Catching the ecstasies of dusk in St. Gilgen, Austria
Lamont, Kirsty Anne (2025) Catching the ecstasies of dusk in St. Gilgen, Austria. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts.
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This research argues that dusk in St. Gilgen, Austria, is a locationally unique atmosphere. Using curatorial and fine-art practices it investigates, frames, and makes tangible, the ecstasies (qualities) that coalesce to form the atmosphere of dusk at this location. It is situated within a New-Phenomenological aesthetic-atmospheric framework (Schmitz, Böhme) where atmospheres are described as "moving emotional powers" (Böhme, 2021, p. 20). Phenomenology, founded by Husserl and later developed by Heidegger and Merleau Ponty, locates knowledge in embodied perception, while New Phenomenology (Schmitz, 2019) (Böhme, 2021) extends this to the felt experience of atmospheres (quasi-objects) rather than objects. Gernot Böhme argues that we understand locations not through conceptualisation of place, but through bodily-sensing their emotional-aesthetic-atmospheres (2021, p. 72). However, we do not just sense atmospheres, we are affected by them. Unfortunately, although atmospheres are phenomenologically affecting, they are rarely investigated or documented due to their seemingly subjective status. Böhme asserts that art teaches us not to see, but to feel (Böhme, 2018, pp. 115-118) making practice-based research fitting for the phenomenological study of atmospheres. Nevertheless, while there are many artists exploring atmospheres tacitly, there are few that are contextualised within an atmospheric framework, and little analysis, or practice-based methodologies concerning atmospheres or the ecstasies that form them. This research addresses these gaps in knowledge.
Methods to analyse and capture three main phenomenological ecstasies of dusk present in St. Gilgen (brightness, colour, and sound) were developed through multidisciplinary fine-art practices. These practice-based responses are informed by artist-participant curatorial practices, case studies, and Böhme’s atmospheric philosophy. The research puts forward new ways of experiencing, understanding, and documenting locations, via their atmospheres.It fosters new understandings of St. Gilgen through archiving its atmospheres. Atmospheric understanding and analysis methodologies within the visual arts are extended, using New Phenomenology as a generating structure. Furthermore, it expands practice-based understandings of ecstasies that create atmospheres of dusk, and recontextualises understandings of artists’ work within a New-Phenomenological framework.
Thesis submitted in partial requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.
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