First
Floating Image:
From Christopher Alexander “A Pattern Language”, 1977
Second Floating Image:
Keiji Uematsu
“Wave Motion I”, 1976
Video:
Nostos takes its namesake from the Greek root of nostalgia—a combination of “nostos” meaning “return home” and “algos” meaning pain. Visualizing other sources such as “The Future of Nostalgia” by Svetlana Boym (2000) as well as the “Theatre of Memory”, a mnemonic technique by 16th century Italian philosopher Giulio Camillo in which memories are affixed to specific physical places reimagined in the mind, Ota is interested in utilizing these through a surrealist visual language to ruminate on the tension between being caught between two countries as well as the tension between her body and mind as a former dancer. Through Nostos Ota explores the interstitial states between dream and reality, real and unreal, memory and myth, reflecting what Boym wrote in that “reflective nostalgia has a capacity to awaken multiple planes of consciousness”.
Background
image:
Still from Bimbo’s Initiation, Fleischman Studios (1931)
