In her celebratory account of urban coolness, Currid-Halkett defines the cultural economy of New York as the Warhol Economy (2020), where an informal web of parties, art openings, punk musicians, fashion designers, hip bars, jazz clubs, restaurants, cool spaces, music venues, and underground art compose the city’s “perpetual creativity” (2020: Ch. 1). As we saw with the Burberry partnership, this cross-sectoral, informal sociality suggests that “fashion, art, film, music, and design did not reside in separate spheres”, but are in the process of movement and exchange (2020: Ch. 1). Avant-garde artists mingle with eclectic fashion designers and underground musicians in urban clusters of chic bars, fusion restaurants, boutique cofee shops, and organic markets. This perpetual creativity should then be thought of in terms of networks and processes, rather than objects and persons. Similar to Bruno Latour’s actor-network-theory (2010), in the Warhol Economy, art objects, subjects, performances, and events are actants within a network mediating its longevity in varying capacities, intensities, and degrees.9
In this sense, and since a network is always more than the sum of its parts, the Warhol Economy gives rise to an intangible context which defines the emotive hint of a space, an atmosphere. The concept of the atmosphere, traditionally associated with the meteorological field, owes most of its relevance in contemporary theory to the seminal work of the philosopher Gernot Böhme (2013, 2016). The atmosphere, for Böhme, encompasses the intangible surroundings, barely perceptible and often neglected, framing one’s presence and action: an atmosphere is the “moods which are ‘in the air’ ” providing the “emotional tinge of a space” (2013: 1). Diferent emotional tinges construct diferent afects and dispositions when navigating a space. The atmosphere surrounding a hospital’s waiting room, for instance, crafts an emotional tinge that usually communicates sadness or psychological distress, while the atmosphere in a comedy show enables laughter. Atmospheres have certain characters, and the character of each informs “the way in which it communicates a feeling to us as participating subjects” (2013: 2); if it rains or it is windy, the atmosphere is often gloomy, if it is sunny and the smells are nice the atmosphere is pleasant. Atmospheres thus qualify afects and emotional responses: if one laughs in an environment of psychological distress that would be perceived as inappropriate while if one laughs in a comedy show it would not. There can be something theatrical about an atmosphere, as if objects, subjects, and activities occur on a stage. An atmosphere is neither material nor immaterial, neither perceptible nor imperceptible; as its etymological origin suggests, it is a sphere of vapor (atmos [ατμός] in Greek), a state of in-betweenness, among, and within. Atmospheres often refer to the tacit level, being “there but not there, imperceptible yet all-determining” (Bille, Bjerregaard and Sørensen, 2015; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2013: 36), neither objective nor subjective, they are “what is in between, what mediates the two sides” (Böhme, 2016: 13). The atmosphere of the Warhol Economy conveys a cool ambience, that is, it is an imperceptible surrounding within which subjects, objects, and events are shaped by, and themselves perform, a condition of desirability; a space—physical or virtual—that appeals through ironic detachment, narcissism, and some (minor and managed) deviation from the norm, a “symbolic rebellion” (Puntain and Robins, 2000:15).
Atmospheres of Banal Luxury in Digital Warhol Economies
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