Abstract
This paper addresses the concerns that theoretical discussions of enchantment and atmospheric perception raise about the way humans enter into relationships with architectural space, art objects, and design. Focusing on Columbus, a contemporary independent film set against the backdrop of modernist architecture in Columbus, Indiana, our paper highlights the limitations of an ocularcentric approach to art and the rational language that often accompanies it. For a contemporary subject acculturated to the dynamics of detachment governing modern epistemologies of knowledge, being moved by a beautiful object or building frequently emerges as transgressive, something that must be either redefined or denied. Kogonada’s film, Columbus (2017), critiques the ocularcentric apprehension of architecture and the illusion of detachment it offers; recreating an aesthetic mode that is at once visual and atmospheric, the film works to locate both characters and viewers in the textured spaces they would stand apart from to critique and observe. Bringing together theories of space, materiality and desire, we thus consider what it means to resist or “inhabit the life” of a room, a beautiful object, or a building. The objects and spaces designed by human subjects often assume an uncomfortable agency as they pull us close or push us away, mediating our intimate experiences of ourselves and our worlds. This paper explores the cultural assumptions that make it difficult, vexed, and sometimes even forbidden to acknowledge or represent the way that the objects we hold and the spaces we move through also move us.
Presenters
Laura TannerProfessor, English, Boston College, Massachusetts, United States James Krasner
Professor , English, University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ARCHITECTURE, ART, ATMOSPHERIC PERCEPTION, JUHANI PALLASMAA, AESTHETICS, FILM, PHENOMENOLOGY, SPACE
