I had heard about East Austin’s locals butting heads with the newcomers, but as I immersed myself into the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood, I questioned if I was part of the “culture vulture” epidemic. To further explore this conversation surrounding the tension between the “locals” and the “outsiders”, I chose to create imagery that focus on this clash and its consequences.
With the first GIF, I wanted to emphasize the destruction of East Austin’s newcomers coming into the neighborhood and essentially bulldozing over the “local culture” to make room for the “trendy culture” they tend to bring in.
With the second GIF, I wanted to abstract this tense dynamic by using a metaphor of a mixing bowl where you add too many ingredients together that it ends up spilling over and making a mess everywhere. The controversy of the rapidly-expanding gentrification in East Austin has been become so deep that it feels like the neighborhood can never return back to what it was before and that the locals can no longer escape the influx of newcomers that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.