Sam Jacob: Nostalgia as Representation

Though [nostalgia] may feel part of us - even welded to our core - these are often memories of externally provided images rather than internal experiences. They've been formed after the event, by consensus and communicated to us through media. Nostalgia is often as impersonal as the memories of the Nexus-6 replicant Rachel in Blade Runner. There are semi-memories that we've learnt from family Super 8 films, from endlessly repeated clips, and a media in constant state of historical revisionism. Never before has so much information been available with instant recall. The dividing line between our own memory and the capture and cataloguing of time that digital technology has allowed.

Its effect is so powerful - beyond logic or argument - that it is hard to see whether nostalgia is a subject or object, a technique or a mode of operation. Perhaps, like drunks hell bent on another shot, we're addicted to the sensation overpowering us and delivering us into oblivion. - Sam Jacob