Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film Hardcover - 2002

Media reviews

“A hugely ambitious mapping of the complex intertwinings of film, architecture, and the body. We think of film as a predominantly visual medium, but Bruno insists that it is as much about the positioning and movement of the body in space—hence that is, as she puts it, ‘haptic’. This adventurous book will be of interest to anyone concerned with what we might call ‘mobility studies': the attempt to understand cultural performances not as the manifestation of fixed structures but as the expression of restless energies.”—Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University

“Bruno’s endlessly provocative narrative weaves film and architecture so tightly together that they swap identities. Buildings melt into fluid emotions while flickering images become astonishingly solid. Traditional disciplinary limits dissolve to reveal a completely different kind of map, a psychogeography of cultural life. In an exhilarating ride, the reader is transported across this vast hidden landscape to reach a whole new understanding of spatial experience. Essential reading for architects in love with the elusiveness of their own field.”—Mark Wigley, Professor of Architecture, Columbia University

“This is a journey into and an inventory of the alchemist lab, or Hexenkuche, out of which the Western infatuation with re-created spaces, places and motions has operated in the past 400 years—a vast continent of mimetic obsessions, now uncovered and cartographed with Latin lucidity, Neapolitan lavish, and a pinch of feminist stregoneria ... . Bruno’s atlas/book teaches the reader many things: among them, the meaning of topophilia, and how to never again mindlessly speak or write of something taking place..”—Wolfgang Schivelbusch, author of The Railway Journey