Artist's Statement
Imperfect Understanding
MY WORK FROM THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS has been motivated by the idea of a contemporary nostalgia. In her book The Future of Nostalgia, the late Svetlana Boym proposed this concept of a contemporary nostalgia as a longing for coherency borne more of an apprehension of an uncertain future rather than a sentimental desire for a past. It is a phenomenon particular to contemporary life and reflects a sense of foreboding that puts our capacity for self-determination at risk. Forces beyond individual control buffet us around, but in a paradoxical twist, also unite us. From this perspective, nostalgia’s desire is for a more contained and controllable sense of the world.
I find it fascinating that Boym’s historical emotion –existing as a vicarious longing– is strangely enabled by our technological age. We sit at our computers, and see the world. We imagine ourselves to experience, and possibly empathy. We are simultaneously inconsequential and connected.
I like to think of the nostalgic impulse as Boym describes it as “not always retrospective; (but)… prospective as well. …(N)ostalgia is about the relationship between individual biography and the biography of groups or nations, between personal and collective memory.”[1] Nostalgia holds out hope for a return—or at least reclamation of agency—perhaps as we can only understand in hindsight. As long as the possibility of experience—however remote—exists, then the understanding of our collective responsibility becomes tangible.
I have responded to such paradox in a variety of ways. My fascination with language and communication is often based more on what is unsaid than said. Residual, excerpted and layered texts and images exist as visual metaphor for the imperfect understanding that results from our struggle for comprehension. This aim is considerably more difficult when confronted with mutually exclusive sentiments and complicated by flawed acts of memory. Processes that invite dislocation, altered emphasis and recombination exist as strategies to aid in communicating a sense of desire for empathy when faced with reconciling conflicting points of view.
[1] Svetlana Boym, Nostalgia and its Discontents, The Hedgehog Review / Summer 2007, p 8
I find it fascinating that Boym’s historical emotion –existing as a vicarious longing– is strangely enabled by our technological age. We sit at our computers, and see the world. We imagine ourselves to experience, and possibly empathy. We are simultaneously inconsequential and connected.
I like to think of the nostalgic impulse as Boym describes it as “not always retrospective; (but)… prospective as well. …(N)ostalgia is about the relationship between individual biography and the biography of groups or nations, between personal and collective memory.”[1] Nostalgia holds out hope for a return—or at least reclamation of agency—perhaps as we can only understand in hindsight. As long as the possibility of experience—however remote—exists, then the understanding of our collective responsibility becomes tangible.
I have responded to such paradox in a variety of ways. My fascination with language and communication is often based more on what is unsaid than said. Residual, excerpted and layered texts and images exist as visual metaphor for the imperfect understanding that results from our struggle for comprehension. This aim is considerably more difficult when confronted with mutually exclusive sentiments and complicated by flawed acts of memory. Processes that invite dislocation, altered emphasis and recombination exist as strategies to aid in communicating a sense of desire for empathy when faced with reconciling conflicting points of view.
[1] Svetlana Boym, Nostalgia and its Discontents, The Hedgehog Review / Summer 2007, p 8