Venti: Air, Experience, and Aesthetics invokes both the number ‘twenty’ and ‘the winds.’ Conceived in the year 2020, the journal is a forum for discussions centered on the year’s foregrounding of air, its related themes, and historical, interdisciplinary, and critical resonances. Ventiasks: how do we become aware of something invisible and of things that are always in the air — such as the air itself? Investigating this query in a series of thematic issues, Venti explores the indexical qualities of air and our awareness of it through effects and affects.

Wind 

Venti Journal’s sixth issue, “Wind,” examines the dynamics of the natural movements of air. If air and atmosphere are thought generally to be considered as a surrounding, how do the movement and currents of wind allow us to conceive of air as an active force? 

As the name of our journal refers to the winds, we invite submissions that reflect upon articles published in any of our previous issues. 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, 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. 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. 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? 

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? Following this line of thought, how can we understand wind to be a starting point to answering the question of how we might depict air? Our thoughts might wander between Putti blowing air at the bounds of maps,  to animated Renaissance draperies,  to contemporary kinetic sculptures. 

We invite essays that analyze the relationship between air as an animating force and as an environmental surrounding; our awareness of air through wind; wind as a force of destruction or renewal; wind as a spiritual force; the politics of wind; depictions of wind in both text and image. 

Submission Guidelines: 

Please submit an abstract and short bio by June 13, 2022, to venti.journal@gmail.com

While the majority of articles are written by art historians, philosophers, and literary scholars, Venti is foremost an interdisciplinary journal. We embrace intellectual diversity, but we ask you briefly to explain terminology and ideas that may belong to a specific discipline. Please read our previous issues before submitting a piece to understand our tone and style.

All articles should be between 1500 - 6000 words, title and endnotes are not included. Beginning with our fourth issue (“Inhale/Exhale”), we will accept three types of essays:

1) Long Form Essays - 3500 - 6000 words

2) Personal Essays - 2000 - 5000 words

3) Short Form Essays - 1500 - 3000 words

Style and format should be consistent with The Chicago Manual of Style. On the cover sheet please provide an abstract and short bio of 100-150 words. Articles should be accompanied by a Microsoft word document with images and captions. We also accept poetry and visual artwork.