ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the affective qualities of spaciousness, ambience and slowness are afforded close and detailed attention. These immaterial architectures of dwellspace, alongside others (atmospheres, air and nowness) provide the main focus of discussion. The chapter begins by entering the ambient dwellspaces of Derek Jarman's 1993 film Blue, or, more precisely, the spacious outdoor atmospheres of a special ‘screening’ of the film held at a cliff-top location on the south Kent coast in 2001. Overlooking the English Channel, the monochromatic ocean of colour that is the artwork – the visual field of the film as encountered on screen – was replaced by the blue of sea and sky. Shorn of image, the ambience of the film's soundtrack blended with the ambient environmental sounds of the coastal setting. This example provides support for a wider discussion on the ‘Five As’: ambience, atmospheres, auras, affects and air, from which a critical distinction between ‘ambient’ and ‘ambience’ is drawn. The spacious affects and atmospheres of ambience – and the spaciousness of the self/non-self-dwelling in spaces of ambience – is explored in the second part of the chapter. Having established therein the constitutive spaciousness of dwellspace, we turn finally to considerations of the spacious affects of slowness. Following a critical examination of so-called ‘slow media’, with a particular focus on discussions of slow cinema, we turn our attention to an example that offers a compelling illustration of the cinematic production of dwellspace: the Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang's 2014 film, Journey to the West.
