For my final project of this semester, I wanted to challenge the romanticized ideas of my city, Los Angeles. Many view Los Angeles as a city of opportunity and entertainment, a view that is deeply rooted in the interconnected culture and media that has the city in a chokehold. By remixing a 1920s map of Los Angeles and Orange Country, I aimed to juxtapose the city’s image with my own personal experiences. I wanted to present my city not as a place of fantasy, but as a familiar place that is filled with memories and mundane life. My approach was to personalize this map by overlaying photos from locations I thought were significant in my life, such as my multiple schools and friends’ houses. I also edited the map to reflect what I value about the spaces, highlighting meaningful locations, crossing out others, and creating a legend to portray my perspective.
The primary goal of my project was to challenge the externalized fantasy that many people project onto the city. I have met many people who dream of visiting the city, and each time, I found myself not understanding their views. For those who have grown up in Los Angeles or lived here for a long time, the romanticized city is different. It’s a home, where growth happens along with mundane and difficult experiences. My project is to make the gap between these two ideas by remixing the map and making it personal, emphasizing the city’s role as a collector of memories.
The process of remixing was a central part of how I developed my critique. A map from the 1920s was my starting point as historical artifacts, especially maps, have a connotation for neutrality. Maps are traditionally viewed as an objective tool made to lead the viewer to their destination. However, I wanted to challenge this objectivity by layering my personal experiences over the map. This introduced subjectivity and emotion into an objective artifact. Places such as local hangout spots, friend’s houses, schools, and the places I have lived became the focal points of the map. Each photo essentially created a story of my life by piecing together memories. This transformed the map from a historical document into a medium for storytelling.
Additionally, I drew on the map, adding changes and created a legend. By highlighting specific locations that had meaning to me and crossing out others allowed me to represent my critiques. Locations that many see as landmarks, such as tourist attractions, were covered or ignored as they had less relevance to me than the memories that were formed. This act of covering is itself a critique, a way to represent my personal perspective, offering an interpretation of the city in my own eyes, a Korean American, immigrant, woman.
In this way, remixing the map became a reflection of the relationship between remixing, originality, and identity. Remixing is usually seen as an alteration or change of the original, but my project shows that it can turn something into its own work. By using existing historical artifacts and transforming it with my own personal experiences, I created something that was entirely new and reflected my own identity. This map is no longer a representation of land, it is a new portrait of my personal relationship with the city of Los Angeles, shaped by my memories and experiences. This shows the historical and personal significance of how my identity is formed through the remixing of multiple factors.
Furthermore, I am remixing the established idea of the city of Los Angeles. In this project, I used remixing to critique not only the idea of Los Angeles, but the assumptions that were made about what I remixed, a map. By altering the map’s purpose and the old aesthetic, I created the question of the valuable memories everyone holds. My edits highlighted the ways in which a space is subjective based on the value that is assigned to it based on personal experiences. In doing so, I emphasized the importance of questioning what defines the value of locations and spaces.
The critique that I brought up in this project is not just about the city of Los Angeles but about the broader process of labeling places. Every city or town carries a narrative that shapes how it is perceived by the public, and Los Angeles is one of the most fantasized cities in the world. This also carries over to the town of Northampton. Going against my critique, I can not physically imagine a life before college in Northampton. It is hard to think that people grow up in this town. This however proves that memories create the idealization of places. Without experiencing moments of my life in a location, I would not have different perspectives than those who do not live and shape this city. By remixing through layering, altering, and personalizing, I am able to alter what people believe Los Angeles to be by showing a city with memories and experiences, by not just me, but by millions of people.
In reflecting on this project, I see it as a final step of utilizing what I have learned in this class. Throughout the semester, we discussed the ways in which remixing can challenge original ideas and works by creating new meanings. My project takes on this idea by using a historical map and transforming it into a personal artifact that critiques both the object itself and the cultural fantasies that many create of the city of Los Angeles. This process has taught me to use critique as a creative tool, learning how to use my materials in a personal and analytical way.
In all, my project explores how personal narratives can change the broad cultural ideas surrounding locations. By remixing the map, I was able to create my idea of Los Angeles that is created from my own personal memories and experiences, challenging the highly fantasized city. This is a way I am using my identity as someone who grew up in Los Angeles to critique its popularity. I hope that many are able to reflect on their own relationships with the places that they have been, considering how their personal experiences shape and challenge the narratives that are created by culture and history.