Reading Wind Diffractively: Elemental Chiasmus as Theory and Method

Wind itself, many have noted, is invisible. In both the archive and the field, we encountered the difficulty of getting wind into view ourselves, foregrounded by the many strategies developed to capture wind with the help of various proxies, instruments, and representations. Facing this difficulty, we here draw together work from elemental media theory and feminist new materialism to develop a novel theoretical and methodological approach to wind we call “elemental chiasmus.” We begin by acknowledging wind’s ephemeral nature. Instead of delineating wind as a definite object, we argue that wind is momentarily stabilised and rendered legible when it metaphorically “diffracts” through other elemental media. Across three sections, we trace different practices of elemental mediation which provide wind with a specific shape: In “Aeolian sensing,” we highlight past and present practices of atmospheric sensing which give wind horizontal and vertical shape by diffracting through particulate matter, sound, and electromagnetic waves. In “Aeolian geology,” we undertake an elemental reading of John Muir’s field notes to highlight his application of elemental chiasmus in making sense of both long-term geologic change and short-term changes in wind and weather. In “Aeolian art,” we finally turn to the artistic work of Leonardo Da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh to demonstrate how their related strategies of linear disegno and pastose capture wind by diffracting it through water and oil. Viewed together, wind “comes to matter” or accrues meaning through an iterative and open “diffractive reading” across elements; a method we call elemental chiasmus.