Air (review)

A new volume in the Alphabet City Media Books Series, Air is a perfect illustration of what this series is all about: a multilayered, transmedial, both critical and creative approach to a typically postmodern phenomenon that cuts across the various aspects of contemporary daily life (previous issues feature themes such as "Trash" and "Food"). As one of the blurbs on the series web site reads: "This book is like having an art gallery in your hands" (Booklist).

The Booklist description is correct but incomplete. It is certainly true that the series attempts to present utterly elegant and extremely well-crafted books that have everything to seduce the reader: easy to hold and to keep, for instance in one's pocket; easy to read— yet not superficial; pleasant to look at thanks to their ideal blend of visual and textual contributions; and last but not least, instructive and useful.

The basic idea is to tackle a "thing" (in this case "air") and to turn it into an "object," that is, a thing that has lost its transparency and self-evidence and that, by resisting automatic understanding, generates endless wonder (and also a strange mix of awe and fear). The most interesting aspect of the approach this series has adopted is certainly the great diversity of viewpoints represented, often surprising but always appealing, on a subject whose importance we are not always aware of initially. In the case of this collection on air, one finds inevitably a number of essays on pollution and ecology (and it is a pleasure to praise the one by Bhawani Vankataraman on the earth's atmosphere and its changes through time here) or clouds, winds, smell, pneumatic tubes and so on, but the reader may be more directly attracted by less-expected subjects such as dust sculptures, the history and signification of the whispered letter h or a new form of sidewalk sheds.

It is a delight to stroll through this book as the editor takes the discussion from one viewpoint, style, insight, history and discipline to another. One can dwell on the well-chosen images and, above all, learn a lot about a subject that appears much richer and infinitely more diverse than what one could have imagined before reading this book. Nevertheless, the reader may also feel some frustration. This is not because the volume does not offer enough information, new ideas, wonderful illustrations and new forms of representation. Rather, the frustration results from a certain shallowness in the overall organization and structure of the book. Of course, Air is not chaotic or badly structured, but it has a certain playfulness and quickness that makes the reader permanently long for more.

For instance, one is always looking for the reason why this or that topic or approach has been selected and, corollarily, why this or that other topic or approach has not been chosen for publication. It is not a problem per se that many possible aspects and disciplinary views are absent, but one would have preferred a clearer editorial statement on the way the book was composed. To a certain extent, the same reservation applies to the various contributions. Most of the pieces are very well written and, I repeat, very enjoyable to read. Still, even in the best essays one may regret the absence of more detailed references. Names of authors and artworks appear and disappear without bibliographical references, and these absences clearly diminish both the book's use and its value. A well-organized bibliography and an index are missed not just because they are not there but because the reader has the impression that he or she cannot fully benefit from the wealth of information that is being offered.

It might have been helpful also to explain why some authors and works are not discussed (Stieglitz's Equivalents or Damisch's Theory of /Cloud/, for example—two classics in the field). Moreover, the link between historical or critical contributions, on the one hand, and...