“This is a really wonderful book. Backing up her theory of an aesthetics of joy with Spinoza, Bergson, and Deleuze, Margit’s very strength is a kind of pragmatic phenomenology. By offering insights into her own practice, ways of creating and experiencing atmospheres is suggested to the reader, who as a result is obviously moved.“
Gernot Böhme, Director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy; Professor for Philosophy, TU Darmstadt
Constructing Atmospheres is concerned with subjective perceptions and affections and the co-production of collective spatial realities. The book speculates upon the production of joy as a worthwhile and effective collective practice applied toward the refinement of shared spaces. The author suggests that atmospheres precede matter, including built environments. As a report on the artistic labour of bringing forth joyful affects, the book puts to the test Spinoza’s fundamental conception of substance as a self-creating universal principle – philosophical theory is productively entangled with concrete spatial experimentation.
Dr Margit Brünner holds a PhD in Visual Arts and undertakes her artistic research practice between Vienna, Austria and Adelaide Australia. Working through performative intervention, video and drawing her work investigates the spatiality of affective relations. Margit studied and undertook her Masters degree project in architecture with Hans Hollein, at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She has received several grants from the Austrian Federal Chancellery and was awarded with a MF & MH Joyner Fine Arts scholarship. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; the Architectural Biennale Venice; AEDES Gallery in Berlin; the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; and the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, amongst other places. Currently she holds a visiting research position at the University of Adelaide.
