Rosa Whiteley: Cultivated Atmospheres

“Cultivated Atmospheres” spans geographies to archive the many ways specific atmospheres are made by food production: from ammonia rains due to intensive pork production; airs filled with fish scales in towns surrounding fishmeal factories; the clouds of methane from intensively farmed animals that encourage rainforest deforestation; or the (atmospheric) carbon calculations fuelling the continued EU farmer protests. Considering how our exhaustive food systems stretch into the skies, the project repositions food politics into the many clouds that emerge from it. By examining the political materiality of the atmosphere, “Cultivated Atmospheres” disassociates from the neoliberal notion of the atmosphere as a void, permitting endless atmospheric trashing. The project aims to consider how we can intervene with and remake atmospheres within ecological and climatic crises, moving beyond the capitalist carbon credit schemes and neoliberal notions of maximum capacities through which we currently view our skies.

Alternative forms of agriculture are already thinking through this transition from within the soil: rebuilding soils and promoting biodiversity. “Cultivated Atmospheres” realigns this active and passionate dedication to agro-soils, to the skies: considering what it means to cultivate an agrobiodiverse cloud. Or, to allow our stomachs to float in the skies. “Cultivated Atmospheres” examines cases of alternative food practices to rethink how we live within and remake our atmospheres – ultimately questioning how care for ecologies through food production may be informed by caring for clouds, and vice versa. Examples include the formation of microclimates through the dew ponds of England; drought gardens within the southern Mediterranean; shelterbelts to reduce wind erosion in crop farming; “clean air” city gardens containing pollutant-absorbing plants; and agro-ecological practices that keep carbon in the soils.

The project explores how the environment, and the food system, can be read in the clouds, and how different cultivation on the ground can be reflected in the clouds above. Clouds may carry omens in a certain color, messages in a certain shape, carry unexpected inhabitants, or deliver much-needed water. Within Athens, the project will consider how wildfires periodically remake the atmosphere of the Balkans Peninsula through a lack of rain-bearing skies, extremely hot airs, and a rise in pyronimbus clouds. The research will investigate what forms of food production and land management already exist, in an effort to create resistant areas to wildfires, working between atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, farming cooperatives, fire management experts, and ecologists, while questioning how food producers may learn to read the skies.

Licking fingers for the wind, tree sex from the east, turning libraries from the south, cheering the rage of the Meltemi, crickets cry in the gusts, battered by the Apeliotes, Sahara in my lungs, salt in their eyes as the Eurus exhausts.

We speak of things disappearing (εξαφανίζονται/eksafanizontai) “into thin air” or “into the wind”, as if the air were such an empty vacuum that it could swallow us whole. And yet, the air is a complex mixture of organic, mineral, lively, and living things, flowing with pollution, carrying seeds, allergens, strange smells, unexpected spiders, and even disease. When one turns a close eye, ear, or nose to what lies hidden in the air and its currents, they may discover other ways of seeing and sensing the world.

In the Aegean, the Boreas wind may bring a fertile bull or an angry downfall; the Sirocco/Notos/Notias/Garbis/Lips/Africus wind carries aching bones and mineral dust; the Zephyr/Pounentes brings the seeds of a blooming spring with salty marine exhaust; while the Apeliotes/Eurus refreshes crops until it drifts too far north, bringing heavy hail and gusts of agricultural burning. Across Athens and the Balkans, air masses converge from central Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa, depositing stories that shape navigation, agriculture, and cultural narratives.

Since ancient times, the winds have arrived with such seasonal clarity from the North, East, South, and West that they have not only been named but have also given rise to navigational directions. On the Tower of the Winds in Athens, Boreas, the god of the northern winds, blows stormy air from puffed cheeks, while the easterly Eurus carries bundles of grapes as the harbinger of spring. The naming of winds is common across many geographies, typically denoting topography-specific gusts or warnings of strong, fast katabatic winds. In the Balkans, winds from every direction bear multiple names – there are 27 named Balkan winds – and the matter they carry from diverse geographies and political regimes is embedded in the airs of the region.

As Tim Ingold reminds us: “It is not so much the wind that is embodied as the body, in breathing, that is enwinded”. To be enwinded in the Balkans is not only to breathe the environment, but to recognize that the winds are also constantly breathing you. Astrida Neimanis similarly reminds us that embodiment is not confined to the boundaries of our human bodies: “we are all bodies of water... Our embodiment is always already intersubjective and more-than-human”. An understanding of being enwinded reconfigures how one is situated within an environment – not as a discrete observer acting upon a passive world, but as a porous body shaped by atmospheric forces. This shift in perspective, from individuals processing their environment to being processed by it, helps attune us to the ways environmental forces act through us – socially, politically, and biologically.

To read the winds – and to tell their futures – is, therefore, also to hear the wind reading us. The winds are not merely environmental conditions but active participants in culture, knowledge making, and forecasting. As winds carry environmental information in their dust, sediments, and passengers, stories have long been told about the promises of fertility, pollen, sex, disaster, or distress that they may bring. Since ancient times, people have known that the first gusts of a northern wind signal an approaching storm – linking an understanding of air movement, temperature, and feeling to a future event held within the air itself. These forms of knowing constitute enwinded forecasting beyond the mathematical: they are signals and signs that return us to the plurality of the airs. We may all sit under the same sky, yet we move through different winds.

“Cultivated Atmospheres” is an ongoing project exploring the many ways people and other beings experience the winds of the Balkans – through processes of becoming enwinded. The project unfolded through research interviews with fire meteorologists, weather forecasters, atmospheric scientists, farmers, land workers, and other members of the public, focusing on how they have learned to read the winds and what signs they look for to predict the coming weather. The project also experimented with filming techniques that document wind and weather through careful observation in Athens – holding the camera close to the documenter’s chest while filming the plants and objects people refer to when forecasting. The resulting films and audio materials form an expanding archive of alternative meteorology.

Research trips to locations renowned for distinct named winds have informed the design of eight kites, devices conceived to understand the winds and all they carry. Each kite corresponds to a specific local wind, its form, weight, and surface calibrated to respond uniquely to shifting speeds, pressures, and directions. The kites are not only carriers of cloth and string but also carriers of knowledge, each becoming a sensor of air currents and an embodied drawing of their force. Their structure translates wind into sound, vibration, and tension, producing subtle signals that can be read by hand, ear, or eye.

The kites extend the project’s methodology into a material practice of forecasting: flying them allows one to feel the qualities of the Meltemi’s rage, the heaviness of Saharan dust carried by the Notos, or the fertile dampness of the Apeliotes. Rather than measuring wind through data points, they translate the experience of enwindedness into tactile encounters. As public objects, the kites are flown collectively, inviting people to stand with their bodies in relation to the wind and to sense how local airs shape perception, gesture, and attention. They are both tools for sensing the atmosphere and banners that acknowledge the many names, narratives, and cultural histories of the winds across the Balkans and the Aegean. In their flight, they propose a temporary re-mapping of the sky – an alternative cartography inscribed not on land, but in air.

With thanks to: Effie Georganta, Theodore Giannaros, Iasonas Stavroulas, George Papavasileiou, Panos Lymberopoulos, Christina Papakyritsi, Sotiria Smyrnaiou, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Sotiris Tsoukarelis, Antonis Politis, Elias Tziritis, Katerina Papagiannaki, Faye Tzanetoulakou, Ioanna Zouli.