Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Seeing Lost Enclaves

Hear from the Library of Congress Innovator in Residence on Visualizing Providence, Rhode Island’s Chinatown.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working to support the preservation of America's Chinatowns. Sign our petition today to commit to the cultural preservation of America’s Chinatowns for future generations.

Jeffrey Yoo Warren Headshot (2023) by Library of Congress/Jeffrey Yoo WarrenNational Trust for Historic Preservation

Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Introduction
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Jeffrey Yoo Warren Introduction

"My name is Jeffrey Yoo Warren. I go by he/him and I live in Providence, Rhode Island on Narragansett land, and I also live in what used to be Providence's Chinatown during about 1904 to 1914 before it was destroyed as part of the widening of a nearby street."

"... I'm the Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress for 2023-24, and I'm working on a project which digitally reconstructs early Asian American enclaves and other enclaves of color across the United States."

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Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Providence, Rhode Island's Chinatown
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Providence, Rhode Island

"I really got fascinated with both the fact that the neighborhood that I live in today, which doesn't sort of show any sign of it, was this vibrant center for Chinese American and Asian American life, but also that it was so invisible."

"... And as an artist, my work has really developed from that starting point into a project about these hidden spaces and what they mean to Asian Americans today."

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Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Growing Up in Somerville, Massachussetts
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Growing Up in Union Square in Somerville, Massachusetts

"When someone mentions Chinatown to me, it actually brings me back to my memories as a Korean American growing up, mostly outside of Korean American enclaves, but not entirely."

"I think one thing that this project has helped me to understand is when I didn't recognize the degree to which I did live in Korean American community.   I used to live in Union Square Somerville in Massachusetts, and within a few blocks of my front door, I had a Korean grocery, Korean laundry, a restaurant, a video rental shop.

I think my history and connection to Asian American enclaves and often specifically Chinatowns, really pushes me to think about the way that different Asian American communities develop a sense of place and communal identity, group identity, today in the sense of a city in a neighborhood and things like that. I've learned more and more about early Asian American communities and the ways that they constructed community, they built community physically and otherwise. I think that's been something I've really been thinking a lot and direction that  my artwork has been going in."

The Relational Reconstruction Toolkit

A key part of Yoo Warren’s work at the Library of Congress involved building a Relational Reconstruction Toolkit, a set of guides that would provide techniques for others wanting to create an “immersive (virtual, 3D) reconstruction of an erased neighborhood."

Modeling

In Yoo Warren's Modeling tutorial he walks users through the process of building structures using visualization tools and archival records. Each of the three clips below shows the ways in which Yoo Warren built the model of Providence's Chinatown.

Atmosphere
The Atmosphere tutorial looks at creating “emotional space-through lighting, weather, textures & movement.” Yoo Warren worked with Alicia Renee Ball, a multidisciplinary artist and designer to create a sense of place. As Yoo Warren describes, these elements create an "emotional tone."

Soundscapes
The Soundscapes part of Yoo Warren's tutorial is in collaboration with artist Ann Chen. As Yoo Warren states, “Adding sound to your reconstruction can be a powerful method to augment a visitor’s experience of your space and also reconnect with memories and histories.”

Seeing Lost Enclaves Providence Visualization (2023) by Jeffrey Yoo Warren/Seeing Lost EnclavesNational Trust for Historic Preservation

Seeing Lost Enclaves Soundscape Description
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Jeffrey Yoo Warren describes neighborhood sounds

The site of the grocery and shops on Burrill Street, Providence, in 2023, on what is now Empire Street.

"One thing I noticed because I live in the neighborhood, is the constant hum, which I guess it must come from all the different heaters and air conditioners and things. And on top of that, you know, Empire Street, it's a pretty big street now. So, almost no matter when you go, there'll be some traffic and it's not moving very slowly. But I did notice there were some birds. There were some small trees."

"Surprising, even in the middle of March, it's pretty cold, and I can hear myself breathing and breathing in this cold air, and there's some kind of motor going over by the big building over there. So, then you know, I was thinking, well, the road, it's much bigger. It's a asphalt road. And then you know I thought, would there be a road nearby that's closer to what it would've been like? So next I went over just a couple blocks towards the Jewelry District and I stopped when I heard a lot more birds. I mean, there's some bushes, small trees, some vines, and they were really making a lot of fuss, and there was a dog bark. There was just signs of more like residential life."

PastForward 2023

Yoo Warren presented at the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Annual Conference, PastForward. In addition to walking the audience through his toolkit he talks about other ways, as an artist, that he has tried to bring Providence, Rhode Island’s Chinatown back to life.

Seeing Lost Enclaves Burrill Models (2023) by Jeffrey Yoo Warren/Seeing Lost EnclavesNational Trust for Historic Preservation

Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Art and Chinatowns
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Art and Chinatowns

"My work focuses on Chinatowns and other ethnic enclaves that have been destroyed."

"I'm often facing this sense that the places and the communities and the people I'm studying, the situations that they're in, often violent, definitely involving displacement, that those things could happen to present day communities like Chinatowns and is currently in the process of happening. I think it's a particularly urgent form of gentrification among other forces because of how precious and important, especially Asian American enclaves are, and how relatively rare they are."

Seeing Lost Enclaves: Modern Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island (1916) by CinemaTreasures.orgNational Trust for Historic Preservation

Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Why Preserve Chinatowns?
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Why is it important to Preserve Chinatowns?

"Things that come to mind are community institutions, a feeling of togetherness. Things like language access, language justice, the ability to learn a heritage language or to grow up immersed in one's heritage language."

"Many people are trying to reconstitute communities, whether that be digitally or physically or in other forms through mutual aid, things like that. And so I think that Chinatowns and other ethnic enclaves represent a lot of surviving community networks and institutions, and relationships that have been damaged many times, but still exist. And so I think that this sort of turn towards community is tied up in the Preservation of those places as well."

This story has been developed in collaboration with Jeffrey Yoo Warren. Immerse yourself in Yoo Warren’s work to recreate Providence’s Chinatown and how he hopes to work with other communities as part of his Innovator in Residence project at the Library of Congress.  

Learn more about the National Trust for Historic Preservation's America's Chinatowns initiative.

About the author: Priya Chhaya is the associate director of content at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Credits: Story

Citation:
(2023) Seeing Lost Enclaves [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5f2Jwn
(2023) Seeing Lost Enclaves: Research. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y81PI8e4KZc
(2023) Seeing Lost Enclaves: Modeling. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvmezYMMfYE
(2023) Seeing Lost Enclaves: Atmosphere. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuEDVpuVr0 
(2023) Seeing Lost Enclaves: Soundscapes. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y81PI8e4KZc    

This research guide comes out of initial work in Seeing Providence Chinatown, inspired by the excellent RI Chinese History Project , by Angela Yuanuan Feng, Julieanne Fontana, John Eng-Wong, and others at Brown University's Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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