Windy Metropolis—Part 1: Animation as method

Abstract Based on fieldwork in Stuttgart from 2022 to 2025, the animation Wind Witnesses is a fictionalization of the sweeping wave of microclimate protests in the 2000s, demanding the protection of fresh air corridors ( Frischluftschneisen ) as nonhuman entities threatened by the conversion of ostensibly empty spaces into buildings. This companion essay outlines three variations of “animation as method.” First, it offers a method of perspectival transformation for entering the world of animism, where nonhuman entities are not only seen as areas to be developed or as climatological objects, but, more critically, as part of the inhabitants' homes and as living beings. Second, it also functions as a mnemonic device, contributing to the maintenance of the collective memory of their valuable existence despite their invisibility, so that the citizens can reflect on the consequences of keeping them as they are for at least 100 years. Third, as an extension of the first and second meanings, animation presents a futuring method for different worlds yet to come, where the vitality of environmental elements is appreciated as co‐constitutive of our living spaces. To ground these three meanings and contextualize them in the immanent sense, the essay begins with a reflection on the political economy of multimodality.