Nostalgia - Saudade

It is the last few days of Tangent Projects, Project 5 and it brings to mind a conversation I had in the summer with a Brazilian woman. We talked about nostalgia and saudade, the Brazilian Portuguese word that all-at-once expresses a deep nostalgia and melancholic yearning for past good times spent with someone or something, but also a contentment to have experienced such happiness.

It’s how we feel about the ending of this exhibition, but we have a few more days left! So, for now, chega de saudade! :)

Bien Cuadrado will be open normal hours Wednesday - Friday, 11 - 15.30.

Nostalgia - "How Trump Trades on Nostalgia for a Mythic White America" - Lenore Metrick-Chen

In the text for our forthcoming exhibition, In Search of Lost Time, we mention how nostalgia is used by organisations and politicians to manipulate people - it is a powerful and worrying tool that is being used officeholders in every corner of the world.

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The Leather Federation Advertising Trade Card (c. 1890)

In this article by Lenore Metrick-Chen in Hyperallergic, dated just over 2 years ago, she compares the Trump presidential campaign and Victorian American advertising cards, and discusses the use of nostalgia to embolden the racist mythology of an all white American utopia that never existed.

The article is a couple of years old but it is interesting and still speaks a great deal about now, definitely worth a read.

Nostalgia - "I’m going back to Proust this August. The truly long read is a summer treat - Alex Clark"

In a previous post I mentioned how from the moment we decided on the title for our 5th project, we started to see references to Proust everywhere. It's still happening! Like this article in The Guardian claiming that it is the summer of the "long read", with the writer aiming to tackle what other than...Proust's In Search of Lost Time!

You can also read a letter written in response to the article here.

Nostalgia - "We can’t embrace the future if we’re longing for the past."

As an interesting read in connection to our upcoming exhibition In Search of Lost Time and our general interest in Nostalgia,  here's an interesting article written by Rafael Behr for The Guardian, dated December 2015.

 Illustration: Andrzej Krauze (taken from The Guardian article).

"Nostalgia is a cultural and a cognitive phenomenon, and common memories are the glue that holds a society together in shared endeavour. Agreeing to look fondly on where we have been together makes it easier to travel onward without rancour. But our brains collude by adjusting our past to make it a neater fit with the present."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/23/embrace-future-longing-past-nostalgia-memories

Nostalgia - In Search of Lost Time

As the text for this show is long enough, but there is still so much to say about nostalgia, we decided to set up a blog to collate all the articles, photos and stuff that are still floating around in our heads and continue to feed into the dialogue of this project.

From the moment we decided the title for this show, either we became more aware of all things Proustian or more Proustian things began to manifest on a regular basis. We are undecided on whether it is mere coincidence or something more synchronous...hmmmm...

These blog posts won't be in any kind of consecutive order, or potentially (most likely) not in any kind of order at all. It's just stuff, that we find interesting and don't want to get rid of. Think of it as sifting through some virtual hoarding.

Screen grab from Sense 8.

This is the image we selected to use on the website. It is a screengrab that Tsering took while watching Sense 8 and whatsapped to Laura. The character Jonas quotes Proust but badly "The bonds that bind another person to ourself exist only in our mind", it is actually "The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds", which is quite different. Jonas' quote seems to  talk of a singular experience, WE attach ourselves to others. But Proust seems to be saying that it is an agreed act between people, we do it together. A shared bonding in our minds, notice the plural MINDS. He continues "Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying."

More to come soon.