Visual Assignment 2

The image is a diptych of the side of a building overlooking the Spree. The image on the left was taken on a foggy afternoon soon after our arrival in Berlin, while the right was shot just after sunset a few weeks into the program. The reason I chose these images, taken from the same vantage point, was because I felt that they demonstrated the contrast between reality and fantasy that I experienced during my trip. I remember telling Chandan in my interview that I hoped to find a city that could be my own, in the sense that it would be a cultural escape from the tension between the Korean world of my upbringing and the American world I live in. However, I began to realize that Berlin has many of the same issues that I thought were only present in Seattle. In a more concrete sense, the first picture represents my initial impression of the city. After arriving from hot, beautiful Istanbul, it was a little bit of a shock to arrive in Berlin and see nothing but gray. The beauty of the buildings and our surroundings was a bit muted, and maybe even lost, in that disappointment. However, Berlin did grow on me. I expected to love it from the beginning, but I found that I only began to appreciate and enjoy the city after I started exploring it on my own. (A few sunny days thrown in didn't hurt either.) I had to wait until I had learned more about the city to see the things that I had overlooked. For example, after I read up about the Spree and the Landwehr Canal, I spent a solid afternoon walking along the river, and another day getting utterly lost in the pouring rain in the Spreepark. Seeing things under those weird circumstances, instead of being led around in a fast tour, were much more unique and personal memories for me. (However, I also want to say that I did enjoy all of our tours! It's a good thing, though, to have a good mix of guided and self exploration, I think!)

I also love these pictures because they remind me of how beautiful the city is. I love bridges, and so standing on that bridge and looking out at the river and the darkening sky was just breathtaking, and one of my favorite memories of the city. I love that bridges allow you to stand somewhere and to get a perspective from a place that you would normally be unable to reach. And I feel like I was also able to view the city in a way that took me some time to achieve, but once I found a way of experiencing the city that worked for me, I was able to enjoy it so much more. I feel that these pictures illustrate that progression in me.

Week 5 Video Log

Our program is now over, but this short (and rough) slideshow recaps our last few days in Berlin.

The Final Two Photographs

Rich with cultural history and contemporary contradictions, Istanbul has an extremely intricate composition as a modern city that goes far beyond its tagline of “where east meets west”. Prior to our arrival, my understanding of the city was colored mainly by middle school history classes, in which I learned about the Roman emperor Constantine, something about the Ottomans, and a lesson or two about the Russians in the Crimea. Coming to the city and experiencing it at the ground level brought a new understanding that challenged the Orientalized paradigm in my mind, and the three lectures by Orhan, Professor Danis, and Jen added to this by giving me a much more textured understanding of the city’s history, people, and modern makeup. Istanbul seems to be full of contradictions—it is one of the oldest metropolises in the world, yet mostly filled with buildings constructed after 1950. On one hand, it is one of the largest cities in the world, and on the other, it is homogenous to a degree that undermines the its identity as cosmopolitan. Its location on the Bosporus as a bridge between Europe and Asia (but more accurately, a link between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea) also makes it a locus with a rich and unique history of migration. The final two pictures of my photo blog were chosen because I felt that they captured some of the ideas that were on my mind after our speakers’ presentations.

The sixth photograph includes a mosque, one of the stereotypical and iconic images of Istanbul. However, from my vantage point, I also captured a valley of the city that lies underneath both the shadow of the mosque and the higher (higher class and higher elevation) dwellings that we were privileged to stay at. Orhan spoke to us about the dynamics between the “citizens” and the “people” of a city—that the city is designed for the advantaged, wealthy, politically powerful upper classes, but is ultimately most used and needed by the many people who are largely voiceless and powerless. I thought about the way classes organize themselves geographically, literally creating a map of wealth in the city, where the society’s highest reside in the high places, and the city’s lowest citizens reside in the valleys. In her own lecture, Jen talked to us about the history of Turkish identity, and more specifically, the struggle to identify what a “Turk” really is. Despite a great deal of ethnic diversity, she (and Orhan) mentioned how Istanbul became systematically homogenized under a broader definition of “Turk.” In this picture, I saw a contradiction between the diversity of identities (represented by the diversity of the buildings) and the knowledge that these vastly differing things were part of one identity. As Jen concluded, I realized that this unitary, communal identity was, in fact, contradictory. The idea of what is a Turk and the reconciliation between difference in the city are both constructed ideas. Clearly, these are very difficult ideas to illustrate in an image, but as I observed this picture, it brought up those particular memories from our lectures.

The final photograph served to illustrate a more specific point that Orhan brought up in his talk. As we walked around the city, he pointed out several homes that were slated for demolition, only to be rebuilt as an exact replica of the destroyed building. The row of houses in this photograph were located in an impoverished area of the city, where the government frequently relies on legal loopholes to force families out of their homes. Instead of spending money helping people renovate their homes, the government uses far more funds to rebuild them, the real intent being to move people. This modern mentality of the state dictating and influencing settlement contrasted sharply with the “pre-modern” system of the Ottomans, in which people were largely free to form their own communities, based on systems of invitation and self-governance. It was fascinating for me to learn about the highly democratic and “modern” city planning of the past, which allowed citizens to have incredible agency and influence in their neighborhoods. Conversely, it was saddening to see that the modern state is far less progressive than its predecessor. I began to realize that time does not necessarily create progress, as we have been conditioned to believe. The idea of learning from our past and fixing old mistakes clearly does not apply in this situation. Instead of improving, the history of cities, states, and communities has merely moved in a different direction in Istanbul; from a system of self-determination, it has become a system of power, in which those with power can manipulate those without.

In conclusion, my time in Istanbul helped me not only rethink my conception of the city itself, but also the relations between people and the state, communal identity, and the contradictions that fill them. Moving beyond a tourist’s perspective and getting to see more parts of the city helped to solidify what we are learning about movement and identity.

Visual Assignment 1: The Camera's Istanbul

1: The Camera's Power to Translate Experience

2: Shock and Otherness in the Built Environment

3: The Limit (Violence) of the Camera

4: Artistic Interpretation, not Scientific Binary

5: Capturing Memory

6: Illustrating Lectures: Power, Inequality, Migration, Modernity

7: Illustrating Lectures: Class, Gentrification

Research Proposal

Initially, I was very interested in studying the architecture of Berlin, and tracing the history and long-term cultural, religious, and ideological trends of Germany through its most visible artifacts. However, I eventually began to think that I wanted to examine a topic that had more visibility, more ability to change and adapt rapidly, and more immediate relevance with immigration. Studying more modern social and cultural trends requires, in a way, one to study something far more transient and modifiable than architecture. Therefore, during my time in Istanbul and Berlin, I plan on studying immigration and intercultural interaction as it plays out in food and (especially) street food culture. Instead of merely studying German traditions and heritage in its food and drink, I’m very interested in seeing how food is the perfect demonstration of cultural interaction.

As a child of immigrants, I’ve always been interested in how cultures interact and where the borders break down. I’ve noticed that religion and language, for example, are some of the most difficult areas to find interaction, but that one of the first points of interaction is food. A culture’s food is so closely tied to its identity, heritage, geography, history, and “cultural essence” that when cuisine begins to interact with other cuisine, I believe that cultures begin to interact with one another. In Los Angeles, there are large communities of both Hispanic/Latin American and Korean immigrants and communities. On a trip to visit friends there over spring break, I was treated to a meal that specialized in fusion of Mexican and Korean food—traditional Korean kalbi in tacos, or kimchi quesadillas. Lining up by the dozens were Koreans, Hispanics, and Caucasians alike. This memory resurfaced after hearing a description of currywurst—a traditional German food dressed in foreign flavors. With this as a starting point, I want to examine how stomachs can be a mode of cultural understanding and cooperation.

It has been a recurring theme in our readings that many minority groups in Germany were originally part of migrant worker programs, foreign armies, and the like. This kind of immigration has isolationism built into its core. I also found evidence of a strong Korean population in Berlin, mostly remnant of a migrant worker program in the 1960s. With these in mind, I'd like to explore this topic during the summer.

Haiming Liu and Lianlian Lin. "Food, Culinary Identity, and Transnational Culture" Journal of Asian American Studies 12.2 (2009): 135-162. Project MUSE. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. .

Ken Albala. "History on the Plate: The Current State of Food History." Historically Speaking 10.5 (2009): 6-8. Project MUSE. Web. 22 Jan. 2011. .

Michael Slackman. “National Dish Comes Wrapped in Foreign Flavoring.” NY Times, January 26, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/europe/27berlin.html?_r=1&ref=michaelslackman

Saskia Sassen

Since I have been told since elementary school that the United States has a unique identity as a "melting pot," it was a bit unusual for me to realize that immigration is more of a global phenomenon than an American one. In result, I found the Sassen reading interesting because it swept away all the strange, incorrect notions I had of immigration. As evidenced by the general fear of "outsiders" and the self-important belief that our country is the most desirable destination for those who are less economically or socially or whateverly blessed, I began to understand that immigration policy and our understanding of migration is viewed through a very skewed and egocentric lens. However, Sassen pointed out that European countries have not only experienced immigration that is more intermingled and fluid than in America, but also that they have seen patterns of immigration and intercultural interaction that is similar to American immigration history.

One aspect of this that interested me the most was the idea that immigration is far less individual than it is made out to be. I've heard since childhood of how my grandparents came to the US as a way to provide better opportunities for their families-- and this type of immigration does exist. However, Sassen points out that the greater force that mobilizes immigration moves groups, not individuals. Thinking of immigrants primarily as individuals seeking a better life in a better country leads to a fear that opening the borders would be inviting a flood of poor immigrants, and this line of thought eventually leads to racialization and hostility, both in public policy and in personal perspectives. Labor demands, such as the rise of factories during the Industrial Revolution, led to waves of migration far greater than poverty did.

The article is long and dense, but what I got out of it is just a better understanding of how immigration works: it is logical, very scientific in its predictability, and less threatening than it's made out to be. Specifically relating to the upcoming trip, it was interesting to read about the immigration history of Germany, how the different ethnic groups interacted, how Germany tolerated migration through the country but resented settlement in their borders, and how the racialization of certain groups led to hostility.

beginning

in june, i will be heading to istanbul and berlin for the 2011 uw honors program on mobility and negotiations of identity. this blog is dedicated to that upcoming trip!