The Lie in the Void

Is nostalgia “the lie in the void,” as declared by Peter Carroll in an attempt to confuse remembering with escapism and nostalgia with amnesia? What if, as argued by Roberta Rubenstein, what is remembered “never actually existed, or never could have existed, in the form in which it is ‘remembered?’” If, according to Jonathan Steinwand, “the imagination is encouraged to gloss over forgetfulness in order to fashion a more aesthetically complete and satisfying recollection of what is longed for,” then is nostalgia a legitimate act of memory? In defense of nostalgia as an authentic approach to perceptions about the self in the present and directions for action and thought in the future. Both private and public memories rely on nostalgic remembrance for the creation of personal and social identities as well as internal and collective meaning.

Rubenstein describes nostalgia as “an absence that continues to occupy a palpable emotional space” and argues that “the felt ab- sence of a person or place assumes form and occupies imaginative space as a presence that may come to possess an individual.”  Rubenstein’s description qualifies the “painful awareness” of nostalgia as mel-ancholic while simultaneously describing nostalgia as a response to “universal inevitability of separation and loss” and “the existential condition of adulthood.”  As opposed to the spatial or geographical separation of homesickness, nostalgia according to Rubenstein reflects a temporal dilemma.

"One can never truly return to original home of childhood, since it exists mostly as a place in the imagination. Although the meaning of nostalgia itself has changed over time, essentially it has come to signify not simply the loss of one’s childhood home but the loss of childhood itself." 
- Rubenstein 2001

Whether nostalgic images lie in the mind, in objects such as photographs, or in objectless media such as film, the premise of absence is necessary for reflection and reinterpretation to emerge.

The film Nostalgia (1971) by photographer and filmmaker Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) is a powerful document of cultural memory that articulates and demonstrates vital issues of memory, such as the use of autobiographical film, to explicate identity formation and the intricate relationship of photography and film to absence, memory and meaning.  It is precisely what Rubenstein calls “the presence of absence” that makes nostalgia pertinent to my discussion of film and particularly Hollis Frampton’s film (Nostalgia). Through the treatment of photographs as malleable objects that are ritualistically destroyed on film, Frampton’s avant-garde film addresses the decay and destruction of image and memory. Here, story-telling serves as a preservative for memory that accompanies a visual transition from the private to the public.

"Art is a lie which makes you realize the truth."

~ Pablo Picasso ~

*Shira Segal, From the Private to the Public: Photography, Film, and the Transmission of Cultural Memory in Hollis Frampton’s Nostalgia, 35-54