The Atmospheric Worlds of Cinema

• Applicant: Dr. Steffen Hven
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426167528

One of the most attractive features of cinema is indisputably its ability to embed its audience in atmospheric worlds or affectively charged narrative environments. Yet, although the concept of atmosphere is today an integrated part of the vocabulary used to describe films, no substantial research has been undertaken to a) provide a precise definition of the term beyond its vague and imprecise use in everyday speech, b) develop a consistent theoretical framework for the study of filmic atmospheres, or c) to unfold the concept of atmosphere narratologically to explain how the filmic narrative is experienced rather than merely analyzed retrospectively. Consequently, this research project has two major aims. The first aim is to provide the first systematic and coherent conceptualization of film atmospheres as designating an intermediary space existing between film and spectator. The second aim is to use the concept of atmosphere to carve out a conceptual plane in which subject and object, cognition and affect coexist. This plane could serve film narratology in incorporating the nonrepresentational, sensorial, and affective dimensions of the narrative that escape the ‘disembodied’ frameworks of dominant linguistic, semiological, and cognitivist approaches to film narratology. The film’s atmosphere cannot be ascribed to the spectator nor the film proper, instead it is a result of their interrelation. Atmospheres are thus quasi-objective, as the German philosopher of atmosphere Gernot Böhme (2016) explains, “they are out there, you can enter an atmosphere and you can be surprisingly caught by an atmosphere” but at the same time “atmospheres are not like things; they are nothing without a subject feeling them” (p. 2). The concept of atmosphere might, therefore, be useful for grasping the film narrative in relational terms, as existing between spectator and film. The integration of the atmospheric into narratology thus circumvents the dichotomy that in recent years has become established in film studies between narratology that largely neglects the role of the felt-body (Leib) and theories of filmic affect, which define the affective in negation to cognitive, representational, and narrative concerns (cf. Brinkema, 2014, p. xii). Unlike most contemporary atmosphere research, this project deals with the specific branch of media-generated ‘virtual’ atmospheres. It is important to expand atmosphere research in this direction given that today “our most pervasive surrounding environment is technological” (Durham Peters, 2015, p. 2). With the development of a new film narratology able to study filmic atmospheres this project aspires to foster more critical, reflective, and ethical thinking on how and with what consequences cinema arranges its virtual environments affectively. This is important in a time where our affective lives are increasingly staged and orchestrated by media-technologies.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor David Norman Rodowick, Ph.D.