Nostalgia 

Jasmine Orozco

NOSTALGIA is an audiovisual installation exploring the themes of past memories, authenticity & experiences worth living.

The project separates our common experiences in two themes. The journey to a new experience, and the life experience itself. 

It challenges the viewer to remember.Just as a trip that may or may not end soon, the way there involves a silent, peaceful meditation. You eagerly board the ferry of life, and sit patiently in waiting. 

What experiences lie in the next port? Will one stay there forever, or keep exploring to satisfaction?

As you arrive to the port, you begin to live. The first images are always the most powerful, but there will be so much more than that to remember. 

As we grow older, our memories change. You may learn from them, but eventually the negative aspects and feelings fade. The positives always stay with you, although they become altered by your new perception of things. Each new experience alters the old.

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The main inspiration behind this project was my late grandfather, Luis Orozco.

He sailed from Mexico to my home island of Mykonos in the 1950s, stayed for love, and spent his entire life portraying the island as a surrealist painter.

He always spoke fondly of the island “before”.

Before I was born, before mass tourism and greed; the island in his paintings.

The island he remembered so fondly, is one that does not exist anymore- perhaps it never did. It has yet been immortalised, through his perspective, in his paintings.

The idea of a place only captured in art;

It inspired me to create my own version of the place, to place focus on the things that I, like so many others, miss and remember. I set out to create a surreal dream-like place, created solely from memories. Memories, of course, are often somewhat altered, focusing

only on positive emotions.

Nostalgia.

To further illustrate the surrealism, I decided against using my own footage from the island. Instead, I chose to create my island, from memory and inspired by Luis’ paintings.

The little “kaiki” arrives at its destination. It completes its cycle, and departs.