Sunday, 25 September 2011
Critical Reflection
When a close relationship between two people ends, there are many emotions and memories that linger to remind us of that connection. This creative piece is an attempt to represent the complex mix of nostalgia and innate amnesia that are intertwined in the very emotional recollections of past relationships, demonstrating the insufficiency of human art to recreate memories as vividly and emotively as they occur in our minds. Still images and poetic verses are combined to imitate a romanticised scrap-book. The poem tells the story of two people who fell in love happily and then fell out of love with an anger-filled break-up. Although this is a recollection of an event from my past, I believe it could represent a much larger dialogue about relationships in general, as many people will have experienced a similar event.
The complex process of recollection and dreaming of the past after the pain of a separation is represented in the series of photos, which are not the types of photos which would conventionally be placed in a memory aid such as a scrap-book. Instead, the photos are abstract immitations of the positive and negative elements within a relationsihp. Here, the photos are placed together in a style similar to a scrap-book, but on one large page. Although the sequence of photos develops a linear path through the memory of the relationship, the final photo demonstrates the temporal destruction in recollections of this nature, as the photos, we find, have not been organised in the story form. When thinking back on a relationship it is not always clear which argument came when or when exactly, within an event-filled time-line, the positive moments happened. This chaos is represented, therefore, in the traditionally beautifully organised form of scrap-booking to demonstrate the intangible nature of memories and the insufficiency of these commercialised memory aids to represent memory.
The beach, with its picturesque beauty and unforgiving water was used as symbolic of the light and dark within these complex memories. Furthermore, with the contrasting use of colour and black and white photos, the aim was to emphasise the poetic and other-worldly way that love is often remembered, contrasted with the painful fall, a sharp memory of a breakup. Kuhn discusses the “psychical struggle between holding on and letting go that characterises the activity of mourning” (Kuhn 128) and although here there is no mourning for a life lost, the mourning of the end of a relationship functions in a similar way. The ‘holding on’ can be seen to be represented in the photo of the girl drawing a love heart in the sand. This is contrasted with the heart being washed away. The ‘psychical struggle’ of ‘letting go’ is seen in the water that takes with it the mark of the heart in the sand.
Within this process of ‘holding on’ that Kuhn notes, a type of nostalgia is innate in my memories of past relationships. Although many theorists are concerned with the cultural and collective forms of nostalgia, here I am noting the ‘individual sickness’ (Boym 452) of nostalgic recollections. The poetic words, combined with the whimsical photos, suggest a re-living of a past experience and the first three stanzas are indicative of the positive emotions involved in remembering a past love. Conversely, the black and white of the final photos, with a crystal shimmer, also display a yearning for the earlier positive photos that can be seen in colour. Huyssen states that “it is this tenuous fissure between past and present that constitutes memory, making it powerfully alive and distinct from the archive or any other mere system of storage and retrieval” (Huyssen 3).
Although the photos demonstrate one’s inability to return to the past life of the relationship, they are also inadequate attempts to recreate memory, as Huyssen notes. The poem demonstrates the emotional levels of the memories and the photos are abstract representations of the relationship. This piece, therefore, is a comment on the insufficiency of memory objects such as this to “guarantee a stable anchor of memory retrieval” (Van Dijck 37) because memories such as these are far more emotionally complex than the pictures can display. The final photo, with the girl looking backward in a way that suggests she is thinking of another place, is an example of the complexity and life of memory that we are unable to capture.
Works Cited
Boym, Svetlana. From 'Nostalgia and Its Discontents'. The Collective Memory Reader.
Ed. Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy. New York: Oxford
University Press. 2011. 452-7. Print.
Huyssen, Andreas. "introduction: Time and Cultural Memory at Our Fin de Siecle." Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge. 1995. 1 - 9. Print.
Kuhn, Annette. "Phantasmagoria of Memory". Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. 2nd ed. London: Verso. 2002. 125 - 46. Print.
Van Dijck, José. “Memory Matters in the Digital Age”. Mediated Memories. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2007. Print.
The complex process of recollection and dreaming of the past after the pain of a separation is represented in the series of photos, which are not the types of photos which would conventionally be placed in a memory aid such as a scrap-book. Instead, the photos are abstract immitations of the positive and negative elements within a relationsihp. Here, the photos are placed together in a style similar to a scrap-book, but on one large page. Although the sequence of photos develops a linear path through the memory of the relationship, the final photo demonstrates the temporal destruction in recollections of this nature, as the photos, we find, have not been organised in the story form. When thinking back on a relationship it is not always clear which argument came when or when exactly, within an event-filled time-line, the positive moments happened. This chaos is represented, therefore, in the traditionally beautifully organised form of scrap-booking to demonstrate the intangible nature of memories and the insufficiency of these commercialised memory aids to represent memory.
The beach, with its picturesque beauty and unforgiving water was used as symbolic of the light and dark within these complex memories. Furthermore, with the contrasting use of colour and black and white photos, the aim was to emphasise the poetic and other-worldly way that love is often remembered, contrasted with the painful fall, a sharp memory of a breakup. Kuhn discusses the “psychical struggle between holding on and letting go that characterises the activity of mourning” (Kuhn 128) and although here there is no mourning for a life lost, the mourning of the end of a relationship functions in a similar way. The ‘holding on’ can be seen to be represented in the photo of the girl drawing a love heart in the sand. This is contrasted with the heart being washed away. The ‘psychical struggle’ of ‘letting go’ is seen in the water that takes with it the mark of the heart in the sand.
Within this process of ‘holding on’ that Kuhn notes, a type of nostalgia is innate in my memories of past relationships. Although many theorists are concerned with the cultural and collective forms of nostalgia, here I am noting the ‘individual sickness’ (Boym 452) of nostalgic recollections. The poetic words, combined with the whimsical photos, suggest a re-living of a past experience and the first three stanzas are indicative of the positive emotions involved in remembering a past love. Conversely, the black and white of the final photos, with a crystal shimmer, also display a yearning for the earlier positive photos that can be seen in colour. Huyssen states that “it is this tenuous fissure between past and present that constitutes memory, making it powerfully alive and distinct from the archive or any other mere system of storage and retrieval” (Huyssen 3).
Although the photos demonstrate one’s inability to return to the past life of the relationship, they are also inadequate attempts to recreate memory, as Huyssen notes. The poem demonstrates the emotional levels of the memories and the photos are abstract representations of the relationship. This piece, therefore, is a comment on the insufficiency of memory objects such as this to “guarantee a stable anchor of memory retrieval” (Van Dijck 37) because memories such as these are far more emotionally complex than the pictures can display. The final photo, with the girl looking backward in a way that suggests she is thinking of another place, is an example of the complexity and life of memory that we are unable to capture.
Works Cited
Boym, Svetlana. From 'Nostalgia and Its Discontents'. The Collective Memory Reader.
Ed. Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy. New York: Oxford
University Press. 2011. 452-7. Print.
Huyssen, Andreas. "introduction: Time and Cultural Memory at Our Fin de Siecle." Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge. 1995. 1 - 9. Print.
Kuhn, Annette. "Phantasmagoria of Memory". Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. 2nd ed. London: Verso. 2002. 125 - 46. Print.
Van Dijck, José. “Memory Matters in the Digital Age”. Mediated Memories. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2007. Print.
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