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Music Video Spaces

Atmospheres, Imaginaries, and Negotiations of Audio-Visual Spatial Relations

Music Video Spaces cover

Music Video Spaces

Atmospheres, Imaginaries, and Negotiations of Audio-Visual Spatial Relations

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Pre-order. Available Nov 12 2026
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Description

Music videos conceive, depict and perform a variety of imaginary, communicative, social and cultural spaces and thus can contribute to sharpening our artistic and academic sensibilities and imaginations of the production of space.

The production and representation of space and place in film and (popular) music has received increasing scholarly attention. However, a surprising gap appears at the most obvious intersection of these two fields of study: the music video. While urban settings have dominated in music video history due to many popular music genres' close ties with urban scenes and sounds, some music videos address classical tropes of the sublime and concomitant representations of nature, like forests, deserts, mountains or the sea, while others explore the spatialities and visualities of recently emerging scopic regimes, such as Google Street View, the vertical perspectives of Google Earth and drone footage.

The collected case studies cover a variety of European cultures and geographies, including mountain, desert and urban landscapes. In so doing, the edited volume probes and underlines the versatility of music videos as a highly sensitive medium of spatial reflection of times in which societies, political formations and the climate are undergoing radical changes.

Table of Contents

Music Video Spaces: Introduction and Overview
Maximilian Jablonowski (University of Vienna, Austria) and Johannes Springer (University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany)

I. Foundations
1. Music Video's Hybrid Audiovisual Spaces
Mathias Bonde Korsgaard (Aarhus University, Denmark)
2. Carto-Clips: Map-like Imagery in Music Videos
Tania Rossetto (University of Padova, Italy)
3. See What I Sing: Finnish Lyric Videos, Karaoke Aesthetics and Narrowing the Gap Between the Artist and Her Audience
Anna-Elena Pääkkölä (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)

II. Urban Music Video Spaces | Vertical and horizontal
4. The Big City as a Musico-Visual Phenomenon: Aesthetic Experience of Urban Space in Contemporary Music Videos
Antoine Gaudin (University Paris 3, France)
5. Socialism, Electoral Politics and 'Plastic Soul' in London, 1981-1987
Owen Hatherley (Independent Scholar, UK)

III. Music Video Time-Spaces | Atmospheres and Nostalgia
6. Contested Chronotopes? Claiming Nature, Past, and Belonging in Austropop Music Videos
Bernhard Tschofen (University Zurich, Switzerland)
7. Dérive: Space, Sublime, Beauty
Stefan Hartmann (University Augsburg, USA)
8. 'Alpenrap' / Alpine Rap: Contested Imaginaries of the Alps in Hip Hop Music Videos 1983-2024
Maximilian Jablonowski (University of Vienna, Austria) and Johannes Springer (University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany)

IV. Music Video Spatial Politics | Belongings and Protests
9. Desert (Be)Longings: Space-Bending, Identity Play and Sounds of Elsewhere in Contemporary Israeli Music Video
Alexa Altmann (Humboldt University, Germany)
10. Spaces of Discomfort and Spaces for Escape and Refuge. A Panoramic View Through Spanish Music Video
Monica Salcedo Calvo (Universidad Autónoma, Spain)
11. Music Video as Mediatized Protest: Pitura Freska's Venessia in Afito
Janine Schemmer (University of Vienna, Austria)
12. Cycling the City: The Role of the Bike in Contemporary Music Videos
Johannes Springer (University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany)

Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Nov 12 2026
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Pages 272
ISBN 9798216376767
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Maximilian Jablonowski

Maximilian Jablonowski is a lecturer at the Instit…

Anthology Editor

Johannes Springer

Johannes Springer teaches cultural studies at the…

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