Rose-tinted memory of Nostalgia

Nostalgia was originally considered as a psychiatric disorder from 17th to 19th century. But more recently, nostalgia has been studied to find that the brain rewards memories during nostalgia with positive emotions. It could increase feelings of generosity and positive outlook towards the future or allow people to be more forgiving of experiences in the past. However, which memories produce positive emotions is dependent on the history of the individual, for example, one song can make some people nostalgic while not others. During the internship, I learned that nostalgia can be described as personal nostalgia based on the individual person or group of people’s lived experiences, and as historical nostalgia based on an imagined and idealized time in history. Personal nostalgia can be elicited through senses that is linked with the memory or through actively recalling the memory in conversations and activities or these can happen simultaneously. For example, in Telling Environmental Histories (2017), walking interviews around Point Saint-Charles identified sounds of trains and automobiles to be “sound anchors” and “acoustic identifiers of community” in the neighborhood since the 1970s that has become more quietened through deindustrialization. Personal nostalgia can also be elicited through having conversations, singing a song, watching a film, walking in a neighborhood, playing a game and so on, with another person who shares the memory.

Despite the possibility of retreating to a romanticized past through historical nostalgia, personal nostalgia can have psychological benefit. This is especially relevant for individuals who are in transitions such as beginning university. Students who had high nostalgia for past communities did better in university and were more open to new opportunities if they could maintain strong ties to the past communities while students who had low nostalgia for past communities were not affected. There are individual differences to reactions to transitions, and, therefore, differences on what will benefit the person. In the context of forced displacement of North Koreans, nostalgia was mixed with memories of trauma and was not a result of a dissatisfaction with the current condition but due to longing and guilt for families or homes left behind. The nostalgic memories were also placed in context of the traumatic event, for example, nostalgia for times before the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. One study asked Syrian refugees in Saudi Arabia based on the Syrian word for nostalgia, “Hanin”, to recall a memory that makes them feel nostalgia. This study found that nostalgia increased meaning in life, self-esteem, social connectedness, optimism and inspiration in individuals who remembered fond memories from the past but were less negatively affected by the fact of displacement. However, individuals who were more adversely affected by the displacement felt greater pessimism and lower inspiration after engaging in nostalgia due to the reminder of the loss. For the individuals who are more adversely affected by the displacement, identifying connections in the new community reminiscent of the past communities may aide in their sense of continuity and resilience.

I asked members of Building 21 and people outside of the internship who have, are, or will be living in Montreal about their personal nostalgia and dreams through virtual or in-person interviews. I found out that people had different definitions and answers for personal nostalgia and dreams. After the interviews, I made a list of the words of what made the interviewees nostalgic or what they dreamed of and collected related footages and started to make a film. I am also interested in nostalgia and dreams and what comes after them. Is it stagnancy or movement? During the film making process, I thought about if we could we be ourselves beyond our ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, age, names, and diagnosis. While cherishing all those parts of ourselves and what they entail, and still be flexible in our identity as if we never had one, forever malleable creatures of memories and absence of memories. The difference between you and me could be that you have memories that I don’t have and I have memories that you don’t have, and the difference of present and future is that we will have memories in the future that we don’t have in the present. These are great differences, but if we can get to know more memories, we could become more and more limitless as a collective in our movement through empathy.

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Letter from and to Building 21 / Une lettre de et à Building 21

“Remembering knows no borders: Do you hear what I hear?”

I explored recording the nostalgia and dreams of members of Building 21 and individuals outside of the internship who is residing in Montreal through film. I spoke with interns, staff, and individuals outside of the internship and collected words related to nostalgia and dreams they shared. I also searched literature and films for words that reflected a time in the past. Then I found or filmed footages that could represent those words. This is an on-going work, and the following are example scenes that is currently a part of the film. At the end of the film, I included a reading of a poem “Gazurang home” written by a person who expresses his nostalgia for a time and place in his childhood in Jeongju City located in what is now North Korea. The poem was written in 1936 and it is about a place I have never been to, but it evoked an anemoia or nostalgia for a time I’ve never known before.

When even a rabbit grows fat, I follow the Gazurang grandmother who is gathering from the hill swallow-tail marsh, valerian, hawkweed, saussurea, fern, braken, angelica sprout, spindle tree sprout, wild greens / Quand même un lapin grossit, je suis la grand-mère Gazurang qui cueille de la colline marais machaon, valériane, épervière, saussurea, fougère, cassé, pousse d'angélique, pousse d'arbre en fuseau, verts sauvages – Gazurang home / Chez Gazurang – BaekSeok, Jeongju, North Korea

Contributors and Inspirations for the letter / Les contributeurs et les inspirations pour la lettre

1:1 Interviews with Renatha Giramahoro, Faizan Khan, Sarah Graham, Brandon Kaufman, Mir Abdullah Al Rakib, Jill Harrington, Tiffany Harrington-Ashoona, Seulmin Ahn, Junhee Ahn, Michelle Kwon, Wendy Toria Chen, Asma Khamis, Bintou Mbodji, Sophie Luo, Adela Kwok, Nogieru Eghobamien and Nogie's friend Victor

Conversations with Doreen Kiprono, Jenny Zhang, Cynthia Feng, Anna Brandenberger, Brianna Cheng, Ollivier Dyens, Anita Parmar, Jhave Johnston, Rebecca Brosseau, Tanor Bonin, Damian Arteca, John Mac Master, Stanzi Vaubel, Aditya Jain, Salomé Henry, Emmanuelle Lescouët, Margot Mellet and Marcello Vitali-Rosati