Artikeln behandlar förhållandet mellan affekt, tecken och värld i filmmusiken till Lars von Triers så kallade depressiontrilogi (Antichrist 2009, Melancholia 2011 och Nymphomaniac 2013). Huvudfrågan gäller skillnader i behandlingen av det konst- och populärmusikaliska materialet.

This chapter explores the notion of attunement in correlation with Stimmung, mood, and atmosphere through the understanding of phenomenology. It starts with Edmund Husserl’s lectures on inner time consciousness through music and Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Stimmung and its early reception in the field of music. Philosopher Joseph Kockelmans, musicologist Karol Berger, and English philosopher Andrew Bowie understood the concept of Stimmung, also comprehended as mood, within the field of music. Thus, researchers used a whole series of concepts closely related to the idea of attunement in the analysis of contemporary culture and art. The chapter then notes the emergence of atmosphere, referencing how new phenomenology and its associated aesthetics comprehended that emotions are atmospheres poured out spatially.

Despite the attention that the affective sphere has reached in the last decades, affectivity has generally been supposed to be a consequence of historical processes, not changing their direction. This article argues instead that affectivity can be a driving force in historical change, and it establishes the concept of ‘patheme’ in relation to Michel Foucault’s ‘episteme’, Martin Heidegger’s ‘history of being’ and the notion of regime in William Reddy, Jacques Rancière and Peter de Bolla. What is described as a pathemic change took place in the thoroughgoing affective transformation of European culture during the 18th century, a cultural change that in Sweden was condensed into much more compressed shifts during the Gustav III’s reign (1772–92). This latter period is bestowed an investigation grounded in an understanding of historical processes that considers the interplay between layers such as power relations, social conditions and modes of scientific thought along with affectivity. The interplay is described in terms of polyphony.

In this essay, an interdisciplinary group of researchers sets out to address the period 1780–1840 in Sweden in a new way, by placing nature at its centre. With the help of ecocritical and transcultural theory, combined with renewed attention to the Swedish fine arts, learned discourses, and practices, we suggest a new approach to these revolutionary decades. The perceived dissonance, the interplay between climatic conditions and cultural template in early modern and modern Sweden, has not been fully addressed in current research, despite the fact that the relationship between humankind and the environment is a central issue in contemporary society and scholarship. Representations of nature situate the nation, they negotiate the relationship between a sensed reality and an ideal, between human and more-than-human beings. We suggest a focus on the unpredictable space created by negotiations of nature in Swedish representations during this crucial period, and, furthermore, on the ways in which this creative space is charged with utopian possibilities in the early Anthropocene. This is the background and the driving force of the planned research project ‘Cool Nature: Utopian Landscapes in Sweden 1780–1840’. 

Denna festskrift sammanställdes under pandemiåret 2020 för att fira vår uppskattade kollega, Cecilia Sjöholm, professor i Estetik på Södertörns högskola, på hennes 60-årsdag den 8 mars 2021.

This festschrift was produced during the pandemic time of 2020 in order to celebrate our esteemed colleague Professor of Aesthetics, Cecilia Sjöholm, on her 60th birthday on March 8th 2021.