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What is belonging?  Or rather, how?  Belong-ing implies that it’s an action in movement, constantly fleeting, always changing.  

How is belonging? You establish relationships with people that you can rely on and who can rely on you. You engage with certain objects in the environment. These actions can give you entry into the social, cultural, economic, and political networks that make a place, and feel that you can take some kind of role in that community. To me, this participation, as marginal or ephemeral as it may be, is the workings of belonging.

I don’t know how individual people in the various cities I visit create their belonging. I can only assume. The following images are my personal glimpses into the hidden mechanics of belonging in New York, Tokyo, and Barcelona.  

Economic belonging
Individuals contribute to the economic circulation of a city. This interaction creates a consumerist role for the person. Whether intentional or accidental, desired or resisted, this is one of the most basic actions of belonging to a community.

Political belonging
One form of participation in these particular cities was the imposition of political speech onto the street. From protests to graffiti, private beliefs were etched onto the urban landscape. As rebellious as this is, just as a child rebels against his or her parent, to me it seemed to be a show of their belonging.  

Belonging by not belonging
There are those who are on the margins of participation — those who are ignored on the street, those without an imposing voice. Their ways of belonging are more invisible to me than those of anyone else. As outcasts or strangers, how do they belong? What does their presence say about the other ways of belonging? What does this say about me?

chika