Notes for Atmospheric-Making

Taking turbulence as both a conceptual driver and organizational strategy, this paper examines the coming together of particular ideas, materials, and processes in a collection of recent drawings, installations, and performative works. These projects were developed through an experimental practice of 'atmospheric-making,' which involves reciprocal capacities of affecting and being affected by atmospheres. Within this two-way dynamic between the particular and the atmospheric, new qualities emerge from the interplay between particles and systems. Three modes of crossing between the particular and the atmospheric will be discussed. The first involves developing relations between material and immaterial media in order to inhabit a threshold position between the two. In the second, these (im)materials are used to activate spaces of 'betweenness,' drawing attention to these liminal zones. The final crossing-between is a series of bodily practices that open up relationally in order to embrace uncertainty, vagueness, and changefulness. These three approaches privilege a bodily process of 'figuring out,' requiring immersion and active participation in making sense of atmospheric conditions. This bodily engagement results in a blurring of the distinct sense of self, and challenges participants to take part in a process of co-formation between environmental surroundings and distributed presence.