ABSTRACT
Air is, however, not only an element of escape, but it is also an inter-connecting substance of sustenance. It would be more prudent then to consider air as a participatory element that partakes in both absence and presence, leaving and staying. The dominant meaning associated with air currently is primarily that of hypermobility and placelessness. The denigration of place in contemporary culture, as Edward Casey suggests in The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, can be attributed to the fact that place is most often considered to be a priori – a given. The phenomenological importance of place breathed or inhaled has also received renewed interest because “place cannot be reduced to a site nor to a spot on a map or geographical coordinates. Place is something living, and its meaning and value cannot be separated from our experience of it”.
