The Logic of Sensationin the Institution of BygdegårdenA coloring-in-book by Jenny AndreassonSchool of Architecture, kth, spring 2012Advisor: Dr. Hélène Frichot

Introduction: Bygdgården,affect and institution

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This coloring-in book introduces the concept of affect in the institution in general, and more spe-cifically in the institution of the Swedish phenom-ena of bygdegården, a specific kind of community spaces owned and run by rural communities. I will try to argue how the bygdegården move-ment can be looked upon as an institution, and also use the concept of affect to try and see if it is possible to speak of a logic of sensation in re-lation to it. Is affect at work in this institution? The texts in this book derives from a course in philosophy and architecture held at the School of Architecture in Stockholm in the spring of 2012.

In Eric Shouses article ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’ from the M/C Journal, affect is described as a bodily response that is not preceded by thoughts, feelings or emotions. It is pre-personal. Shouse puts forward affect as a possibly very forceful concept that can execute hidden influence. He describes how “The power of affect lies in the fact that it is unformed and unstructured (abstract). It is affect’s ‘abstractivity’ that makes it transmittable in ways that feelings and emotions are not, and it is because affect is transmittable that it is potentially such a powerful social force.” (Shouse, 2005). In terms of the bygdegård, what can be said to be at work at the level of affect here? What affect is transmitted

from this often quite down-to-earth, modest ver-nacular architecture? Reading these texts on affect and sensation (see bibliography), I have tried to ap-ply these concepts on this investigation of the archi-tectural spaces of the institution of Bygdegården.

Bygdegårdar are community spaces specific to the countryside and smaller villages of Swe-den. The information about Bygdegårdar in this coloring-in-book is largely build on my per-sonal experience, growing up near several byg-degårdar in the Swedish countryside, and on the state funded investigation from 2003 on com-munity spaces, ‘Allmänna samlingslokaler - de-mokrati, kultur, utveckling’ (SOU 2003:118).

The movement of building bygdeårdar emerged in early twentieth century rural Sweden from grass-root movements of different kinds, such as agri-cultural associations and rural youth associations. The population of the countryside needed spaces for a multitude of activities, including the holding of board meetings for the different existing associ-ations mentioned above. Material for constructing these buildings was often donated from people in the area or reused material, and the construction was made collectively by volunteers. Some bygde-gårdar were also re-appropriations of already exist-

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ing buildings. (Bygdegårdarnas Riksförbund, 2012)

Today, Bygdegårdar are used for, for instance, different kinds of parties, weddings, youth dis-cos, and annual parties for the community mem-bers. It is also used as spaces for different kind of sports and cultural activities, and for study circles. Sometimes they contain smaller meeting rooms for groups of teenagers or small associa-tions, and they can also serve as polling stations in national and regional elections. The spac-es are run by volunteers from the community.

From early twentieth century and onwards, the bygdegård movement grew all over Sweden and began to take on the form of an institution, as in-dividual bygdegårdar organized themselves in a national association of bygdegårdar. In 1942 the Swedish state voted for subsidies for maintain-ing, and constructing new, community spaces in Sweden (SOU 2003:118). The state then gained a certain control over the stock of existing spaces, and, over the construction of new ones, through the formal applications necessary to receive fund-ing. At the same time as the Swedish state appreci-ated and elevated the spaces of the bygdegårdar, it also used an already existing infrastructure of self-regulating community spaces to gain control

over mechanisms that “educated and civilized” the inhabitants of the Swedish countryside. Reading Tony Bennetts text ‘The exhibitionary Complex’ gives an insight of how the state in the disciplinary society, still present at this time in history, might have worked to regulate and order its inhabitants. Bennet writes about how the phenomena of the exhibition played a crucial role in educating and self-regulating the public, transforming them from populace into a population. Bennet writes: “Muse-ums, galleries and, more intermittently exhibitions played a pivotal role in the formation of the mod-ern state and are fundamental to its conception as, among other things, a set of educative and civilizing agencies.” (Bennet, 1995, p. 66) He points out that the state had an indirect, but very strong, influence over the institution of museums and exhibitions.

In reading the bygdegård movement as an insti-tution, the text ‘Panopticism’ by Michel Foucault on the mechanisms of disciplinary societies, has been key. The institution of the bygdegård can be said to have a disciplinary power over its com-munity members, as there are social and factual rules on how to behave in it. The effect of this disciplinary power can also be argued to spread out to all parts of the society, according to Fou-caults writing on how power relations distrib-

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ute themselves by the panopticism of every day. Small tactics of discipline, executed by parters in positions of power, operates on the “underside of the law”, and have a large influence on ordering the community (Foucault, 1991, p. 223).

The following pages of this coloring-in-book contains eight short responses to eight different themes derived from readings in the course held at the School of Architecture in Stockholm. The first four responses deal with the concept of affect, while the other four deal with the theme of the institution. All responses try to also relate to the physical and institutional space of the bygdegår-dar.

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Affect, what is it?

In his text ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’v, Eric Shouse sets out to unpack the concept of affect as a bodily response that is not preceded by thoughts, feelings or emotions. It is rather “always prior to and/or outside of consciousness”. He writes that “The body has a grammar of its own that cannot be fully captured in language.” (Shouse, 2005).

In the text an Inventory of Shimmers Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth goes on to talk about affect as not only being prepersonal as Shouse describes it, but also as being the unnoticed that is “born in in-between-ness and resides as ac-cumulative beside-ness” (Gregg, Seigworth, 2010). This can make affect a very forceful concept, as it can execute hidden influence. This is likewise un-derlined when Shouse describes how “The power of affect lies in the fact that it is unformed and unstructured (abstract). It is affect’s “abstractivity” that makes it transmittable in ways that feelings and emotions are not, and it is because affect is transmittable that it is potentially such a powerful social force.” (Shouse, 2005).

The unnoticed affect is also what Melissa Greg re-fers to in her editorial text Affect, when speaking of how contemporary american right-wing politi-cians create a response in their audience that goes

beyond, and strengthens, their actual political mes-sage. She refers to how Grossberg argued that “the strategy of new conservatives has been to conduct a political agenda at the level of affect, (… ) It suc-ceeds by colonising the very mood, imagination and hope of a citizenry.” (Gregg, 2005).

So, the unconscious affective messages of these politicians amplifies as they are unnoticed, and furthermore they become statements that are hard to form a political opposition to. Shouse writes: “in many cases the message consciously received may be of less import to the receiver of that message than his or her non-conscious affective resonance with the source of the message” (Shouse, 2005).

It seems like the property of being unnoticed is a dominant feature of the concept of affect. This property makes affect difficult to define and ana-lyze, and it might very well take several readings of the texts refered to here to begin to understand it.

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Can art make use of sensation?

In the two chapters ‘The Diagram’ and ‘Paint-ing and Sensation’ from the book The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze writes about Francis Bacons act of painting, and his process towards mak-ing what he calls the Figure. Deleuze describes how Bacon is interested in creating sensation. Bacon is less interested to take a detour via the brain, rather he wants the paintings to hit the nervous system directly. He states that he is “ce-rebrally pessimistic but nervously optimistic, with an optimism that believes only in life. (…) Ba-con’s formula would be: figuratively pessimistic, but figurally optimistic.” (Deleuze, 2003, p. 43)

In the texts Deleuze describes ‘the diagram’ when speaking of the act of painting. He writes “The di-agram is the operative set of traits and color patch-es, of lines and zones.” (Deleuze, 2003, p. 102) The diagram is both the necessary chaos of painting, but also what gives chaos rhythm, and according to Bacon there is a limit to what the diagram can do. Deleuze writes he “will never stop speaking of the absolute necessity or preventing the diagram from proliferating, the necessity of confining it to certain areas of the painting and certain moments of the act of painting.” (Deleuze, 2003, p. 109) If the diagram is allowed to cover the entire painting, as in abstract expressionism, it will end up in an

impossible confused state that does not serve his purposes. Rather Bacon uses the diagram as a tool, a step in the process. Deleuze writes “The diagram is a possibility of fact – it is not the fact itself.” and he continues: “a new figuration, that of the Figure, should emerge from the dia-gram and make the sensation clear and precise.” (Deleuze, 2003, p. 110) Deleuze describes how the line-strokes and color-patches of the dia-gram have to be utilized in order to evolve into a Figure and stop being an optical organization. The diagram “unlocks areas of sensation” (De-leuze, 2003, p. 102) but is not the sensation itself.Deleuze writes that “The diagram ends with the preparatory work and begins with the act of paint-ing.” According to Deleuze Bacon didn’t make any sketches, but instead the preparatory work might be part of the act of painting, all the moments up until the painting is finished. Then the Figure has emerged, and Bacon has created sensation.

Reading Deleuzes texts on Bacon I struggle to un-derstand in what way it is possible for Bacon to make use of sensation. If Bacons Figure is to hit the nervous system rather than the brain, to what ex-tent can he, using his intellectual capacity to make art, control the outcome of his art as sensation?

The autonomy of Affect

The more I read about affect and intensity, as in ‘The Autonomy of Affect’ by Brian Massumi, the more I find it difficult to see how I can use it in my architectural practice, and in my investigation of the institution of bygdegården. Massumi describes intensity in one passage as: “It is outside expecta-tion and adaptation, as disconnected from mean-ingful sequencing, from narration, as it is from vital function.” (Massumi, 2002, p. 25). What are we doing (as a society, as humans) if we focus on something that don’t have meaningful sequencing, narration and vital function? In the way I would like to practice architecture these things are quite important and necessary. And when it comes to the bygdegård, affect seems quite far from these community buildings so focused on the practicality of providing space for people to organize cultural activities, parties, and (political) meetings.

Another problematic issue I find in the readings on affect continues to be the idea that intensity would be entirely “prepersonal”, before thought, and with no connections to our autobiography and previous experiences. Couldn’t many of the things Massumi ascribe to intensity also be ascribed to feelings? As for instance the example with the chil-dren watching the three different versions of the story about the snowman. How do we know that

the different reactions to these stories are not con-nected to what the children have experienced earlier in their lives? I continue to wonder if it is possible to have an impression before thought, be-fore it runs through your backpack of things expe-rienced, felt, and seen in your life, once you have started thinking (as a human) in the first place? When I have been investigating the bygdegård movement, the things that struck me as interesting has to do precisely with peoples experience, social interaction and historical processes.

About feelings or emotions Massumi writes: “An emotion is a subjective content, the sociolinguis-tic fixing of the quality of an experience which is from that point onward defined as personal. Emo-tion is qualified intensity,” and he goes on: “It is crucial to theorize the difference between affect and emotion. If some have the impression that af-fect has waned, it is because affect is unqualified. As such, it is not ownable or recognizable and is thus resistant to critique.” (Massumi, 2002, p. 28)

So for me the question remains, in our (feminist) practice as architects, how can we make use of something, that is not personal or social, and that is resistant to critique? In studying an institution that has been part of forming peoples social, po-litical and personal lives in the rural parts of Swe-den, it seems to be a blunt tool.

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Kissing the bygdegård

The text Kissing Architecture by Sylvia Lanvin is critiquing modern architecture as having failed on a number of points concerning affect. The specific (modern?) architecture of the new addition to The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York by Yoshio Taniguchi, is described as being banal and without flavor. One of the examples put forward in the text, Pipilotti Rists artwork Pour Your Body Out projected against a white wall in MoMA, is then described as a kiss, and possibly as a savior of the bleak modern architecture. This new media art piece that rub up against the surfaces of the museum gives its architecture a new dimension, a new interpretation. Lanvin writes: “Architecture can expand its affective range – and therefore its consequence – by hooking up with more cultur-al players.” (Lavin, 2011, p. 22) Lanvin identifies this mixing up of material and intent as a possible future for the architectural discipline. She writes: “surfaces are where architecture gets close to turning into something else and therefore exactly where it becomes vulnerable and full of potential.” (Lavin, 2011, p. 26)

Looking at the institution of bygdegården, a move-ment of emerging community spaces in rural Swe-den, I find that its architecture is a kind of modest vernacular, build with quite simple materials, and

not very decorated. My observations are build on a number of bygdegårdar I often visited, and went to parties in, growing up in rural Västergötland, Sweden. The typology of bygdegårdar were to fit a number of different kinds of activities, and so to the simple structures, decoration could be added to go with the specific event it was going to hold. One example of this is a mural with a psychedelic pattern made in the basement space of a bygde-gård about a kilometer from the house I grew up in. This mural was made by a group of teenag-ers that used to hang out there in the seventies, as an attempt to make the space more up to date with the movement of the time. Another example is putting up a kind of frame made of birch twigs and flowers in front of the entrance when wedding parties was going to be held there.

These kind of vernacular spaces might seem pretty far from buildings of status, such as the MoMA in New York, and the ways of decorating them may be quite analogue, but perhaps there is a parallel to be drawn in terms of the kissing of architecture. Perhaps both of these examples can be seen as a way of kissing the bygdegård, giving it specific fea-tures for specific events, and being the savior when organizing activities in an otherwise pretty charm-less building.

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Panopticism acting in-, and out-side of the instituion of bygde-gården

In his text ‘Panopticism’ Michel Foucault makes a very clear argument of what over all principles our society is built on. He is describes how a disciplin-ary society along with its disciplinary institutions emerged at the end of the seventeenth century, when society began its urge for “ordering of hu-man multiplicities” (Foucault, 1991, p. 218) and make all citizens a part of a larger system of soci-ety. Using Bentham’s diagram of the Panopticon Foucalt shows how a whole new type of surveil-lance society emerges.

Describing how societies handled plague and leper in the seventeenth century, Foucault demvvvon-strates this urge to make order in the institutions of prisons, schools ans hospitals, but also how dis-cipline de-institutionalize and spread out into the society, which is what he calls panopticism. He writes “one can speak of the formation of a disciplin-ary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social ‘quaran-tine’, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’. (...) because it has infiltrated the others, sometimes undermining them, but serving as an intermediary between them, linking them together, extending them to above all making in possible to bring the effects of power to the most minute and distant elements. It assures a infinitesi-

tribution if the power relations.” (Foucault, 1991, p. 216) Later he writes “panopticism constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coer-cion.” (Foucault, 1991, p. 222)

The somewhat institutionalized community space of the bygdegård, can be said to organize a dis-ciplinary control over its members, as there are social and factual rules on how to behave when at-tending or organizing events there. As these com-munities are rather small, people know, or know of, each other, which distributes the disciplinary mechanisms out to the “distant elements” of the community. Perhaps I can, as Foucault, argue that discipline makes a relation, a private link, between individuals in these communities, and that this in-evitably creates uneven power relations. Foucault writes about disciplines: “the way in which it is im-posed, the mechanisms it brings into play, the non-reversible subordination of one group of people by another, the ‘surplus’ power that is always fixed on the same side, the inequality of position of the dif-ferent ‘partners’ in relation to the common regula-tion.” He continues to describe how panopticism then operates on the “underside of the law” as it “supports, reinforces, multiplies the asymmetry of power and undermines the limits that are traced around the law.” (Foucault, 1991, p. 223) He writes that the small tactics of discipline are crucial to how society operates. This panopticism of every day is perhaps one part of what ties the commu-nity together, making it orderly and coercive.

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Self-regulation in the Bygdegård

In this response I will look at the movement of the establishment of bygdegårdar in rural Sweden, through the text ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, by Tony Bennett, and investigate the self-regulating mechanisms of these self-governing community spaces.

In defining the bygdegårds movement as an insti-tution and relating it to the text ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’ I have found that there are mechanisms of self-regulation at work in this rural Swedish ex-ample, as it is in the institutions of museums and exhibitions described in the text. These commu-nity spaces, managed by the same people that use it, is built on voluntary labour, and depends on a mutual trust. As rural communities in Sweden are rather small, people know each other by name, and knowledge of members behaving inappropri-ate will easily come to everybodies attention. In the scale of the community space itself, and in the as-sociations inhabiting it, there is a element of both seeing and being seen, which, as Bennett describes in the text, leads to self-regulation. With reference to the text, the activities held at these commu-nity centers can be seen as spectacles, where the participants themselves are part of what is being watched. Bennett describes how the exhibitions of the nineteenth century transformed “the many-

crowd themselves was part of the spectacle (Ben-nett, 1995, p. 72). The Crystal Palace, for instance, was arranged so that “while everyone could see, there were also vantage points from which every-one could be seen, this combining the functions of spectacle and surveillance.” (Bennett, 1995, p. 65) He continues to write that society then itself be-comes a spectacle, and is therefore being watched, and surveilled, by itself. Perhaps it can be said sthat the community spaces of the bygdegårdarna or-dered the population of the countryside through self-regulation.

In the text Bennett also speaks of the indirect in-volvement of the state in the emerging museums, as it had control over the policy of the museums, while the every day work was executed by boards of trustees. Museums then played an important role in the formation of the state, as they worked to educate and civilize the public. (Bennett, 1995, p. 66) A parallel to the Swedish states involvement in the bygdegårds movement can be seen when in 1942, the Swedish government voted for subsidies for maintaining and constructing new community centers. The state then gained a certain control over the stock of existing community centers, and over the construction of new ones, through the formal applications necessary to receive funding. Perhaps one might say that the Swedish state used an already existing infrastructure of self-regulating community spaces to gain control over mecha-nisms that “educated and civilized” the inhabit-ants of the Swedish countryside.

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Societies of Control

In the text ‘Postscripts on Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze describes how the disciplinary so-ciety has transformed into a society of control. He also describes the changes of capitalism in relation to this transformation.

The sites of confinement in the disciplinary soci-ety, described thoroughly by Foucault, are break-ing down, in favor of another type of domination, that might be just as harsh as its predecessor. Con-trol societies are taking over.

Deleuze defines the difference between societies of discipline, and societies of control, when he writes that confinements are molds that made for instance the the workers in a factory into a body of men that could be monitored by the management, and that the trade unions could organize. Control on the other hand is rather a modulation, where the workers in factories are set up to compete with each other. It is turned into a business.

The text goes on to discuss the new ways of capi-talism, that is more directed towards metaproduc-tion, and the selling of services. Companies no lon-ger buy raw material and make finished products, but instead they buy already finished products, or assemble products from finished parts.

So what are the consequences of the shift towards a control society? Deleuze ends by asking wether the trade unions still have a role in a control so-ciety, as they historically struggled against disci-plines. They organized, and fought for the rights of, a mass of people, so how can they deal with a society that is more individualistic, and global? Organizations and associations formed by sites of confinement need to take on new roles and forms to be able to respond to new questions in societies of control. I began to think about the movements active in the end of the nineties, and the riots in Gothenburg during the EU summit in 2001. Per-haps these were a different kind of movements, responding to a more free floating global control society rather than one of discipline?

In looking at Bygdegården, being a movement that emerged in a disciplinary society, I would be inter-esting to investigate what role it plays today. How is it affected by the control society? Can it be that it is more difficult to organize community spaces in the countryside of Sweden in a time where the individual is more important than the collective, and in a time where urbanization is making rural sweden even more sparsely populated?

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Exhaustion an Exuberance

Jan Verwoert speaks in his text ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ about high-performers in the cre-ative industries, and ways to defy their pressure to perform. This high performing work force, set up to compete with each other, might be said to live in the control society described by Deleuze in ‘Postscripts on Societies of Control’. Verwoert investigates ways to say ‘I Can’t’, to say stop, no more, but in a way where it is still possible to Care. Verwoert draws parallels to the punk movement, and its resistance against music industry standards. He writes that this resistance “resulted in the trans-gression of personal capacity by rigorously em-bracing personal incapacity, rising above demand by frustrating all expectations.” (Verwoert, 2010, p. 22)

This makes me think of a big protest in the streets of Berlin that a friend of mine happened upon a few years ago. He and his friends tried to ask peo-ple what the protest was about, but the only answer they got was that they protested against “the ganze Scheiß”, that is, against everything, the entire sys-tem. In his text Verwoert investigates ways to pro-test against the entire system of high-performing, because people are exhausted by it.

In the end of the text Verwoert then writes about

what lies beyond exhaustion, what comes after protesting and resisting the system of high-per-forming. He finds one answer in convalescence, and suggest that the burned out high-performers use their shared experience of being exhausted to form a community, a community of convalescents. He describes it as “a state of suspension between exhaustion and activity, between the ‘I Can’t’ and the ‘I Can’, the state of convalescence is the epit-ome of an empty moment of full awareness. In this moment the illusion of potency, interrupted through illness, is not yet restored (…) but still the sense of appreciation is redeemed as the ‘I Care’ return in its full potential: you begin to care about life again, more than ever.” (Verwoert, 2010, p. 70).

This makes me think of the somewhat naive idea among high-performing inner-city inhabitants that the countryside holds their salvation, that that is where one can live the simple, good, life. There might be a parallel between the ‘community of convalescents’ and this dichotomy between the city and the countryside, which is what led me in to looking at the community space of bygdegården in the first place. Perhaps the inner-city high-per-formers will exhaust themselves, move into the countryside, and form a community of convales-cents to be able to start seeing things clearly, in this “empty moment of full awareness”. We have seen this happen earlier in our modern history, and maybe the bygdegård associations will be there to pick the convalescing high-performers up when new ideas start to formulate, and they need to or-ganize.

Bibliography

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Bennett, Tony (1995) ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, in The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, Lon-don: Routledge, excerpt, pp. 59-79.

Deleuze, Gilles (2003): ‘The Diagram’, in The Logic of Sensation, London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles (1995) ‘Postscript on Societies of Control’ in Negotiations: 1972-1990, New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (2003): ‘Painting and Sensation’, in The Logic of Sensation, London: Continuum.

Foucault, Michel (1991) ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin.

Gregg, Melissa (2005) ‘Affect.’ in M/C Journal 8.6 [12 May 2012].

Lavin, Sylvia (2011) Kissing Architecture, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Massumi, Brian (2002) ‘The Autonomy of Affect’, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Dur-ham and London: Duke University Press.

Seijworth, Gregory and Gregg, Melissa (2010) ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’ in Seijworth, G and Gregg, M eds. The Affect Theory Reader, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Shouse, Eric (2005) ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’ in M/C Journal 8.6 [12 May 2012].

Verwoert, Jan (2010) ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press.

Government publications

Web pages

Justitiedepartementet, Statens offentliga utredningar (SOU), (2003:118) Allmänna samlingslokaler - de-mokrati, kultur, utveckling, Stockholm

Bygdegårdarnas Riksförbund, the National association of Bygdegårdar, [Online], Avaliable:http://www.bygdegardarna.se [12 May 2012]