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World Wide Wind Chime Festival

May 21 – July 31, 2022

online exhibition

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"We have a tendency to think of Earth as a closed system. It is not. We do not live in a sealed spacecraft, isolated from the environment in a convenient bubble of air. We travel rapidly through space and time with our windows open, constantly exposed to the complex ecology of the galaxy and all it contains. We are windblown. And, while one of the consequences of this openness may be bouts of influenza, another could be the very existence of life itself." — Lyall Watson, Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind (1984)

Welcome to the world wind chime festival, a virtual exhibition in which artists from across the globe present their own live-streamed wind chimes, swaying and ringing in chorus with one another even though they are many thousands of miles apart.

To learn more about each of the chimes presented here, please view the artist checklist.

The wind chime festival was co-organized by us — artists Ellie Hunter & Laurel Schwulst. We came together through a joint interest in art in the public realm, and the importance of providing opportunities for participation in the civic commons that aren’t always governed by institutions that require big budgets and lengthy bureaucratic processes.

Moreover, we were interested in the concept of wind as a connective tissue, and the wind chime as an object that makes us acutely aware of our interdependence. Is it possible for an artwork to reshape the fear and bias we have developed over the last two pandemic years towards the idea of being interconnected? How can we embrace co-presence, shared affect, and forces of nature that move between us and bind us in a way that is celebratory, creative, or poetic?

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