The production of atmospheric interpellation : light shows at Civic Centre, Shenzhen

This paper explores the ideological valence of atmosphere, grounding the notion of interpellation in investigating the widely welcomed light shows at Civic Centre in Shenzhen, China. Combining theoretical development and empirical research, this paper examines how these light shows generated particular atmospheres that impinged upon the formation of spectators’ subjectivity. In a time when atmospheric staging is widely adopted to engineer urban space and events, ideological interpellation has become increasingly atmospherically diffused. Meanwhile, material contingencies and lived varieties of atmosphere also condition and potentially disturb the communication of ideological messages. Atmosphere thus needs to be considered in terms of its conceived, perceived and lived dimensions. This paper draws from Henri Lefebvre’s space triad and rhythmanalysis to outline a framework for tracing the production of atmosphere, and applies it to empirical data to illustrate how light shows at Civic Centre generated ideological appeals through the atmospheric constellation of content, environmental materiality and subjects. It is through atmosphere that we grasp and imagine what the world is. In critical response to atmospheric interpellation, new modes of the reproduction of life derive not from an atmospheric outside but precisely through a reorientation from within.
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