A Community-Based Somatic Art Workshop by to M•Others
22 February 2025, 16:00–18:00 / Casco HQ
Artist Sun Chang, a longtime friend of Casco Art Institute and former collaborator of Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills, presents the workshop How to Become Family(s)? in our office gallery on Saturday, 22 February. The somatic art workshop is designed for queer and BIPOC migrants. It navigates experiences of belonging within these communities. This workshop was developed as part of the to M•Others project, which was initiated by Sun Chang alongside former Casco team member Rosa Paardenkooper and others.
The workshop revolves around a semi-fictional story. This story interweaves a fairy tale about the protagonist, Wind’s search for a family, with real-life interviews about family re-making. The workshop is an invitation to embody Wind’s spirit by embracing its non-human, non-binary, ever-changing, and migratory essence.
Through activities such as drawing sessions, a breath ceremony, a sharing circle, and a communal reading session, the workshop unfolds stories of migration, queer kinship, and family wisdom, thus guiding the participants toward new ways of becoming family(s).
RSVP via info@casco.art. Please bring an object that represents family to you. During this workshop, the object will become part of our collective ritual space. Capacity is limited to 15 people.
Background on the workshop and the to M•Others project
This workshop is developed by to M•Others. It is an artistic research on the ideas of M(Other)ing, that results in a translocal queer and feminist archive and pedagogy of practising family embodiment and care systems. For to M•Others, M(Other) is a verb, to practise taking care and receiving care, regardless of gender, age, social status of being a mother or not. M(Other) is an intention, to relate to each other and all kinds as a family, or clusters of families.
How to Become Family(s)? is co-created in progression by a group of creative professionals and local queer and migrant family practitioners from the Molenwijk neighbourhood (N.B. Molen is Windmill in English), via an abundance of personal exchanges, interviews, collective fabulation workshops, and artistic reflection. It has been practiced and connected with communities in Nyeri, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Amsterdam. Together, we experiment on the artistic and somatic expression for the shared intention of becoming families with all kins, that serves the purpose of community healing, in terms of desires of belongings and resistance to not belonging to.
How to Become Family(s) is an artistic research project, directed and pedagogically designed by social artist Sun Chang. It is featured in the creative publication to M•Others #2, with graphic design by Cleo Teh and translations by Jumana Azzam (English-Arabic) and Rosa Paardenkooper (English-Dutch). The Wind Story is written by Sun Chang and edited by Rosa Paardenkooper. The interviews were contributed by Molenwijk residents Martina, Isa, and Angèle. The pedagogical visual Our Wind House in Molenwijk was created in a collective fabulation workshop, co-developed by Sun Chang, communication designer Noam Youngrak Son, and the educational department of Framer Framed (art educators Wendy Ho and Sterre Herstel). The project was kindly consulted by landscape researcher Imogen Thea Humphris and actively shaped by local participants Angèle, Enaam, Flora, Isa, Nardelly, Noam, Sonya, Sterre, and Sun.
