“In the Game of War, history is made mobile again, in an irreversible time where strategy can reverse the course of events. ” – Mackenzie Wark
I approached the quote more in a personal way. The picture above is a photograph that I took while walking down the street in NewYork. The reason why I took that photo was because it reminded me of my guardian when I was living in Paris. Our apartment located near paris, a small town called Saint Cloud was very quiet and basically everyone knew everybody near by. The person who took care of the whole apartment facility was called Le Guardien. I used to forget my keys a lot so i’d always knock on his office to get the spare keys. It was very rare for these people seeing an asian family around because usually the asians would live in Paris by the 16th or 18th arr. where all the Korean supermarkets were. For that reason he took care of me, giving me candy, always being around when I would sit outside when locked out.
He was the one incharge of cleaning the windows too and this particular man cleaning the window with that tool just reminded me of him since it’s what I had seen growing up.
And i had always associated “history” specifically on our past (cultural past). Which made me think “what would my mom say if she saw the photo?”. As a person who had lived her whole life in Korea, growing up with a different history I decided to ask her.
The answer I got back from her made me realise one thing. She said “oh that reminds me of our guardian back in France”. I was expecting her to say something completely different or rather I should say something culturally Korean. But instead she also had read the memory that she experienced in her life. I had forgotten how history is not only about her history in her cultural background but that also additionally wrote her history when living in paris.