CONSTRUCTING
ATMOSPHERES
TEST SITES FOR AN
AESTHETICS OF JOY by Margit Brünner
She writes
about:
CONCEPTS OF REALITY | ATMOSHERES |
BECOMING | HABITAT. SPINOZA’S GEOETRY |
WHAT IS THE BODY | AFFECTING AND BEING AFFECTED | DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE AND TACTICS
OF JOY. CLIMATES OF JOY | CREATING
ATMOSHERES | EXPRESSIVENESS AND BODIES MOVING MAKING ATMOSPHERES. ATMOSPHERIC
PERCEPTION | NUANCES AND INTUITION | DRIFT | AND TURBULANCE AND SABOTAGE.
This book
deals with my research into atmospheres and the spatial nature of joy. From a decade of investigations into how
places condition emotional responses keeps
evolving as an
inquiry in an ever-transforming subject. she gives her account of her
arts-practice and
uses this as a theoretical framework for the production of a joyful
consequence. Most of her research into
atmospheres has been done through the ‘production of joyful consequences”.
Before
becoming a book, Constructing Atmospheres – Test-sites for an Aesthetics of
Joy, was a PhD thesis entitled, Becoming Joy: Experimental Constructions
of Atmospheres,
Her message:
“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”.
“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’. 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
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.
Her
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..
Spinozistic
understanding that joy registers as a fleeting moment of
change or
dierentiation, 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.
Small,
ephemeral and insignificant detail such as dust, specks
She
appreciates Spinozistic understanding that joy registers as a fleeting moment
of change or differentiation. Unlike the urgent repetitive impulse of intense
pursuits of pleasure that modern drives us to and where mass culture and
twenty-first century urbanism or ‘non-human’ land leads us towards. Instead, in
these durée, potentia is not sublimated, but constitutes a vocabulary of
body-atmospherics which express an ontology of processual life.
How do
specific chosen site relate to the self? How do these site construct the self?
How do they interplay with site and environment, through visual art practice?
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…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 p13
I think: Her
hypothesis is that joy is the centre of to bring forth relationships to
environmental circumstances? Her work is
a passage between two concepts of spatial reality examined through
arts-practice.
WRITING
ATMOSPHERES
She
has invented a small number of words, neologisms, retaining (and finding joy
in) her 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.
This book
addresses the production of collective spaces suggesting that the
processes of
atmospheric exploration are concrete spatial productions. She has always
engaged in a sustained enquiry into the invisible and transient factors that
influence the individual character or atmosphere of specific architectural and
urban spaces. She believes to
view space is an ‘occurrence’ that emerges from the present moment. Examining how atmospheres might relate to
concrete forms
Glossary:
ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITIONS-
‘PEU À PEU’ – p13 means little by little.in french
‘PRACTICAL’ SPATIAL INTERVENING’- addressing strategies for more sensitive ways of
engaging with(in) specific physical environments.
ATMOSPHERE-
MANOEUVRING ATMOSPHERES’ – by consulting thinkers and
practitioners from different fields of knowledge to challenge concepts of
spatial reality, to investigate it through visual art, consepts of social
sculpture,
POETIC TRAVELS,
PERFORMATIVE WANDERINGS,
NON-TELEOLOGICAL EPISODES,
EVENT-DRAWINGS - visual translations of emotional
and psychological ‘affect’ into ‘atmospheres’.
‘MINOR GEOMETRIES’ - understood to be composed of the natural rhythms and
speeds of change that, for Brünner, constitute worlds of atmospheric
inhabitation.
DURÉE, POTENTIAL – duration of the potential line
breaks through the long term and structure of history.
UMWELTS AND ATMOSPHERIC HABITATIONS
- rare rhythmic geometries
of what the
body can do?
UMWELTS: German for environments. UMWELTEN
means the world as it is experienced by a particular organism
TEST SITES- could be the marquee, salon test
sites?
SOCIAL COLLECTIVE FABRIC – is what humans contribute
positively to the quality of public space.
ATMOSPHERIC REALITY’- interdependently shared
collective nature, through explorative experiments. expression in performative, art-based
drawing, as well as in ordinary daily practices that are equally important. Human investment into joy.
JOY – an internal activity.
THE SPINOZIST- a fleeting moment of change or
differentiation.
OPEN-ENDED EXPERIMENTATION – are her continual insights into
the relation between architecture, site and emotional or psychological
atmosphere
QUESTIONS for her research
(may be good inspiration for salon questions?):
1. How does the
experiencing subject resonate with and within a place? She provides a ‘taste’ of atmospheres
on p22
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?
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?
4. How can I
‘follow’ the processes of resonance and can they ever really
be
‘represented’ through a visual arts practice?
