Manifold | Seçil Yersel

Neither Breeze nor Wind, Hurricane

The Six Elements Air is Made of: Wind
Neither Breeze nor Wind, Hurricane

This article will begin as though it had been written in the 1990s, when both the climate and ecological configuration were not that complex yet, and gradually transition to the sudden, stormy atmosphere we now find ourselves into as of 2024. Now that you have begun to read those lines, let go for a while of your worried looks, anxious of the current course ecological events have taken. I’ll assume you are indoors, yet I still wonder what sort of a wind you are under the influence of right now. Therefore, could you please pause and take a look at which direction the wind is blowing from at the moment? To do so, you might need to open up the window, or, if you are outside already, pay closer attention to the matter. As it occurs, “attentive awareness” will undoubtedly affect the way you read the rest of this article. Now let us grasp hold of the wind along with us as we set off, attempt to seize it as it blows. The wind always materialises as a harbinger of news: sometimes in sudden gusts, sometimes as a continuous stream, it carries things from yonder, establishes invisible links between places, conveys sounds, smells, and objects; some we might see, some we might not, yet the wind displaces whatever is fixed in space; it itself may be invisible, but it gives itself away: it sends colours, textures, and objects flying; curtains become entangled, hair made a mess of, specks of dirt blown in the eyes, the surfaces of rakı glasses littered with dust, those who take to the sea become sick to their stomachs, ships and rowboats further drabbled in salty water, the directions indicated by the compass jumbled up, seagulls struggle to fly and cross between continents, roofs are sent flying, pollens spread in all directions; the wind is the indispensable condition of existence of the still world: it dislikes routine, drives us on edge, discharges rubbish into the sea, it always messes around with things, if only to a subtle extent, displacing what's here there and vice versa; only dragons perhaps enjoy the wind: if it weren’t for it, lifting skirts up, turning umbrellas upside-down, sweeping their leaves off trees all of a sudden, or, as though a hand on our back, either subtly supporting or hindering our walk, the world would be a dull place; if the air was something that merely existed, at a standstill, if it didn't change, if the surface of the earth wasn't warmed up irregularly, if the atmospheric temperature, humidity and pressure didn't differ, we would be left windless; if the air molecules remained forever static, what sort of a place would the world be...

In Istanbul, the wind carries all kinds of smells but the one that which made the most lasting impression in my memory is that of the sea, something I only truly took notice of when I moved to Berlin. I guess here, the wind blowing from the Baltic Sea carries the scent every now and then, or perhaps my nose, raised in Istanbul, remained on the lookout, searching for the least trace of the sea. Some time ago, Nilüfer Şaşmazer also wrote a piece, concerned with the wind, through the same medium, Manifold; I shall now carry on with the present article, propelled by the wind, so to say, which I garnered from her third footnote, referring to the “cosmic murmur” she mentioned. Nilüfer tells us the following: “The English word wind derives from a Proto-Germanic root, winda, which also means blowing. I chose this word because in Turkish, üflemek, or its variant, üfürmek, not only describes the hum produced by the wind but also evokes the üfürükçü, that is, a person who recites prayers for the sick, claiming that their murmur alone will heal them.” Progressing forth from this “cosmic murmur”, I would be grateful if you paused, and produced a light wind yourself (what a demanding writer this is) (or let us consider this a collaborative venture upon generating a text); I cannot be sure of how many of us are currently reading this article, but trusting that several of us are now simultaneously involved, I would like to ask you to blow the air contained within you outwards, and create, somehow, a manner of wind, an air stream.Inwardly, you will relax; outwardly, you will be propelled into motion. Now, picture in your mind that who knows how many people are doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment; right now, we are all bringing into existence a wind resulting from multiple air flows that commingle, and perhaps strengthen each other in cumulative manner. Yes, now let's all start: draw three to four breaths inwards, and think over the effect of the wind outside; a subtle smile may tag along with us: after all, we just performed a rather childish, yet altogether terrestrial action, whose roots perhaps extend back to antediluvian times. As we breathe in and out, our lungs and circulatory system capture what they need and expel what they do not. In one of the notes I took in my daybook, I wrote the following: “The air we blow back into the atmosphere, tens of thousands of times a day, is absorbed by the leaves of plants and trees, which later fall to the forest’s floor, and form the carbon-rich soil that nurtures our food.” Once we start to look at things in this light, how intrinsically and deeply connected and interdependent we all are on each other and everything!

The scope of this article provides me with appropriate reason to cast a look at a few interventions whereby either the wind or breath fills up balloon-like structures, and, as it does, reveals itself to us through the volume it generates. The 12^th Liverpool Biennial, which took place last year, between 10 June-17 September 2023, was curated by South African artist and curator Khanyisile Mbongwa. The event borrowed its title from the word uMoya, whose meaning, in the African isiZulu language, covers such notions as spirit, breath, air, weather and wind. Artists were invited to engage with uMoya and one of the works that resulted, uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, hinged on human breaths, filling up red balloons. As it occurs, black men and women have a long history of being prevented from breathing, extending from Eric Garner, who lost his life in July 2014 while uttering the words “I can't breathe”, to the numerous individuals enchained and condemned to suffocate in the holds of slave ships. This contribution to the Biennial by artist Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński grapples with breath, as an instrument of individual and collective liberation. For the purpose of this ongoing project, titled Respire (2019-), together with local participants, she assembled a videographic installation out of music, sound and breath. While ensconcing breathing as a bodily response against violence, she also hinted at both notions of pleasure and connection. “As we inhale, can we hold on to the pain experienced by our ancestors, and, as we exhale, let go of both suffering and traumas?” Where will the black individuals’ breaths which fill up these red balloons lead our thoughts to?

Earth, where we currently dwell, is the third closest planet to the sun in the solar system. The strongest winds observed on the planets which form part of the solar system are those that occur on Neptune and Saturn. We might find it challenging to even contemplate their speed (let us try anyway; perhaps we might hear it blow).Still, since we are currently on planet Earth, let us remain focused on here for the present moment. The human species, relentlessly trying to fathom and make sense of everything on this here planet Earth, has striven to comprehend the wind with the tools that art provides; to reach that end, indigenous peoples and tribes have mimicked it, underscoring its inaccessibility through their dances, masks and paintings, whereas sedentary, urbanised minds have unfailingly endeavoured to liken it to themselves, the human species, while representing it. Perhaps we have not felt estranged enough. Perhaps the fact that we failed to sufficiently exclaim “What in the world is it we are doing?” is the very reason why the Earth now reminds itself to us through such strong winds, storms, sudden changes in weather, extreme heat and cold waves and many more of the likes. While personifying natural phenomena undoubtedly helps us feel closer to them, could we begin to consider that, by observing the world through human eyes, and humanising it as we do, rather than becoming a part of the Earth which shelters us, we actually only assimilate it to ourselves? We may have normalised nature by granting it human characteristics through the agency of art, so as to be able to cope with it, but in doing so, we have actually arrogated it. Humanised nature is currently holding a mirror up to us, staring at us in the very way we have approximated it to ourselves.

 I used to walk a lot in Istanbul, and I still do in Berlin; sometimes the wind smells of the sea. When blowing in Berlin, the shortest distance the smell of the sea may have covered is roughly 270 km to the Baltic Sea, and 450 km to the North Sea; of course, both their smell is different, as is their taste, compared to the less salty Mediterranean and Aegean seas. I am now walking; at present, I am on Müller Street, whose name derived from the windmills that once stood here. The first of those mills whose record was kept was a Dutch one, built by a millwright named Kloß in 1809 (I am reminded of the cover of The New Yorker: The Impossible Dream, by Eric Drooker, 2021).

In 1846, the 22 mills which Müllerstraße sheltered made it the largest windmill field throughout Berlin. The street I now tread receives copious amounts of wind it would seem. A sudden gust sends a plastic shopping bag, which had been quietly and casually lying there in a corner a little ahead of me, flying past me at great speed, straight over my head. With a fleeting glance, I liken this bag to a balloon, which immediately reminds me of the Museo Aero Solar project. Thousands of plastic shopping bags being transformed, with the help of volunteers, into an art installation that can hover up in the sky, as long as the weather allows for it. Museo Aero Solar, a flying museum project developed by an open-source international community, first initiated by Tomás Saraceno in consultation with Alberto Pesavento, invites people to transform used plastic bags into light sculptures by inflating them with air. Through cross-disciplinary actions, workshops and meetings across the world, ranging from primary school programmes to Bruno Latour's Anthropocene Monument, the Climate Conference organised by Pablo Suarez and the Red Cross, and the steadily growing global climate strikes, more than 20,000 plastic bags were collected by a number of displaced communities in Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Palestine, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The installation essentially consists of one gigantic plastic bag, itself made up of thousands of recycled plastic carrier bags, which, when heated by the sun, rises up and hovers into the sky as though a weather balloon. As we look at this work, both human creativity and our ability to alter the environment and atmosphere that surround us immediately capture our attention, and we are awe-stricken by the sudden visibility it grants to an incalculable number of plastic bags: this is but an infinitesimal portion of all the plastic bags currently in circulation.

Wherever it was exhibited from 2007 to 2023, and still is, the Museo Aero Solar is recreated every time, with the support of the local population and volunteers. The aim, beyond the mere production of an image, is to hold talks and workshops, furthering the awareness created by the project.

Dismay brings us to a halt; who would have ever thought that one day, wind farms, otherwise referred to as wind fields, would be founded on the surface of the world. The first wind farm ever created was established in the USA in December 1980; a wind farm designates a cluster of wind turbines erected in the same location, used for electricity production. In 2021, as Europe sustained a wind drought, wind speeds dropped by as much as 15 per cent in countless regions across the continent. As of September 2020, wind farms accounted for 18 per cent of the UK's total energy production. However, by September 2021, this ratio had fallen to even below 2 per cent. In order to make up for the energy gap, the UK had to reactivate two previously discontinued coal-fired power plants. As we as a species multiplied our depictions and reflections of nature’s elements, so we also moved astray from its spirit; now, we might as well try to build a connection with the spirit, rather than pursuing the production of reflective objects

As the saying goes, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. And yet, the wind is currently being sown in wind farms across the world; in fact, according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council, the construction of wind farms operating three times faster than the current ones do should begin within the next ten years. Wind Catching Systems is currently developing one of those. Founded in 2017 and based just outside Oslo, the Norwegian capital, this company focuses on the development of what it describes as a “floating wind farm, based on a multi-turbine design”. As far as we know, the main idea that drives the Windcatcher system is the maximisation of “energy production over a concentrated area”. The project also includes a lift-based contraption designed to facilitate the turbines’ installation and maintenance. A photograph of the said lift-based system stands in front of our eyes, eerily evocative of a contemporary art sculpture.

A strong wind may potentially snatch flying balloons off the hands of their owner or seller all of a sudden. Some flying balloons, though, are too sheltered for the wind to grab; I am talking of those gold letter balloons, used in the context of birthdays or otherwise celebrations; we have always seen them separated from one another, although they hold the power to form sentences when brought side-by-side. They may appear tightly fastened and clumped up close together, but because they are inflated with air, due to the changes in temperature and the time factor that affect a place, they inevitably, gradually give in to gravity. With all their eye-catching brightness. Then again, balloons are not the only thing that are slowly deflating; so, too, are the first 10 articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite the fact that it was ratified by hundreds of country leaders three years following the end of the Second World War. Banu Cennetoğlu chose to present precisely those first 10 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formed by bouquets of gold letter balloons in her work right? (2022 - ). I am driven to think of the genocide currently occurring in Gaza, of the abysmal state of mind of those artists who keep raising their voices, diligent and hopeful, in the museums and exhibition spaces of those countries whose governments blatantly overlook human rights. What is the significance of contemporary art’s gestures and potency, the decisions implemented by the political system at such a speed that none of us could have ever predicted, or each of our manners of existing, within the political world, and rapidly progressing ecological collapse?

The wind, though we cannot see it, keeps shaping us and the world. Meanwhile, let us keep being influenced by – and influencing – it in turn, starting with our own breath. May our wind be fair and plentiful.