Spaces of Possibility, which arose from a 2012 conference held at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities, engages with spaces in, between, and beyond the national borders of Japan and Korea. Some of these spaces involve the ambiguous longings and aesthetic refigurings of the past in the present, the social possibilities that emerge out of the seemingly impossible new spaces of development, the opportunities of genre, and spaces of new ethical subjectivities. Museums, colonial remains, new architectural spaces, graffiti, street theater, popular song, recent movies, photographic topography, and translated literature all serve as keys for unlocking the ambiguous and contradictory—yet powerful—emotions of spaces, whether in Tokyo, Seoul, or New York.
