In this issue, we feature new work on the concepts of atmospheres. Understanding atmosphere as the social and affective mode of air, this issue focuses on atmosphere as a means of relational experience. We begin with Eva Horn’s article on the theme of air as a social medium, progressing to the phenomenological and affective theories of atmosphere(s), before conceptualizing and unpacking the disciplinary contexts and applications of atmosphere and the broader themes of ecology in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

In this issue, we feature new work on the idea of air bubbles — the special kind of air that binds with liquid and enchants us with its elemental in-betweenness. We cover the vanitas of the seventeenth century and the scientific findings of the eighteenth, pause to contemplate symbolist visual fields, dream our way to the playful popping of surrealism, and conclude with the darker side of bubbles of the late-twentieth century, their political and environmental contexts, and end with a reflection of our present — on quarantine bubbles filled with the levity of bread.

In this issue, we feature new work on the historical and contemporary notions of plein air. Revolutionized and primarily conceptualized in the mid-nineteenth century with the advent of impressionist painting, plein air broadly refers to the idea of creating art outside in the open air. We seek to uncover the subversive aesthetics of creating in the open air and what it means for an artwork to be full (plein) of air, itself. Bringing together a series of articles that deal with these themes from impressionism to the present day, this issue investigates the aesthetics and politics of our being in and awareness of air. 

In this issue, we feature essays, poetry, and artworks centered on the inhalation and exhalation of breath. To inhale is to feel oneself intimately within one’s surroundings, a means of inspiration, corporeally filling one’s lungs and mentally arousing creative energies. To exhale is an expulsion of spirit, accompanying a whisper, song, or cry. Breathing is so necessary that it is generally an unconscious activity, an innate action, of being alive. Whether noticed or unnoticed, most simply, breath is the process of taking air into and expelling it from our lungs. Primarily focused on the contemporary importance of breath, the contributions to Venti’s fourth issue draw out the many aspects of respiration as an intimate, communal force — encompassing the political, historical, physical, poetic, and aesthetic capacities of breathing.

The aim of this issue is to expand readings of the body as a site of sensory appreciation to consider the air as a carrier of sensations. If sensing precedes knowing, then air, the body’s environment, must certainly precede sensing. Considering atmosphere as a milieu for sensation, how, then, does the air construct sensation and the senses as relational to each other, our social settings, and our own processes of feeling and reflection?

The wind is something that can and cannot be grasped, something that has been economically, spiritually, and ecologically exploited by human hands. Thus the wind, as an unforeseen and impenetrable aspect of the natural world, leads us to consider depictions of the atmosphere’s ephemeral qualities. In many ways, it is the wind that allows us to grapple with air because it is an active force in daily life, weather, and atmosphere, while at other times, wind acts as a force of destruction. If the wind becomes the means by which we see, feel, smell, and hear the air, we are made aware of air due to wind’s effects. If awareness of air is predicated on the effects of winds, how might we characterize the importance of movement, animation, and force to the consideration of the invisible?

Created in collaboration with Toby Wu of Harvard University, Department of Visual Studies and with our poetry editors Carmine Marrow and Nuno Marques

This special issue raises questions such as: What perceptual, critical, and creative modes are required to not only apprehend atmospheric violence but to address it? Which practices might help to stall or stop its reproduction and repetition? How does one temporally order the emergence of an Atmosphere of Violence, and how can we think, feel, write, and make, as we perceive these atmospheres to be un-subsiding?