Our journal title, Venti, refers to the winds, the sixth issue, “Wind,” explores the concept of wind and reflects on prior contributions to Venti thus far. In this way, the winds and this issue raise questions and explore the dichotomies of wind–wind as both giving and taking life, as creating beauty through erosion and destroying lives and structures as tornadoes. This issue considers our past to look forward to the future. Wind is both a natural movement of air and a dynamic aspect of the environment. Winds blow, activating a space and reminding us of our place in an environment. At the same time, wind is itself a natural phenomenon, actively creating the very climate and space in which we exist. In this way, wind has long been perceived as a carrier - of philosophical meaning, of physical particulates, seeds to germinate in fresh soil and allergens that signify the starting of spring. What forms does the wind take across cultures, as well as in disparate literary and artistic mediums? How is the wind — as something intangible, difficult to grasp, or even ascertain — harnessed as a product of colonial and ecological extractivist practices? 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? Contributors to Venti’s “Wind” issue examine and suggest answers to questions of the interpretation of wind in theory of aesthetics, film, visual art, and more.

In many ways, wind allows us to grapple with air because of its active participation in daily life, weather, and atmosphere, and at times a force of destruction. In film, for example, winds are utilized as allegories of a character’s internal thought processing or as a force that brings characters together or tears them apart. In his article, Douglas Macleod examines the violent winds of tornadoes and their impact on the human psyche and belief systems as exhibited in the film “Taking Shelter.” Likewise, David Schwartz interrogates the winds as a character of its own, at once bringing joy and despair, in Hayao Miyazaki’s film, “The Wind Rises.” Schwartz thoughtfully points out how the art of animation brings to life the “wave-like rippling of grasses [and] the winding paths of smoke” that visualize the moving of the winds throughout the film’s narrative. 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. Is wind simply a part of the natural environment or is it an environment of its own created by air? Lisa Moffitt explores this question while analyzing architecture as a way to design wind and environment, querying how architectural structures can make wind tangible rather than invisible. We wonder whether air and wind are one in the same, or able to be separated, visually, figuratively, and ecologically. In this way, air and wind are at once intertwined and two separate fixtures of the environment, one of many dichotomies explored in this issue.

The connections between air and wind, between physicality and invisibility, enable reflection on how wind has been understood across time and cultures. We can wonder how wind relates to other aspects of nature, and how that relationship grows complicated in different cultures as a result of climate change and colonization, as control over the land is violently stolen and these choices leave irrevocable marks on the environment and those who inhabit it. On the other hand, the fluidity of wind can at times appear soft, gentle, welcoming, sympathetic. Wesley Cornwell explores these qualities of air in Walt Whitman’s writing, considering how wind “softens the boundaries of the self and engenders a deep sympathy with/in/of the world. Unfurling our bodies into the wind, we find ourselves met with sensuality and tenderness.” The perception, the understanding, of wind over time can be charted in literature, philosophy, and the visual arts, as is apparent in the combination of essay and visual contributions in this issue of Venti. Dylan Wang traces the visualization of wind in traditional Chinese literature such as Analects (Lunyu) and Song Yu’s “Rhapsody of Wind” (“Feng fu”), exploring the characterization of the winds as cosmic forces in Chinese philosophical thought. From a different perspective, Li Xu offers a cross-cultural analysis of wind in Chinese aesthetics by placing it in conversation with the French philosopher Merleau Ponty’s conceptualization of wind. Xu writes, “Wind, in a way, is the prerequisite for the world to reveal itself to us.”

If winds lead towards reflection, the “Wind” issue also seeks to reflect on the history of this journal. Since its inception and first publication in 2020, Venti has brought together academics, visual artists, musicians and sound artists, scholars and creators from a wide range of fields to consider air as an aesthetic, as an experience, as a natural phenomena. For example, Eva Horn demonstrated in “Airborne: Air as a Social Medium” that wind is a messenger of both good and bad airs. In his article from our first issue, “Atmosphere,” Tonino Griffero described the wind as a quasi-thing, which engenders the feeling of being both within and beyond one’s immediate surroundings — in turn, wind is both within and beyond one’s grasp, knowable and unknowable. In our “Wind” issue, contributor Fiona Keenan explores Griffero’s ideas within the context of the theater and its use of wind machines to create something both real and artificial. Similarly, Kaitlin Moore examines the winds as a visual and physical link between Earth and the cosmos alongside examples of the author’s astrophotography. Moore interrogates the relationships between the winds, the Earth, and the broader universe through the Māori tātai arorangi that visualize how the wind god Tāwhiri used the winds to remain connected to the Earth and his family. 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.

Within this issue, we are able to reflect on the distant and near past and introduce new ideas from new contributors to pave potential paths forward. The winds are a character of their own, bringing life and destruction. The winds make us aware of our surroundings, within the natural environment and those we as humans create. The winds form an allegory for life, and this issue will visualize and proffer how we think of air as it is moved, beckoned, and made visible by wind.