Nostalgia for the here and now is pervasive: a feeling that what we have is unsustainable and disappearing. This installation combines environmental sounds, spoken or sung lists of loved possessions along with objects found in the streets: an archaeological trove of relics from our present. As if someone from the future has gathered together memories of our soundscape, along with our quotidian objects, both valued and discarded, as a record of how we lived and what we cared about.
As a 70 year old person I know about nostalgia for past times and places. But I notice that nostalgia for the here and now is pervasive: a feeling that what we have is disappearing fast. Our everyday lives are lived almost as a dream, where waking up means acknowledging that our way of life may not last much longer and is in any case unsustainable.
This audio/visual installation is an archaeology of sounds and objects from this present time. It combines field-recordings of sounds from here and now with everyday found objects: a collection of relics from our present. As if someone from the future gathered together memories of how our soundscape used to be, along with our quotidian objects, both valued and discarded, as a record of how we lived and what we cared about.
My perspective in this work is to examine the small things that make up our lives, those everyday details that are important to us and through which we can glimpse the huge and overwhelming challenges that face us.I interviewed a diverse selection of the public and asked them two questions.
The first was: “What sound in your environment would you miss most if it disappeared tomorrow?”
Sound is omnipresent and represents the ecological mesh we exist in but don’t always take into account. Asking this simple question of people (including visitors to the installation) allows us to ask ourselves what are the “soundmarks” in our life and to become aware of our own part in the acoustic environment. I then recorded the environmental sounds that people named, as exactly as possible.
The second question I asked was: “What object do you most care about – something you can’t imagine living without?”
We are intimately connected to our possessions and we feel great stress when they are lost to flood, fire, migration and other familiar crises. I would like – in a small way – to provoke a reconsideration of whether we need them or not.I also collected some of the detritus of our lives – objects dropped or forgotten in the street – as traces of our existence and what was once valued but is now waste.
My photographs of found objects form the visual aspect of this installation. The audio element is my field recordings of people’s selected sounds, recorded interviews with people and my own voice chanting or singing the list of objects and sounds that they value. Much has depended on chance – what objects I found on the ground and what sounds people choose for me to record.
Thank you to everyone I interviewed: Barbara, Diane, Simon, Iris, Cassia, Marcus, Ahmet, Stephen, Dave, Marina, Sue, Nancy, Tom, Irem, Stuart, Thrace, Cathy, Kathy, Clive, Francoise, Maureen, Emil, Mum and Dad, Barry, Sheetal.
