Anti-nostalgia

My work “Anti-nostalgia” invites us to return to a few years earlier, when the pandemic hit us all by surprise. Based on my own experience, when we were afraid of the “bug outside” and everywhere we were given instructions on how to protect ourselves from it. But, in a world where everything had gone virtual, no one had taught me how to take care of my own internet mind. I want to represent in this work how many people like me ended up getting sick in the head while ironically taking care of the danger that was outside. The deterioration that comes with being locked in with oneself, while the uncertainty of the days passes and no one can respond to what is going to happen, which would be the new “normal” if something like this were to exist again. Feeling imposing for not being able to do anything but wait and wait. The danger of letting yourself be consumed by bad thoughts and becoming filled with hopelessness.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

When they asked to do a job in p5js, it was difficult for me to decide on something to represent that would fit with what the texts expressed. I had thought about a video game, perhaps, but, unable to find any relationship, I finally decided to let myself be carried away by two texts and relate it to one of the stages that, in my opinion, marked anyone to a greater or lesser extent. Show something that was contrary to nostalgia, nothing that provoked happy memories.

Aira, César in his text “on contemporary art” talked about how contemporary art was more concerned with generating new values ​​and stories than with being beautiful, I thought, what could I tell? What do I have to tell?

It was only that the text “The Code as a performative speech act” by Arns, Inke drew my attention to the fact that it exemplified how software, beyond being able to be used as a means of artistic production, was but used as a social critique, an object of reflection on its own existence and its effect on Society. In my mind then the times of pandemic jumped, so far away and at the same time close, and having been an era so full of the virtual, it seemed sensible to represent something that had marked me so much in the same way.

Seeking to reflect how we were affected, completely consumed by the Internet twenty-four hours a day, without much choice. What does prolonged exposure to the Internet, the news (real or not), the bitterness of seeing everything through a screen, feeling that everything is artificial, unreal. The silence surrounded us and the only thing we could hear were our own thoughts, stained by ourselves in moments where only worry and conspiracy could grow. As my surroundings, full of light, sound and life, fell into a spectral silence from one moment to the next,

An era that many see as diffuse today, for me it will always be a ghost that haunts me even in my own dreams.

Literature AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo””. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House.

RNS, Inke. (2005). ""El código como acto de habla performativo””. En Revista Artnodes, Julio de 2005.