Report: Mapping the Currents, Housing for Winds in Molenwijk with to M•Others

The workshop. Photo by Sun Chang and Noam Youngrak Son

Report: Mapping the Currents, Housing for Winds in Molenwijk with to M•Others

In spring 2024 artist Sun Chang and designer Noam Youngrak Son organised a workshop for the Molenwijk community. The collective fabrication workshop Mapping the Currents, Housing for Winds in Molenwijk served both as a queer pedagogical participatory work in itself and as a preparatory device for the publication to M•Others #2. to M•Others is an artistic research on the ideas of M(Other)ing, practiced through creative publishing, queer pedagogy and community intersections.

Text: Sterre Herstel

The wind is howling in the Molenwijk. It blows through the corridors of the ten-story residential buildings, hovering over its grass lanes, before it arrives at Werkplaats Molenwijk. Today the wind brings a workshop by artist Sun Chang, already an acquaintance of the community, and co-facilitator Noam Youngrak Son. Six participants from queer and migrant Molenwijk communities are invited by Sun and Noam to delve into their relationship with the wind in the neighbourhood and with the wind in or as themselves.

The first step was navigating the wind in the neighbourhood through questions such as “Where does the wind meet you?”, “Where does it feel strong?” and “Is the wind warm or cold?”. New connections to the communal physical space were being made: “My children always name this corner the storm street!”

Next up, Noam took the group on a wind story across the world with a poetic-political image essay on how the wind transports and distributes, and how humans have been trying to gain control over the wind and the direction in which it flows: from high-energy to low-energy, warm to cold, and from abundance to scarcity. Through the eyes of Noam, we were able to glance at the political and historical interrelatedness of ourselves with the wind: “Wind is a current, a vector, a carrier bag that blows through various ecological, cultural, economic, historical and affective landscapes”.

The workshop. Photo: Sun Chang

In the third part, wind became an instrument for self-inquiry: “If you were a wind, what kind of wind would you be? Would you be a summer’s breeze or would you be a raging storm?” Participants drew and shared their internal whirlwinds of impatience, how they’d like to imagine themselves more as a soft breeze, or the storms they had seen in their lifetime – through the metaphor of wind they accomplished a storytelling of their personal storms.

We ventured on what the winds would need and a collection of methods to bring ease to storms came to the surface: praying, dancing, alone time, exploring, or having the wind of others sometimes coming to stillness. Taking into account our needs, Sun invited the participants to welcome their internal winds into their homes. The apartment floor plan of the Molenwijk houses became the canvasses on which we crafted the winds blowing through our spaces, and where the needs of our winds found a place. These individual floor plan sculptures merged as one collective work integrated into the Molenwijk map.

The workshop. Photo by Sun Chang

The participatory workshop will be the backbone of the design and development of the second edition of the to M•Others publication, which will be published at the end of May. The creative publication launch of to M•Others #2 will be held during the Queer Open Stage on the 26 May at 15.00. Mapping the Currents, Housing for Winds in Molenwijk is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stimuleringsfonds and the circular economy of to M•Others.