What is this all about?
The short answer: Nostalgia & Anemoia.
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The long answer: My irrational longing and fondness for the past, and the resulting way in which I shape my life around the style, culture, and politics of nostalgia for times that I have never experienced.
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I began this project from a paper titled, " Take a Trip: Cold War Liberation and Government Secrets." In this piece, I discuss the the paradoxical characterizations of LSD. At the time the drug was popularized, it was used as a symbol of liberation by the counterculture, however the U.S. government was using it in the (clearly imaginary) “race to mind control.” Reflecting on this piece of writing, I realized something that I should've seen all along - when we reflect on the past, things can be twisted and tainted to represent what we wish to see most. It's the rose colored glasses effect.
The goal of this project is to shatter the rose colored glasses...
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... and use the narratives of the past to create a better tomorrow.
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We will explore how nostalgia shapes our understandings of our world both individually and collectively. As we see the past in the culture of now, we need to be aware of what the heck is happening. We see nostalgia in fashion, music, and politics - but why?
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Why do younger generations seem to have a closer connection to the past than the present?
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The answer from a psychological standpoint is that we are experiencing anemoia, which is a sense of longing for time periods that we have never experienced. We are romanticizing the past, but why? Perhaps it's because now is so uncertain. The past is concrete, it's happened, We can pick and choose what we remember and cherish and ignore the bad in ways that we can't in the current circumstances.
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So, let's take a trip.
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Through these projects, we will go on a journey to discover what is happening in the past right now. How can we interact with it and use it to better our lives or just have a little fun! I hope you enjoy... even if it's a slightly less psychedelic experience than the original work.