Workshop “Making Maps of the Future” | Kiral

Workshop “Making maps of the future”｜Kiral

Date: Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 15:30–17:30
Location: Art Room, Matsudo Municipal Daiichi Junior High School

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A workshop was held for the art club of Matsudo Municipal Daiichi Junior High School, led by Kiral, an artist staying through the Long Stay Program. Since 2023, the art club of Matsudo Daiichi Junior High School and PARADISE AIR have continued exchanges through workshops, exhibition visits, and talk events as part of the club’s activities.

This workshop welcomed Kiral, a transmedia artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark, as the instructor and was held in the art room of Matsudo Daiichi Junior High School. Kiral’s practice centers on exploring the relationship between reality and imagination, expressing how that relationship changes as the boundaries between the two become increasingly blurred.

The workshop was organized with the cooperation of the art club at Matsudo Daiichi Junior High School in order to share this perspective with junior high school students and to engage in a reciprocal artistic exploration, allowing Kiral to learn how students from different cultural contexts perceive the “future” and the “unknown.”

The theme of the workshop was “drawing maps of the future,” creating a space where participants could expand their imagination and think about the future together. At the beginning, the history of how people have long drawn maps to understand the world and the spaces around them was introduced. It was shared in the lecture that maps are not only tools for showing locations, but can also serve as ways to think about invisible elements such as emotions and social relationships.

After this introduction, four themes inspired by the structure of the universe—“Big Bang,” “Twin Stars,” “Black Hole,” and “Nebula”—were presented. Participants selected the theme that interested them most, formed groups, and collaboratively created maps. Each group received a worksheet and discussed the theme while drawing a single map of the future together, freely expanding their ideas through conversation.

After the drawing session, each group presented their completed map, sharing what kind of future they had imagined and how they expressed relationships or events within their maps. Different perspectives and ideas emerged from each group, creating a moment where participants listened to and reflected on one another’s ideas.

Through the familiar format of maps, the workshop created an opportunity for participants to freely think about and discuss the future.

This text was translated by ChatGPT.