Migration is a basic form of movement among people due to economic, social, and/or ethnic factors. The Placemaking project views this movement in isolation from its whence and whither, offering a new way of looking at migration.
Migration of Spaces
When people migrate, they take with them spaces, images, cultural practices, and ways of life. Once in their new homes, these exotic-seeming artifacts directly shape their surroundings, creating new spaces in turn. Such “migrated” spaces–e.g, grocery stores, snack stands, and market booths–have become permanent features in Berlin’s urban landscape, and often conserve a form and aesthetic all but extinct in their countries of origin. The Placemaking project aims to trace these migrated spaces, analyzing how they have positioned themselves vis-a-vis the city both before and after the fall of the Wall.
Migration of Images
In our everyday life we have long been witness to a movement of images around the globe– images that travel as moveable scenery through time and space, detached from their semantic and cultural contexts, and which take on a life of their own as bearers of information whose meanings change with one’s vantage point.
