A stroll on the boulevard
How does a territory become tactile? What’s in the air of the times? Can you feel the oncoming rain? Or is it the oncoming civil war?
Things arrive in the company of others. Sensations locate you in a situation. Attunement to an atmosphere makes or breaks a world.
When we speak of global ecological change we often refer to objective scientific facts, such as quantities of identifiable substances measured over time. In this session we’ll start talking about how to produce shareable subjective situations, commonly known as atmospheres. These psycho-social realities are elusive and evanescent, dissolving and recombining over time; yet in their very dynamism, they form the basis of common worlds. Activities, gestures, sounds, shapes, colors, as well as poetic speech and narrative can influence the contents and the very forms of perception. In this approach, artistic composition does not produce an object, an arty fact. What it does, instead, is provide the conditions of emergence for a collective subjectivity, a compossibility alive to a shareable world.
Two texts, proposed by participants at the last session, provide ideal starting points. The first is by Kathleen Stewart: “Atmospheric Attunement.” It’s not exactly a theoretical discourse, but instead a stylistic exercise that attempts in several different ways to describe how “things arrive in the company of others” and how people feel in that particular company. The second text is by Leroy Little Bear: “Jagged Worlds Colliding.” It contrasts the fluid perceptual forms of Plains Indians to the scientific objectivity cultivated by European settlers. “In a context of jagged worlds,” writes Leroy Little Bear, “I cannot take for granted that you see and know the same things that I see and know.” Those who would seek to compose a situation should keep this reflection uppermost in mind – especially in the convulsive social atmospheres that we are now traversing.
Readings:
Kathleen Stewart, Atmospheric Attutnements
Leroy Small Bear, Jagged Worlds Colliding
ZOOM LINK HERE – STARTS AT 11AM
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