as atmosphere within atmospheres; that is, how does one orientate oneself in a world of resonances as distinct from a world of objects? 7 4. How can I ‘follow’ the processes of resonance and can they ever really be ‘represented’ through a visual arts practice?

1

I provide a ‘taste’ of atmospheres in A note on atmospheres, p. 22.

2

How my concept of atmospheres corresponds to Joseph Beuys’ Social Sculpture is discussed in section 5.5.3 Zivile Übungen, p. 208.

3

The same applies for joy as for atmospheres, because they are intrinsically linked to each other. Likewise complex, joy and its conditions are discussed in detail throughout subsequent Chapters, especially in Chapter 3, Climates of joy, p. 87.

4

I inquired into environments located at Oratunga in the Flinders Ranges and in Adelaide. Oratunga is a 75 square kilometre pastoral property in the Flinders Ranges high country of South Australia and also the site of Dr. Virgina Lee’s curatorial practice known as “The Oratunga Project”.

See in particular section 5.2 Oratungas gifts, p. 173.

5

I discuss this state later in this writing as The Spinozist, in Chapter 3, Climates of joy, p. 87.

6

The term ‘atmospheric state’ refers to a series of states of awareness that are discribed in detail in Chapter 3, 3.4 Atmospheric perception: intuition in practice, p. 108.

3. WRITING ATMOSPHERES

My writing reflects the structure of the inquiry as a passage between two concepts of spatial reality examined through arts-practice. As an abstract inquiry I am concerned with a transformation proceeding from ‘identity via subjectivity in process’ towards a free state of existence.8 Practically, however, this movement is fragmentary, complex and confusing, and comprises sub- and parallel movements, backwards and forwards movements, shifts, interruptions, and blind alleys. This confusion, arising from direct inquiry, is reflected in this writing exactly because the writing results from and accompanies the artistic practice.

The present text is written by a native German speaker, who discovered pleasure in collecting new English words, filtering meaning back and forth between languages, again and again, to build up sentences and sufficient sense. Because of my initially un-skilled English I commenced by writing like a blind person, moving forward by tapping along the contours of structures, at times finding myself in peculiar places. I still cannot be completely assured about the preciseness of a sentence or whether it carries additional associations; I lack unlimited access to the English language. Consequently, parts of this book may still appear to be strange, and I politely ask the reader to bear this in mind whilst reading. On top of this I have invented a small number of words, neologisms, retaining (and finding joy in) my own logic of language, between languages. From time to time there is evidence in the writing of this language not being my first language, which potentially has the effect of evoking an atmosphere of a third language - or a coming into ‘view’ of the tone of both languages at once.

4. A BACKGROUND

The emphasis upon open-ended experimentation reflects personal values connected with my insights into the relation between architecture, site and emotional or psychological atmosphere.9 These insights are based on my previous studies and background in the study of architecture and are part of what has led me to move from architecture into visual art practice.10 My architectural studies led me to engage in a sustained enquiry into the invisible and transient factors that influence the individual character or atmosphere of specific architectural and urban spaces. From this point of departure I began to engage deeply with the nature of architectural space itself, including the role played by the human body within space. I discovered entirely different notions of space within the disciplines of visual art, dance, music, philosophy and science. My encounters with such diverse sources have led me to view space as not only developing from ‘restricted coverings’, but as an ‘occurrence’ that emerges from the present moment.11

INTRODUCTION

10 11

Accordingly, after completeing my studies in Architecture, I commenced what I termed a ‘practical exploration’ of the perceived atmospheric characters of specific public spaces, examining how atmospheres might relate to concrete forms, which directed me to further question my professional engagement as an architect.12 I also came to recognise this practical exploration as being an experimental spatial practice 13 connected with contemporary visual arts and correlated with new ideas in art theory and aesthetics.

7

Resonance in physics is explained as a tendency of a system to oscillate with larger amplitudes at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system’s resonant frequencies and occur with an input of energy. At these frequencies, even small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude oscillations, because the system stores vibrational energy. Forced vibration may cause the escalation of some frequencies causing the system to collapse. Resonances occur when a system is able to store and easily transfer energy. Niklas Luhman introduced this term in his soziologische Systemtheorie.

8

Identity, understood as the personal characteristics or personality of somebody. In consequence ‘subjectivity’, that is linked with identity and understood as the personal attitude of conceiving the world, undergoes a modification, turning towards a temporal, perhaps even random, perspective. I will expand on the term ‘identity’ in relation to freedom in Chapter 2, Spinozas geometry, p. 69.

9

See Glossary, p. 224.

10

I studied architecture with Prof. Hans Hollein at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Practicing as a designing architect for several offices, whilst studying and thereafter, I got more insight into the daily challenges of this profession. It took not long to be disenchanted by the limited amount of time, the architects I worked for could economically afford to allocate to the design-process, I realised how difficult it is to retain a visionary position, if one wants to build. Meanwhile it is obvious that it is the visionary position that demands the extra effort, regradless of the kind of discipline one is involved in.

11

Franz Xaver Baier, Raum: Prolegomena zu einer Architektur des gelebten Raums, ed. Posthofen Christian, Vol. 2 (Köln: Verlag Walter König, 1996). Baier’s book differentiates 44 types of spaces, e.g. erratic, panic, stretched, to name a few, all referring to space as lived medium.

12

During my studies in architecture I realised that the visual appearance of an architectural space and its subjective felt qualities do not necessarily correspond to each other, which I summarized in my final project by designing a residence for, and partly with, the blind musician Otto Lechner. The final year project only touched upon something, I felt, worth exploring more deeply, because ‘atmospheres’ still appeared to be a phenomenon I neither understood nor felt competent in having developed suitable tools for its creation. Hence, right after my Masters I started to invest in an experimental exploration of the atmospheres at the Viennese railway station and the St Stephen’s cathedral as opposing ‘atmospheres’. I conducted this research project named moving space surprises, which was funded by the Austrian government, over nine month.

13

From 2002 onwards, until I commenced my PhD in 2007, I followed this practical exploration of atmospheres by four further research projects, cosmetHic space refinements, Strategies to investigate atmosphere, the Lizards travel-approaching nomadic space, Damen in Körpern, all of which were funded by the Austrian government. Emphasising different aspects, they dealt with locating, visualising, and mapping atmospheres of various specific public places, including the Docklands in Melbourne, diverse locations in Melbourne City, urban areas and squares in Vienna City, such as Maria am Gestaade, or the Donaukanal, the Viennese woods and urban outskirts like the Platte at the Danube river, and landscapes such as Brachina Gorge, in the Flinders Ranges, Lake Mungo, and Broome.

The provisional conclusions I reached were: 1. By demonstrating our ethics and values, the spatial environments we create also express the kinds of norms and assumptions that underlie collective social behaviour and its cultural expressions; and 2. A purely materialistic understanding of space may lead to an emotional distancing from the environment, contributing to the social and ecological problems that currently prevail on a global scale; and finally 3. the central question “how do atmospheres relate to concrete forms?” emerged.

Teilhard de Chardin defines the real 14 as a particular type of universal synthesis. He speaks of “spirit – matter” as the physical molecular structure of the universe and points out that pure spirituality is as inconceivable as pure materiality. He uses “Noosphere”, the Greek term for spirit, for a stage of spiritual and intellectual development wherein humanity would be able to conceive of being one spirit. He stresses that the risk of a new point of view is a risk that must be taken, and argues that the inability to experience the universal whole originates in our insistence on narrow concepts of individuality.15 On the basis of such speculations, I suggest that a rethinking of the relationship between the subjective ‘I’ 16 and the collective conscious flow of humanity is a precondition for being able to realise the possibility of joy, by which I mean all that pertains to the positive enhancement of life affirming values, within individual life – and further, may have a lot to do with the quality of the environment within which s/he exists and vice versa. The Worldwatch Institute states that:

The consumer culture has spread around the world, with more than two billion people now considered to be part of the global consumer class. This cultural system encourages people to define their happiness and success through how much they consume. But on a finite planet, this system is maladaptive and threatens to cause significant disruptions to Earth’s climate and ecosystems, and subsequently to human civilization.

If we do not shift to a new cultural norm in the coming decades, achieving a sustainable society will remain out of reach.17 I propose, in accordance with the Worldwatch Institute’s view, that to liberate happiness from its commercial value and retrieve joy within being may lead to more creative and satisfactory ways of living. Indeed, I suspect that to prioritise joy (without and because of reason) over other aims may in fact contribute to the development of a more ethically and ecologically sustainable society.18 In the course of the research project that has led to this book my awareness of the relations between my own perception of a circumstance and the very circumstance itself can become uncomfortably clear. Theoretically aware of the fact that importune circumstances are not only imposed, but erroneously co-produced, the practical exploration of atmospheres has ‘peu à peu’ presented me with hidden relations between ‘my systems’ and a supposedly ‘larger system’.19

INTRODUCTION

12 13

I have very clearly come to experience that I, myself, at times do resonate with the atmospheres that treat life as a commodity rather than a gift, atmospheres that are not at all conducive to joy. Considering that we, as a collective, presently experience what Fritjof Capra describes as a time of “deep systemic change” 20 it is reasonable to imagine that problems and insights resulting from an experiment that addresses this very question have collective relevance.21 This investigation into the creation of atmospheres is aimed at contributing to the knowledge of creative ways of thinking and being through the development of works of art whose nature is atmospheric, that is, processual and not always visible.22 Given that we cannot escape “planetary issues” 23, this contribution aims to bridge what I perceive to be a gap between everyday experience, with its assumptions and limits and rationales, and a radical knowledge leading to a re-configuration of possibilities for creative intervention within unfolding events, within already existing places and situations.

14

I use the term ‘the real’ as the conjectured state of truth and things as they exist, and ‘reality as a facet thereof, that is, an experience of the real’.

15

David Grummett, Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity, and Cosmos (Paris: Peeters Publisher, 2005), p. 35.

16

I refer to I as a form of continuously varying ‘sphere of human thought and feeling’.

17

Worldwatch Institute’s Transforming Cultures project turns a critical eye onto how we can shift today’s consumer culture to a culture of sustainability.

Worldwatch Institute Vision for a Sustainable World, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6096 (accessed 22nd August 2009).

18

Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge: MIT press, 1999).

19

These relations are looked at in greater detail in section 4.3 Public intensities: local automata, p. 150.

20

Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections (London: Flamingo, 2003), p. 181.

21

The atmospheric researcher sees him/herself as part of the circumstance, and doesn’t seek to ‘solve’ problems outside him/herself. Rather s/he experiments with this range of phenomena related to an emotionally troublesome state as an inherent part of herself and, as long as it is necessary, to keep manoeuvreing unpleasant atmospheres into joyful ones.

22

I discuss this further in Chapter 5, Aesthetics of joy, p. 171.

23

Stengers, “Cosmopolitical proposal”, p. 995.

5. A NOTE ON ATMOSPHERES

I have taken on the conventional definition of atmosphere and then crafted other uses and definitions of the term as my practice develops. The following notes, which also compose a textual atmosphere, at times might appear contradictory, but are meant to serve as an invitation into the terrain. I encourage the reader to consider the terms introduced here as ingredients which, I hope, will evoke an atmospheric appetite. The statements made here are unfolded and discussed throughout the writing. As I will refer back to both the glossary and these notes repeatedly, their specific meanings will become obvious and familiar throughout the course of the book.1 Atmospheres live. They are vibrating realities.2 Atmospheric concord constitutes an animate medium that contains, sustains and pervades everything. Atmospheres pulsate through everything and connect everything/anything existing in unending movements; they enjoy affecting each other and can compose opulent assemblages.

Physical (animal, mineral, vegetal, ethereal, human, angelic, demonic...) bodies experience atmospheres differently, within different layers of intensities. We cannot help feeling  3 them, yet their materiality is only fleetingly graspable. Depending on the refinement of our senses, they are unnoticed, or they are felt, seen, heard, tasted, smelt, intuited, suspected, anticipated. Atmospheres do not belong to any body and are absorbed and transformed through individual bodies.

Atmospheres oscillate. Their complex rhythms evolve into specific structures, which correlate with what we identify as their temperaments.4 More or less stable, an atmosphere maintains her/his coherency in relation to other frequencies. Thus atmospheres express varying behaviours. This potential to vary makes an atmosphere more or less evident, more or less material, more or less dimensional, more or less influential, more or less persistent. An atmosphere’s autonomy is paradoxical; it implicates selfdetermination to the benefit of the sum total of all atmospheres.5 An atmosphere undergoes diverse cycles of appearance that directly depend on its levels of vibration. Floating cluster-like, it constantly adopts different tempos, shapes, dimensions, densities, modulating its atmospheric nuances. Nevertheless, it can also maintain a major structure. Atmospheres go on living through transforming each other. Atmospheres can be very forceful and have diverse effects, and can easily support or harm each other.

14 15

Atmospheres are swift. They move much faster than physical bodies and adopt many speeds coevally, on rare occasions synchronously. Speeds define their materiality.

Atmospheres can accelerate material things in such a way that they lose coherence, becoming atmospheres themselves. Atmospheres orbit freely. They have indefinite lengths of time, and irregularly appear and vanish. Sometimes they only flash, yet this does not indicate that they dissolve. They might just have shifted back into their orbit again, for a very long time travelling vast distances before they return and flash once more.

Mighty atmospheres can endure. Induced by shock, they release large numbers of bodies, which dramatically increase in vo lume. Once launched, they proceed along specific trajectories, according to their initial relation of forces and it is unpredictable when they will lose balance or become entangled. It can happen that individuals come into alignment with a mighty atmosphere’s orbital axis for a while. This means that it is certain that they will encounter these atmospheres again and again, as long as they maintain this position, whereas other individuals might never come across them.

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“The ‘atmosphere’ that envelops the ball we inhabit is the only cosmic sphere spoken of by the Ancients that has preserved as certain meaning for the moderns. The term (literally ‘fog ball’) designates its gaseous layer that envelopes solid earth and that makes us all ‘students of the air’, to borrow from Johann Gottfried Herder’s beautiful expression.” Peter Sloterdijk, “Foreword to the Theory of Spheres,“ in Cosmograms, eds. Melik Ohanian und Jean-Christophe Royoux (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2005), p. 225.

2

In Buddhist tradition, air, or ‘vayo dhatu’, is one of the four basic elements and is assigned to vibration or movement. The solid element is called ‘pathavi-dhatu’, the fluid element ‘apo-dhatu’, the heating element ‘tejo-dhatu’. Nyanaponika, Geisttraining durch Achtsamkeit (Herrnschrot: Beyerlein & Steinschulte, 1969), p. 193.

Similarly, in Vedanta philosophy the “five vital functions of the ‘Self’” are referred to as “vayus” or winds and they belong to the subtle and not to the corporeal state of being.

Rène Guènon, Man and his Becoming According to Vedanta, trans. Richard C. Nicholson (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2004), p. 69.

3

By feel I mean, a multilayered sensation [Empfindung in German] of a vibration combined with particular thoughts. To feel is everybody’s capacity and essential source of knowledge. Later on I explain these connections in detail, see Chapter 2, Spinoza’s geometry, p. 69.

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As soon as we unconsciously resonate with - and thereby adopt - an atmosphere, it is likely that we experience it as our own temperament. “In a time when popularity of genetic explanation for social behaviour is increasing, the transmission of affect is a conceptual oddity. If transmission takes places and has effects on behaviour, it is not the genes that determine social life; it is socially induced affect that changes our biology. The transmission of affect is not understood or studied because of the distance between the concept of transmission and the reigning modes of biological explanation. No one really knows how it happens, which may explain the reluctance to acknowledge its existence.”

Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 1.

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To seriously implement atmospheric existing, which is not easily attained and must not be confused with conformity, at times requires momentarily pretending to autonomy, so as to uphold joy.

This is explicated especially in Chapter 4, Constructing atmospheres, p. 121.

Atmospheres interfere. Frequent and systematic interference of atmospheres can build up peripheries (or potential ego-horizons).6 It is there on the periphery that atmospheres locate a potential physical body and start to inhabit it. Atmospheres occupy physical bodies and in turn physical bodies willingly host particular constellations of atmospheres to sustain themselves. In other words, human physical bodies are atmospheres themselves; they are merely different states of atmospheres with regard to materiality and visibility.

Atmospheres and involved bodies identify with each other, which means they actually and vibrantly connect with each other by adopting the same rhythms, the same speeds.

This process sets in motion an exchange of materials and the collaboration of structural orders. By this process atmospheres (and bodies) transform each other through modulating each others’ frequencies.7 Bodies (atmospheres) tending to identify with atmospheres (bodies) in a way that they claim each other as exclusive properties, maintain a continuous transfer of atmospheric materials that become substantial, and physically apparent (visible). On the other hand, if the very same identification is just for a brief moment, its transformative effect is marginal. Accordingly, a physical human body’s physicality can vary; the less properties a body claims, the more atmospheric his/her/its materiality becomes – a passage rather than a specificity.

Atmospheres intuit. Atmospheres, which have subjective duration as they span a moment, are self-conscious. They are atmospheres as they utilize the capacity to create a non-spatial distance. This means that the atmosphere notices its invisible organizing structure while it is vibrating, so producing the very same structure.

Slowing down 8 indicates that an atmosphere is entering into its own distance, becoming alert. It tunes into its own rhythms and speeds and in doing so it subjectively enlarges its structure, which as a consequence becomes visible to the atmosphere. These gradual processes have no obvious beginnings or endings. Mostly, atmospheres proceed and mingle and self-resonate on subconscious and pre-subjective levels.

INTRODUCTION

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Atmospheres are not at all chaotic, but rather have strong principles. The distancing of an atmosphere to its own movements is a skill 9 that enables insight and with it the ability to (sometimes immediately) identify differences. Slight drifting of an atmosphere’s own structure indicates the presence of other influential atmospheres. Whether the participating atmospheres compose new structures (quality or temper or behaviour) or refuse a new structuration is a matter of agreement.

Joyful resonating means to resonate collectively and advantageously 10 and not to the profit of one, or worse still, to the debilitating detriment of all participating atmospheres.

Atmospheres can be capsized, which means that they are shifted into another state by blending a sequence of syncopates 11 into the composition. This might happen suddenly, without warning. Human bodies becoming atmospheres are able – due to skilful drifting of all rhythms and speeds, eventually levelling to the structure of the atmospheric concord – to become immaterial (emotionally transparent), and therefore independent from circumstances of the material setting they are positioned – within.12

6

This relates to Bergson’s definition of time explained in detail on p. 58; and it serves as a base for the tactic of Frequenting boundaries: inconvenience, p. 133.

7

See further details, section 4.3.3 Atmospheric trade, p. 154.

8

See also section 4.1.4 Moving: speedup, p. 130.

9

I will return to this skill later as it is closely related to the terms ‘nomadic’ and ‘Spinozist’.

10

Sustaining atmospheric joy always leads to ‘favourable’ outcomes for all.

11

Syncopates are unexpected beats in musical terminology.

12

This pertains to the issues of intuition as discussed in section 3.3 Becoming imperceptible: atmospheres intuit, see p. 102.

Zhuangzi and A.C. Graham Chaung-tzu: The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001), p. 91.

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PRÉLUDE

A body sits in the dunes. As its weight shifts slightly to the left the sand moves to accommodate the body’s new position. The fine-grained line that contrasts the warm ground with the ocean breeze changes its contours and brings to my mind another shape of this body. The breeze and its whistling enter the ear downwind, mingling with the steady sounds of the sea as last-night’s dream rushes in. Before it can settle and spread worry, the fragment falls apart with the passing of a shrill sound escorted by a flock of white frenzied seagulls. In the meantime the sky silently holds its expansive blue.

Dwelling on the nuances of sandy colours, my pupils, varying in diameter, incorporate silvery and brownish pinks and pale yellows and off-whites that once belonged to shells and empty overturned crabs. Still arriving at where the body is, I am waiting for an impulse that makes the body start doing some(art)thing.

All of a sudden my knee plus an idea – responding to sounds transported with the wind from the South – shift North, taking with them the rest of my body for some awkward movements, except for the eyes which are now resting on a cloud until they get sidetracked by a mute pelican’s shadow that gently glides over the sand. Charmed by the bird’s shadow tracing the body swings and sways gathering all its weight down into (the vast pores) of my soles. Abruptly the left leg, colliding with a keen marine scent, rushes to a leap – a favourable moment for other body-parts to momentarily leave the ground as well, so as to release all this excitement at once. Finding myself in the rhythms of the breathing body together with its shape carved into the warm sand, I am lying on my back for a while gazing upward into the sky. Then I am blending into the steady circles of a soaring eagle or hawk high up in the air.

Readily assimilating the coastal body, bodies attached to me are balancing, falling, expanding, thinning, twisting, reappearing and resting in the dunes whilst my arms and legs are rising and dropping unexpectedly synchronous with the waves of the ocean, then with a long-legged insect and some swaying shrubs. I am watching the shapes that continue to escape themselves as they slide over the rippled terrain, drawing my body’s erratic movements along. Without authorization fingers are picking up milky plants and arranging them by turns in sand and hair. Then they encounter a bottle shaped structure, lined with dried grasses and feathers, populated by ants whilst certain distant toes exchange joy with hairy Spinifex. Along with other living things my voice is uttering tiny bodies – all at once, whirling as a vibration of a place. The whole experience is a drawing – without purpose.

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Margit Brünner holds a PhD in Visual Arts and undertakes her artistic research practice between Vienna, Austria and Adelaide Australia. Working through performative intervention, video and drawing her work investigates the spatiality of affective relations. Margit studied and undertook her Masters degree project in architecture with Hans Hollein, at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She has received several grants from the Austrian Federal Chancellery and was awarded with a MF & MH Joyner Fine Arts scholarship. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; the Architectural Biennale Venice; AEDES Gallery in Berlin; the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; and the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, amongst other places. Currently she holds a visiting research position at the University of Adelaide.

Constructing Atmospheres

Constructing Atmospheres is concerned with subjective perceptions and affections and the co-production of collective spatial realities. The book speculates upon the production of joy as a worthwhile and effective collective practice applied toward the refinement of shared spaces.

The author suggests that atmospheres precede matter, including built environments.

As a report on the artistic labour of bringing forth joyful affects, the book puts to the test Spinoza’s fundamental conception of substance as a self-creating universal principle – philosophical theory is productively entangled with concrete spatial experimentation.

Margit Brünner

art architecture design research

Constructing Atmospheres Test-Sites for an Aesthetics of Joy

“This is a really wonderful book. Backing up her theory of an aesthetics of joy with Spinoza, Bergson, and Deleuze, Margit’s very strength is a kind of pragmatic phenomenology. By offering insights into her own practice, ways of creating and experiencing atmospheres is suggested to the reader, who as a result is obviously moved.“ Gernot Böhme, Director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy; Professor for Philosophy, TU Darmstadt

ISBN 978-3-88778-462-1

Margit Brünner

AADR publishes innovative artistic, creative and historical research in art, architecture, design and related fields. www.aadr.info