Words: Anxious Images
My paper from the Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) conference is now a book chapter, and has been published in Material Cultures of Memory: Archives, Heritage, and Visual Representation, edited by Frederico Dinis. The Anxious Image: Reflective Nostalgia and Critical Illustration in Post Truth Visual Culture is concerned with using a reflective nostalgic stance as a conduit to operate ethically in a visual environment awash with fibs and generated images.
It responds to Trond Klevgaard's paper Truth (and truthiness) to materials: Print design in 21st century Britain, which I encountered in Oslo at the Ar@k symposium Truth, Reality and Artistic Invention. It gave me much to consider in relation to the material and editing decisions made in producing my collage film Always the Way, specifically the role of re-mediation through drawing and analogue nostalgia. It builds on many of the thoughts bubbling up during the writing of and making behind Yesterday Once More (Journal of Illustration).
Abstract
This chapter examines reflective nostalgia as a critical strategy within contemporary illustration. It uses the case study of a music video made by the author to establish a complex web of tensions concerning nostalgia, truth, and responsibility. Informed by Svetlana Boym's distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia, it situates nostalgia within debates about truth in visual culture By reflecting on the construction of “pastness” through analogue nostalgia, questions of indexicality, authenticity and believability are introduced. The discussion then considers “truthiness” and the “apparently real”, and the ramifications of a Digimodern viewing position associated with these. The central argument is that reflective nostalgic imagery can promote critical reflection through the visible mediation of qualities that create temporal distance. The role of reflective nostalgia in images is evaluated in relation to the post-truth context of the time of writing. Ethical dilemmas for the illustrator and their handling of truth are then considered.
A run through of the other images, to whet your appetite:
