Mapping the Rise of the Williamsburg Culture
Mapping the Williamsburg Culture
Through the mapping project, I seek to visualize the growth and decay of artist communities in Williamsburg. Artist communities including art galleries and art studios. The map will be presented through three layers, map 1982 and year 1992 and year 2012. Through layers of years, the comparison between of the amount art spaces, rental prices, and spatial territory can be established. Which will be helpful in examining how the artist community came to birth, and how did it move out.
The Williamsburg art scene started in the late 1980s around the north side of Bedford avenue because of the lower rent and the easy transportation to Manhattan. After art communities forms a popular subculture, however, in the early 2000s government began to allow business ventures to enter in and transform neighborhood. As real state agents moved in and began to rebrand the neighborhood to the wealthy financiers in Manhattan, art galleries found themselves to no longer be able to afford their rent. In 2010, The Brooklyn Paper, a community news group reported that one gallery had to move out because their rent hiked by $1000 per month. This blocked the possibility for the art culture to continue to exist in the neighborhood.
Therefore with this map, I wish to try to define the circumstances, which fosters the formulation of art communities. Apart from the rental pricing issue many news have reported, are there any other criteria related to developments such immigrant dominant neighborhoods, or undeveloped areas that allowed artists freedom to create? Secondly, I want to examine how the subculture in Williamsburg has interacted with other parts of New York. Are there connections between galleries in Chelsea and Williamsburg? How did the neighborhood start to make a name in the NYC media? Furthermore, how is this subculture transported to other parts of the world? Those research questions will seek to result in a global map, which reveals the spatial relationship of how the Williamsburg art community transmits its culture to the city and the world.
To me, the importance of this issue now is because this neighborhood is now going through dynamic economic changes. With real estate companies entering the neighborhood, a different set of social class and culture is gradually gentrifying the neighborhood. Several documentaries such as Guts Renovation and Brooklyn DIY has shown anger and nostalgic viewpoints about Williamsburg’s glorious past. Therefore I feel the urge to document this successful example of art development. The narrative I plan to use is the form of mapping in a “historical” narrative. Histories are often written which often happens when things are dead, by probing the dead past in my writings, may it also probe the question of why are the lifespan of subcultures are often so short?
Tentative Bibliography
- Bonanni, Adrian. Creative Class: The Rise of Richard Florida. New South Wales: University of New South Wales, 2004. Print.
- Will economic growth hurt the culture of downtown Detroit? Steele, Jazmine, Michigan citizen Journal, 2008
- Brooklyn DIY, USA, 2009, 75 min. Produced and Directed by: Marcin Ramocki
- Gut Renovation, USA, 2012, 81min. By Su Friedrich
- The Williamsburg Divide, Williams, Alex, The New York times, 2013
- The growth dividend : the city opens Williamsburg and Greenpoint to redevelopment–and won’t promise affordable housing, Ulam, Alex, City Limits, 2003
- 10 Things We Learned From This 21-Year-Old Williamsburg Time Capsule http://bedfordandbowery.com/2013/07/10-things-we-learned-from-this-21-year-old-williamsburg-time-capsule/
- “New Bohemia” from New York Magazine, June 22, 1992. http://zh.scribd.com/doc/155446947/New-Bohemia-Part1 http://zh.scribd.com/doc/155446906/New-Bohemia-Part2
Types and formats of Media or Artifacts
For the media artifacts accompanying this piece, I hope to collect Video Interviews, Underground Music, Photos, VHS video footages. Old photos and VHS video footages from the 90s will be to visualize the entrepreneurial spirits of the first artists in Williamsburg. Underground Music from Williamsburg will hopefully serve as a medium of sound time capsule, which will allow viewers to retrace the atmosphere of that era.
You’re smart to sample a few specific years, Jung. I wonder, though, why you’re skipping 2002. By jumping from 1992 to 2012, you’re glossing over a period of dramatic transformation — a rise and fall.