Full wind

There are invisible and evanescent things that are nevertheless the multi-millennial pillars of our world, the origins of the universe and the foundations of the night of time.

Perceived in cultures as the cosmic breath that gives life and creates movement, an intermediary between heaven and earth, the wind is the subtle force that governs time and directs space… to the four winds. It is the well-oiled engine of the great terrestrial mechanics, which gives rise to the tides, to the climate, which allows the dissemination and reproduction of plants, and which, through evaporation and erosion, shapes our landscapes by forming the lightest clouds as well as the highest mountains.

Invisible but omnipresent, as dangerous as it is powerful, the wind has played a part in the construction of human societies, which have gradually made it an ally in their development and activities. At the source of music, sailing and human leisure activities, in a relationship of cooperation between natural force and cultural development, the wind is at the foundations of transport, energy, the conquest of territories and wars.

Today, our industrial and post-industrial urban imagination has turned its back on the wind. But the imperatives of climate change are urging us to return to it. As the first stone of France’s first offshore wind farm is laid off our coasts, it becomes necessary to reconnect with these natural and infinite forces, to rediscover this culture of the wind and to grasp all the issues at stake.

Through works of art, scientific projects, historical archives, visual and sound installations, this exhibition crosses the cultural, technical and symbolic history of the wind, from yesterday to today, to give a new lease of life to tomorrow in this providential place of the wind that is Dunkerque.