Dysfunctional Whistling Band

Installation by Bojan Fajfric

I do not want to offer some miraculous cure for nostalgia, although a visit to the Alps, opium and leeches are perhaps able to alleviate its symptoms.

Perhaps longing is something common to all us human beings, but this does not keep us from having different stories about belonging and not belonging. My opinion is that two types of nostalgia determine our relation with the past, imagined community, home, and even the way we imagine ourselves: these are restorative and reflexive nostalgia. They cannot explain the nature of the longing itself, nor its psychological structure and hidden, subconscious flows, but they can explain the mechanisms we use as tools in the attempt to understand this seemingly indescribable feelings and our relation to our collective homeland.

A psychiatrist does not really know how to deal with nostalgia; in this case, experimenting artists in the role of a therapist could offer much more help.

Paraphrasing Svetlana Boym, from 'The Future of Nostalgia'