GENTRIFIED, WORDLESS NARRATIVE
gentrification (noun): the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents;
This is a story about gentrification, told from the perspective of the main characters, gentrification's most obvious 'victims' - the buildings themselves. It is a story of transformation and change.
The colours in this narrative work as a metaphor, representing the alterations suffered by the buildings: energising at first (yellow), then soothing (blue), and gradually fading back to black & white (though a very different black & white from the one in the beginning - we can see there was a change and that it left a mark).
However, this narrative can also be seen the other way round: buildings that have been abandoned and forgottern, that are degradating (black), slowly start being renovated and getting their ‘colours’ back (blue), to a point that the neighbourhood becomes very exciting and ‘new’ (yellow); with time, the exciment disappears but it is clear that the change improved the neighnourhood, leaving it more inviting and ‘solid’ than what it was at start.
The story works either way because gentrification is a cycle. If we were to gentrify each neighbourhood of a certain city, by the time we finished renovating the last neighbourhood, the first would already be deteriorated and abandoned. There would not be enough people with sufficient financial means to populate every gentrified area, therefore making gentrification unsustainable in the long run.
