Venti Journal & Collective
Air — Experience — Aesthetics
A journal and collective focused on examining the effects and affects of air
About
In Italian, the word ‘venti’ signifies both the number twenty and the winds.
Conceived in the year 2020, amidst the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, the journal is a forum for discussions centered on the year’s foregrounding of air, its related themes, and historical, interdisciplinary, and critical resonances.
The journal attempts to ask how we become aware of something invisible and of things that are always in the air, which is the air itself. Investigating this query in a series of twenty issues, each deals with a theme that explores the indexical qualities of air and our awareness of air through effects and affects.
Index of Issues
Atmosphere
.Volume One, Issue One, Fall 2020
Table of Contents
ISSUE #1: Atmosphere Overview
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.
Featured Articles
Airborne: Air as a Social Medium
Eva Horn
“ Air is not only a medium of the physical life of humans, animals and plants. It is also a medium of society. To socialize with someone means not only to breathe the same air, but also to occupy the same atmosphere as they do[...] Air is society, society is the shared experience of ‘being in the air.’ ”
The Wind Blows Where it Wishes: Wind as a Quasi-Thingly Atmosphere
Tonino Griffero
“Wind especially affects us on the affective-bodily level in the form of an atmospheric feeling poured out into (pre-dimensional) space, that is, as a very concrete experience, significantly both climatic and affective, physically and felt-bodily”
Strange Times and Weird Atmospheres
Marco Caracciolo
“This was a slow-moving, baggy drama in which the villainous “monster,” the virus, had to be accepted rather than defeated—at least, for the time being. The “new normal” that governments keep bandying about is, in fact, a state of uneasy and precarious coexistence with the possibility of a new wave in the outbreak.”
Featured Audio
ISSUE #2: Air Bubbles Overview
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.
Featured Articles
Mary Ann Caws
“Surely the bubbles do just that, they transport us beyond where we normally reside, and they make concrete the kind of magic in which Cornell so firmly believed… a pure and evanescent world indicative of another far beyond.”
“If You Think the World is a Balloon in Your Head:” Rethinking Vignettes
Andrei Pop
“The peculiarity of vignette is that it sets the subject emphatically apart from the world, like a richly decorated frame, while at the same time allowing it to emerge gradually, organically, like an inmate of the world itself.”
“Just like my dreams, they fade and die”
Esther Leslie
“The cuteness of the bubble as metaphor is always only another environmental disaster away from polluted foam spillages and fiery polyisocyanurate insulation catastrophes in the tower blocks of dystopian London or elsewhere.”
Featured Audio
Plein Air
Volume One, Issue Three, Late Fall 2020
Coming Soon
ISSUE #3: Plein Air Overview
In this issue, we feature new work on the historical and contemporary notions of plein air — the idea of creating art outside in the open air. Revolutionized and primarily conceptualized in the mid-nineteenth century with the advent of impressionist painting, 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.
Special Preview of Plein Air
In the Air: Ecology and Air Pollution in Nineteenth-Century British Art & Literature
Stephen Eisenman
Essay
American Atmosphere
Craig Perez
Poetry
Bad Air in the Anthropocene: The Global-Local Entanglements in John Gerrard and Cilla McQueen
Orchid Tierney
Essay
Venti Beyond the Issues
Up in the Air
By now we have all written and read the phrase: we are living in uncertain times. Designed as a short forum for critical and creative discussion, ‘Up in the Air’ solicits three to five contributors to write a short response to a question. All members of the Venti community are welcome to participate.
These questions inevitably reflect the changing course of our daily experience and how we understand the world and its aerial surroundings. As such, we hope to ground this ever-changing, ephemeral conversation in airy matters.
Question One
What does it mean to have things “up in the air,” or to understand air primarily as a carrier rather than as a pure element? What does it mean when the air is not just composed of air, but of other elements, like seasons (snow, rain, dandelion flakes), or more dangerous particles, like viruses or toxins? How does air, and everything it carries, dictate the way life is lived, and in turn, establish quality of life?
On Air:
A Venti Podcast
Venti hosts a podcast in collaboration with our issues. Each issue is complimented by a podcast that puts a member of the editorial board in conversation with one of our contributors.
Recent Episodes
Episode One - Atmosphere with Marco Caracciolo
Episode Two - Air Bubbles with Esther Leslie
Coming Soon
Episode Three - Plein Air with
Reviews
Books
Exhibitions
Films
Performance
Beginning in October, Venti will accept book, exhibition, performance, and film reviews related to the topics of the recent issues and the themes of air and atmosphere. We accept book reviews on scholarly and creative texts published in the last five years. Reviews should be no more than 1500 words. Submissions may be proposals or completed reviews.
If you are publishing a book related to our themes, please let us know and we would happily review it. We also welcome scholars and writers to be a part of our podcast to discuss their work or schedule a virtual book talk and workshop with our community.
Special Events
Venti hosts events related to the release of our issues. All members of the community are invited to join, but please rsvp. Email venti.journal@gmail.com with any questions or if you would like to collaborate on an event. We host workshops, performances, conferences, and readings. Due to coronavirus, all events are held on zoom or are pre-recorded and posted to our website.
Venti solely relies on donations to keep our journal running and to support our programming and projects. We appreciate all donations, no matter how small.
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