Air out your dirty laundry
collective event | Amsterdam | 2009 in collaboration with Natalia Calderon air out your dirty laundry took place in Block 58 at 11th of April 2009 and was developed and executed in collaboration with Het Blauwe Huis in Ijburg, Amsterdam.
Air out your dirty laundry
Project for communal laundry presented for the Blauwe Huis by Eun Hyung Kim
and Natalia Calderón
We have been taught to resolve our issues or problems indoors, at home. We
are educated to be careful about not to show them at public, not to air them
out. What will happen if we do air them out?
We propose to bring your dirty laundry outdoors, to make it mix and strike one
with another. To have you cloth together with your neighbor’s in a community
wash with the aim of cleaning the outcome of it.
Ijburg is a specially problematic neighborhood where people are not
comfortable with the neighbors they have. They complain about them, but
they do not try to fix their problems with the others. They better complain
individually than confronting their differences publicly.
By mixing together cloth from people that differ from each other, we do not
look after an instant solution in which problems between them get solved and
forgotten. We aim for people to look at this act as a sample, as a metaphor for
accepting that problems exist. It is not about eliminating them, but to recognize
them and accept the differences. They must be spoken at loud not indoors,
privately but rather outside.
It is important to highlight how public space has change through modernism
and postmodernism. Places of gathering used to be open spaces they were
including spaces. Individualistic culture has taken these places in which we
used to meet. Shopping malls and supermarkets had become our favorite
places to “go out”. Laundry has become also an individual activity. Each family
has its own washing machine. Consumism and individualism have infiltrated us
abolishing the concept of public and communal, over estimating individuality.
By a communal washing we also seek for people to meet outside.
Remembering past times in which women gathered to wash their laundry
together. Beyond the metaphor of airing out problems, we aspire with this
event to gather neighbors outside for them to build the public sphere by
establishing relations outside.
Processes of “Air out your dirty laundry”
1. one day before the event
- Ask people to attend tomorrow
( wash for free)
- Explain our project to people
- Give the flyer
2. event day (preparation)
- Settle the washing machine
- Settle the electricity - water in
- water out
- Settle the lines for the clothes
- Preparing Bottles and Stickers
3. event takes place
- People come with dirty laundry
(meeting place, communal washing)
- Documenting the evnt with photographs
- Hang the dirty clothes on the line
- Mixing the clothes from different houses
4. development of the event
- Collect the out coming water in the bottles
( the out coming water might be dark opacity into transparency)
- The stickers are put on the bottles
(The bottles ...1234567...)
- The washing finish,
then hang the clean clothes on the line
- Waiting people to pick it up
Necessary
1. Washing machine
(Cleaning the dirty laundry)
2. Electricity
(Functioning the washing machine)
3. Long tube
(Connecting between the washing machine and water)
4. Bottles (5 bottles of 5 liters per washing)
(Dirty water is put in the bottles)
5. Stickers
(The stickers are put on the bottles)
6. Lines and clothes pins
(Hanging laundry on the line)
7. Promotion
(Invitations and posters)
8. People that help us (1-3 persons)
Documentation of the event
We will document by saving the water that comes out from the washing
machine in different bottles one for each washing stage. A series of
photographic images will help us narrate of the event.
Eun Hyung Kim and Natalia Calderón,
March, 2009


