The article introduces the special issue on staging atmospheres by surveying the philosophical, political and anthropological literature on atmosphere, and explores the relationship between ...atmosphere, material culture, subjectivity and affect. Atmosphere seems to occupy one of the classic localities of tensions between matter and the immaterial, the practical and the ideal, and subject and object. In the colloquial language there can, moreover, often seem to be something authentic or genuine about atmosphere, juxtaposing it to staging, which is implied to be something simulated or artificial. Nevertheless, people’s experience of the environment is sought manipulated in a variety of contexts, often without offering a less ‘true’ experience of a situation than if it had not been manipulated by people. In fact, orchestrations of space are often central to sociality, politics and aesthetics. This introduction seeks to outline how a number of scholars have addressed the relationship between staged atmospheres and experience, and thus highlight both the philosophical, social and political aspects of atmospheres.
Insignificants was a collecting and exhibition experiment, composed around a series of twelve miniscule installations, mounted monthly between June 2019 and June 2020 (except July 2019). The format ...of the exhibition series was deliberately neglectable. In an attempt to permit insignificant things to remain precisely insignificant, the installations were conceptually and proportionally limited to a small bell jar exhibited at my department at the University of Copenhagen. In this bell jar, I exhibited selections of things dislodged from culture-historical relations, or which were not decodable through retrospective causalities. Exactly where these things came from, or how they ended up where I made contact with them, remain unknown to me. Hence, instead of focusing on the origins or meanings of things, the exhibitions sought to stage new encounters, exploring the aesthetic and epistemic qualities of insignificant and incidental things. This visual essay re-collects fragments of Insignificants.
Contemporary philosophies of atmosphere hinge on the presence of an experiencing subject through which atmosphere is conceptualised and analysed, and it is argued that one has be exposed to ...atmosphere in order to appreciate it. This stipulation will be referred to as the ‘clause of subjectivity’ in this article. The clause implies, fundamentally, that it is impossible to approach atmospheres in the past, at least the past located before living memory. This article seeks to challenge this condition, exploring the potential for analysing atmospheres in the prehistoric past. It is suggested that we need to build a notion of atmosphere that is particular to the study of non-experiential contexts, capable of accommodating the material infrastructure of social spaces (e.g. architecture, lighting and sensuous qualities) and movement (the corporeal staging of particular channels of experience) in order to move towards past atmospheres. Monumental tombs, known as passage graves, from the South Scandinavian Middle Neolithic, form the exemplification of this proposal, offering the opportunity for not only exploring the possibility for approaching atmosphere in the remote past, but also for addressing the affective properties of architecture in a broader sense.
Within the past decade or so, archaeology has increasingly utilised and contributed to major advances in scientific methods when exploring the past. This progress is frequently celebrated as a ...quantum leap in the possibilities for understanding the archaeological record, opening up hitherto inaccessible dimensions of the past. This article represents a critique of the current consumption of science in archaeology, arguing that the discipline's grounding in the humanities is at stake, and that the notion of 'interdisciplinarity' is becoming distorted with the increasing fetishisation of 'data', 'facts' and quantitative methods. It is argued that if archaeology is to break free of its self-induced inferiority to and dependence on science, it must revitalise its methodology for asking questions pertinent to the humanities.
This article stipulates that vagueness is a socially important yet academically largely overlooked aspect of human interaction with the world. Vagueness and vague experiences can structure material ...categorisations of the world; it can contribute to the shaping of social relations and nurture the appreciation of difficult experiences. However, the recent archaeological (re)turn to science as the main provider of knowledge of the past renders vagueness futile as an empirical occurrence through its exorcism of elusiveness and ambiguity in the notorious pursuit of absolute, exact and quantifiable facts. This article challenges the pursuit and use of exact data in archaeological science and the consequential implications of the omission of vague occurrences, discussing the problem that ambiguous and absent evidence become neglected in subsequent conclusion. Second, it is demonstrated that vagueness and ambiguity can be integral to certain social and material phenomena. Third, the article examines recent archaeological analyses of burial practices in South Scandinavian passage graves from the Middle Neolithic in order to discuss the pursuit of certitude in archaeological observations and interpretations. Finally, it is argued that the idealisation of certitude in archaeological analysis needs to be complemented by an interpretative framework making it possible to recognise vagueness as a social phenomenon.
What drives archaeology? Is it new empirical discoveries, new methods or new theory? These factors combined are the fuel of the discipline, is the obvious answer. However, debates and research ...articles frequently reveal how a perceived need for novelty, originality and impact tends to disentangle this triumvirate of archaeological virtues, giving precedence to one asset over others as the supposed driving force. Focusing on archaeological theory, this article taps into current discussions of the nature of archaeological change, reviewing debates on the formation of archaeological theory, its legitimisation and usefulness. Specifically, I address a recent claim that archaeological theory too readily undermines itself by adopting immature ideas and concepts from other disciplines in an uncritical pursuit of novelty. Finally, I discuss how archaeology may contribute more generally to the formation of theory in the humanities by returning so-called borrowed theory.
What legitimizes archaeological work in an age of global climate change, socio-political crises and economic recession? On what topics should archaeology focus its research questions, and what forms ...of archaeological engagement are not merely justifiable but able to make a difference in light of such challenges? Today, there is a tendency, we argue, that archaeological responses to current challenges are expected to align with a specific mode of conduct, political stance and genre, where, for example, a very particular notion of activism, responsibility and ethics is dominating. There is no denial that current challenges call for immediate instrumental reactions, but we contend that valuable reactions can – or even must – vary, and that more fundamental and slow ontological and epistemological change should also be nested within these responses. In this article, we explore what it means to care – what it means to be concerned – in the Anthropocene through archaeological practice and aesthetic engagement. By highlighting the relations between ethics and aesthetics, we explore ways in which we get in touch with the objects of concern, placing undecidability and speculation as dispositions equally important to urgency and impact.
Abstract
This is a comment to Graham Harman’s 2019 response to an article by Þóra Pétursdóttir and Bjørnar Olsen (2018) in which they propose that a materially grounded, archaeological perspective ...might complement Harman’s historical approach in
Immaterialism
(2016). Harman responds that his book is indeed already more archaeological than historical, stipulating that history is the study of media with a high density of information, whereas archaeology studies media with a low density of information. History, Harman holds, ends up in too much detail, while archaeology has the advantage of lending itself to the imagination. Hence, his reading of history had the aim of tempering the historical information overload, in effect making the book a work of archaeology. In this comment, I want to do three things: (1) critique the idea that archaeological and historical media are inherently different with regard to their densities of information, (2) discuss how archaeology and history approach their media, and (3) reflect on conceptualisations of “archaeology” outside the discipline itself.
An Anthropology of Luminosity Bille, Mikkel; Sørensen, Tim Flohr
Journal of material culture,
11/2007, Letnik:
12, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article addresses the relationship between light, material culture and social experiences. It argues that understanding light as a powerful social agent, in its relationship with people, things, ...colours, shininess and places, may facilitate an appreciation of the active social role of luminosity in the practice of day-to-day activities. The article surveys an array of past conceptions of light within philosophy, natural science and more recent approaches to light in the fields of anthropology and material culture studies. A number of implications are discussed, and by way of three case studies it is argued that light may be used as a tool for exercising social intimacy and inclusion, of shaping moral spaces and hospitality, and orchestrating movement, while working as a metaphor as well as a material agent in these social negotiations. The social comprehension of light is a means of understanding social positions in ways that may be real or imagined, but are bound up on the social and cultural associations of certain lightscapes.
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