AbstractIn this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen, a huge bay at the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. To write about atmospheres means evoking a specific forcefield, which is different from observing and analyzing an object from a distance. In the first part, I write about my own experience of the coastal atmosphere by “looking around rather than ahead,” as Tsing (2015) defined the art of noticing. Based on his paintings, on literature, and interviews, I show in the second part how a local artist, the painter Franz Radziwill, made the specific atmosphere of Dangast explicit. Finally, I follow a citizens’ initiative on their way to preserve the specific atmosphere of this coastal village as an artists’ place. In doing so, I provide a detailed insight into the atmospheres of democracy, which define how transitions take place and decisions are taken locally. In the conclusion, I argue that the focus on coastal atmospheres is a way to transcend the boundaries between nature and culture and to undermine the teleological argument of growth and development which more often than not shape coastal politics.
Coastal atmospheres: the peninsula of the blessed and the art of noticing