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Sloterdijk diagnoses the contemporary age as an \u201catmospheric\u201d one, arguing that since the first use of chemical warfare, \u201catmo-terrorism\u201d has replaced other forms of conflict\u2014in this formulation, an environment, rather than an individual body, is attacked. \u201cAtmosphere,\u201d for Sloterdijk, is defined in this sense as a material, a surrounding quality that is literally breathed and felt against skin. Spaces where air quality is not as obviously manipulated are, in Sloterdijk\u2019s view, still \u201catmospheric.\u201d He writes that air-conditioned apartments and sports stadiums\u2014in which audiences are surrounded by the palpable energy of collective participation\u2014are both spheres defined by ambient sensory experience that is always felt but rarely consciously interpreted. Whether theorized or not, \u201catmosphere\u201d is omnipresent in casual speech and communicative enough that, as B\u00f6hme notes, it can be successfully invoked to describe a litany of aesthetic experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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As a result, the term, often used synonymously with \u201caura\u201d or \u201cambience,\u201d is recurrent in discourse about art, though there is a certain vagueness clouding the concept itself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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I suggest that there is a generative commonality in the ways that people talk about this experiential, surrounding quality of aesthetics. Various words are used to conjure this \u201cthing\u201d that exists or occurs in the ambient space between viewer and artwork; \u201caura\u201d and \u201catmosphere\u201d certainly appear throughout the pages of Esse<\/em>, along with \u201cfeeling\u201d and \u201cmood\u201d (humeur<\/em>), but all seem to point toward something very similar\u2014a quality beyond materiality that is nonetheless felt, and an idea beyond language that nonetheless communicates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to suggest that this concept and its multiple names are necessarily composite and multilayered, I take cues from the emerging interdisciplinary study of \u201catmosphere.\u201d The field is, at its core, hybrid, informed by overlapping insights drawn from affect theory, geography, and phenomenology. References to aura and atmosphere in the pages of Esse<\/em> are similarly diverse in meaning and conceptual justification. Like the theorists of this budding field, I find meaning at the points of intersection, drawing in disparate connections to make sense of a disparate concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Being In<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nB\u00f6hme, perhaps the best-known theorist of atmosphere, has located the concept somewhere between the subjective experience of environments by those in them and observable states of physical places.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Gernot B\u00f6hme, Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces<\/em>,ed. and trans. A. Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).<\/span> More recently, other prominent theorists have brought in additional connections to define atmospheres, drawing from the interaction of things such as the colour and brightness of light or the strength and sources of scent, as well as temperature, moisture level, ambient noise, and expected behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tasked with finding art that toys with atmosphere, it might be most obvious to turn first, then, to installation work that alters the physical qualities\u2014the observable, measurable states\u2014of a room. In her review of Gregor Schneider\u2019s installation S\u00fc\u00dfer duft<\/em> in Esse 66: Disappearance<\/em>, which is written almost like a travel narrative, H\u00e9lo\u00efse Lauraire is attentive predominantly to qualities of the air as she narrates her progression through the piece. S\u00fc\u00dfer duft<\/em>, as Lauraire describes it, consists of a labyrinth of successive chambers meant to be traversed alone. Schneider has choreographed a sequence in which viewers (perhaps, more accurately, participants), navigate their way from corridor to door to antechamber to open gallery space, encountering, at each new spatial threshold, a disorienting sensory alteration. In one space, a room with a low ceiling is \u201cdimly lit by an orange lamp\u201d; in another, the door locks behind those who enter, who find themselves trapped beneath \u201cintense and overwhelming light\u201d; and in the space immediately succeeding that, the temperature rises as the light disappears, plunging the room into complete blackness. Throughout the exhibit, an overwhelmingly \u201csweet and acrid smell\u201d presses in upon the viewer: \u201cIt fills our lungs and impregnates our nostrils,\u201d writes Lauraire\u2014\u201cinsufferable, it magnifies the contrasts that saturate our senses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thing produced by Su\u00dfer duft <\/em>could be called an \u201cinduced atmosphere,\u201d a choreographed experience fully designed by its artist, in which the participant is expected to progress through the series of spaces, feeling imposed sensations in each one. A parallel idea can be found in architecture: a designer might attempt to enforce the \u201cfeeling\u201d of a space by controlling how and where light enters or which spaces feel vast and which feel cocooning, as well as engineering the air itself through cooling, heating, or purifying. Architect Mark Wigley, writing about the built environment, points to atmosphere as both d\u00e9cor and structure, which together constitute a \u201cswirling climate of intangible effects\u201d formed by the complex interplay of \u201csound, light, heat, smell and moisture.\u201d^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Mark Wigley, \u201cThe Architecture of Atmosphere,\u201d Constructing Atmospheres:<\/em> Daidalos <\/em>68 (1998): 18.<\/span> He writes that buildings, in essence, are \u201ca kind of device for producing a particular atmosphere within another one.\u201d^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Ibid., 24.<\/span> B\u00f6hme similarly suggests that structural space can be designed to invoke a certain \u201catmosphere,\u201d but that this is rarely, if ever, a straightforward process: atmosphere is capricious, he argues, and so it tends to elude intention as parts of it are composed of the unplanned palimpsest of history, use, and associations.^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - B\u00f6hme, Atmospheric Architectures<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
How Art Feels<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
It is not necessary for installation art to directly alter scent or temperature to conjure the descriptor \u201catmospheric.\u201d Think, for example, of how the term \u201catmospheric perspective\u201d is commonly used by historians studying landscape paintings to describe artists\u2019 strategy of summoning a sense of distance in parts of a canvas through changes in saturation and value. This method also, often, imparts something further on a painting: a scene of a town awash in a hazy warm light might take on an additional sense of pleasant nostalgia, produced entirely by the manipulation of colour and tone. This use of \u201catmosphere,\u201d as a quality of \u201cmood\u201d or \u201cvibe,\u201d is a common one in casual conversation; a speaker might describe the atmosphere of a place as hostile and paranoid, or relaxed and easy. The atmosphere of a painting or sculpture is, certainly, formed of a quality different from the scent or temperature of installation art, as the viewer does not literally breathe in its air. Something, however, ties the ideas together\u2014even a piece of \u201cinduced\u201d installation art, beyond the corporeal reaction of shivering, or sweating, or disgust, conjures a certain feeling\u2014an emotion that can also be evoked by other artistic interventions. Perhaps the \u201catmosphere\u201d of art is most accurately distinguished by its affective capacity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Caterina Albano, writing in Esse 62: Fear II<\/em>, uses the term \u201catmosphere\u201d to explore this immaterial affective quality, which she argues is conjured through the medium of film. The essay is structured around the idea of the \u201cuncanny,\u201d and Albano writes about depictions of the domestic that belie a sense of threatening anxiety. Central to this thesis is Freud\u2019s idea of the das Unheimliche<\/em> (put simply, the familiar made strange, or the unfamiliar that is eerily recognizable), and Freud\u2019s classification of the category as a \u201cquality of feeling\u201d is also summoned\u2014in this essay, this quality becomes an aspect of aesthetic \u201csensibility.\u201d The artworks in Albano\u2019s text are unsettling, and function on the level that they affect the viewer psychologically; the films, in Albano\u2019s terms, \u201c\u2018stick\u2019 through their disturbing presence.\u201d In this essay, however, the term \u201catmosphere\u201d is used only once. It is \u201cthe apparent ordinariness of the exterior\u201d of the domestic facades that appear in Gregor Schneider\u2019s two-channel film Die Familie Schneider<\/em> (2004) that \u201c[disguise] a sinister atmosphere.\u201d Schneider\u2019s manipulation of atmosphere is, this time, distinctly emotional: the pieces prompt the viewer to feel a sense of discomfort, even fear, by raising something that is able to be present without being explicitly represented. To attend to its specific use in the text, however, atmosphere is only used when it is an element that has been, as Albano terms it, \u201cdisguised.\u201d It is not just a \u201cmood\u201d but an idea that lingers in the background, hidden but omnipresent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Atmospheres beyond Control<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe fact that atmosphere can be invoked in visual art without alteration of the sensorial qualities of viewers\u2019 surroundings makes clear that it can be generated by a non-physical communication between artist and audience. In this interaction, an artist summons a mood or \u201cvibe,\u201d such as the uncanny one drawn out by Schneider, and the viewer, taken in by enveloping feeling of the piece, somehow knows to feel that emotion. There is, then, a social dimension to atmosphere, one distinguished by an established interpersonal connection. This helps to explain why colloquial mentions of the term describe a state that incorporates an entire space and its inhabitants. For example, geographer Ben Anderson, writing on historical uses of \u201catmosphere,\u201d points to an 1856 speech made by Karl Marx at the anniversary of the People\u2019s Paper<\/em>. Here, Marx refers to a \u201crevolutionary atmosphere\u201d among his listeners, a \u201c20,000-pound force\u201d that is \u201cenveloping and pressing\u201d European society \u201cfrom all sides.\u201d^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Ben Anderson, \u201cAffective Atmospheres,\u201d Emotion, Space and Society <\/em>2 (2009): 77.<\/span> This instance makes clear that, at least in popular usage, an atmosphere is not just palpable and perceptible at an individual level, but also communally experienced and interpersonally transmitted, even when it is not a measurable condition of the temperature or air pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Patrice Loubier\u2019s discussion of \u201ccelebration\u201d in Esse 67: Killjoy <\/em>is an engagement with this collective dimension of atmosphere; Loubier, writing in French, uses the term \u201cambiance<\/em>\u201d to describe the state that emerges naturally from a shared experience, felt simultaneously by members of a gathered group. The fact that Bernard Sch\u00fctze, in his translation into English, uses \u201catmosphere\u201d as a direct parallel demonstrates that the two terms are often treated as effectively synonymous. Elsewhere in the essay, \u201cthe festive\u201d is defined as \u201cbehaviour, mood, or atmosphere,\u201d and is manifest in \u201cconvivial and enthusiastic atmospheres.\u201d Loubier works from an essentially atmospheric definition of \u201cthe festive\u201d as \u201ccollective ritualized transport.\u201d Vital here for \u201catmosphere\u201d or \u201cambiance<\/em>\u201d is this action of transportation: the thing that bridges the divide between an experience that is or is not celebratory is a movement from individual, disparate states into a single, shared condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Importantly, in Loubier\u2019s essay, atmosphere is given a distinct agency. The festive need not be structured, Loubier stresses, but occurs anytime a \u201cjoyous atmosphere\u201d emerges. It is, indeed, \u201cso much more \u2018transporting\u2019 and authentic\u201d when \u201cit emerges in circumstances where it is neither foreseen nor sought after.\u201d Beyond the intention of any one participant, an atmosphere can shift in tone, affecting everyone it involves. It can also linger in the aftermath of an event\u2014Loubier speaks of an \u201cend of party\u201d atmosphere evoked by an installation consisting of the scattered refuse left behind after an event, and a melancholic, \u201c\u2018no future\u2019 atmosphere\u201d wherein echoes of a party\u2014its disco-ball lighting and wired microphones\u2014change in meaning and feeling with the recent departure of its partygoers. Loubier also speaks of a \u201ctrash atmosphere\u201d that arises from collective caricature and mockery: he casts the 2008 performance Le Carnaval<\/em>, presented by the collective Les Fermi\u00e8res Obs\u00e9d\u00e9es, as an \u201cattack on celebration,\u201d though he argues that \u201ccelebration\u201d nonetheless survived the performers\u2019 \u201cassault\u201d on it, materialized in the collective amusement that arose despite their disdain for the traditional customs of processions. Effectively, in the performance events that Loubier describes, atmosphere is not imposed by an authorial artistic voice but erupts spontaneously from assemblages of people. It also exists without human presence: elements of it will linger even after celebrators no longer exercise an active role in creating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The idea at the centre of atmosphere, which lies in the commonalities between overlapping uses of the term, remains nebulous. There is still no single definition of atmosphere that captures all of its attendant ideas and associations, but the concept\u2019s shifting vagueness, like the haziness of an \u201catmospheric\u201d landscape painting, is central to its function.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Discussions of atmosphere continue to carry meanings that vary from person to person and space to space, but nonetheless there is a cohesive, universally experienced \u201csomething\u201d that sits slightly beyond descriptive definitions, speaking between people and, more importantly, being felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As artists increasingly turn their gaze toward the disastrous effects of impending climate catastrophe, atmosphere in art writing picks up additional meanings and associations related to environmental changes in the layer of matter that envelops this planet. The indeterminacy of the concept is useful here, in that it is able to hold these multitudinous meanings, shifting between the political and the emotive and communicating a complex interplay that includes air quality, affective emotion, and collective experience; an environmental usage might carry with it both the literal effects in temperature and weather occurrences brought on by these changes and a communal feeling of anxiety and increasing urgency. The definition of atmosphere will always evade conclusiveness, but I suggest that it is precisely for its indeterminacy that its essential ambiguity should be preserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Links to the articles cited: Patrick Poulin<\/a> H\u00e9lo\u00efse Lauraire<\/a> Caterina Albano<\/a> Patrice Loubier<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
Gregor Schneider, Les Fermi\u00e8res Obs\u00e9d\u00e9es, Stephanie Weber<\/div>\n
Gregor Schneider, Les Fermi\u00e8res Obs\u00e9d\u00e9es, Stephanie Weber<\/div>\n
Gregor Schneider, Les Fermi\u00e8res Obs\u00e9d\u00e9es, Stephanie Weber<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":241253,"template":"","categories":[7063,1398],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[6240],"artistes":[4009,4632],"thematiques":[],"type_residence-numerique":[],"class_list":["post-253229","residence-numerique","type-residence-numerique","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-residency","category-acces-libre-en","auteurs-stephanie-weber-en","artistes-gregor-schneider-en","artistes-les-fermieres-obsedees-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique\/253229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/residence-numerique"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=253229"},{"taxonomy":"type_residence-numerique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_residence-numerique?post=253229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}