Artefacts, design and nostalgia. Everything used to be better, didn’t it?
These days, I hear a lot of talk about nostalgia. Well, all people seem to talk about nostalgia around me. I hear a lot about the old days, about how cool this or that used to be. Every Sunday morning I receive a bunch of newsletters in my mail, and more than half of them talks about this topic in one or another way. There are authors who in their weekly newsletter only talk about summer afternoons, conversations with their past selves and memories of earlier times or methodologies. Nostalgia disguised as romanticism.
People tell me that there are Apps that have raised a few million dollars for a service that only allows you to take a photo and not to see it until 24 hours later. It is like an old film, they say. OMG, I developed Kodak reels for myself under the buzzing red light while I was snorting silver fumes that burning photographic paper. So… I am old stuff now. I see…
Wait wait, there are also Apps for people who haven't yet grey hair because when we talk about nostalgia, the past and the romance of memories, it seems there is no age. Don't you believe me? Take a look at Timehop or any of the clones that will appear when I finish publishing these lines.
There’s more. We thought they were extinct, but did you know that we can buy Taylor Swift cassettes because… old stuff is cool? It's not like vinyl and that snob stuff, no. Tapes bought by teenagers who are curious about old stuff and to be listened to on Walkmans®. BAM! We didn't see this one coming, did we?
Let me continue here. Retro and vintage are always cool. At least for me, it catches my attention, and it’s quite ironic that this is the case for a techie-loving guy who dreams of 15 guesses betting pool to be able to “get” the latest gadget that appears in Gizmodo or 9to5mac. The word of a techno-believer. But vintage is cool. And it seems to be very cool. Furthermore, my particular case is not an exception, as it seems to be the norm. But why does this happen?
The soul grows fat over time
There is the belief that all times past were better, that we were happier without industrial bread and with human relationships based on coffee and gossip, no Facebook, no Zoom, Teams and Slack; nothing like looking into the other person’s eyes and not admiring your own image in a little square on the screen while you talk, don’t you think?
What is old or previous is related to “authentic”, to how things really used to be and not now that everything is copied and there are no original things. There is no handcraft. There is no authenticity, which is, after all, what we are looking for when we are faced with something “vintage”. It’s a reaction against the industrial revolution and mass production. We are soul-seeking in objects. We want to feel the pulse of design through its forms, its use or its colours. We establish dialogues with objects, with places, with the ideas we have of how everything was better before. And this does not stop being a matrix in our heads. A simulation of a reality that no longer exists, and we need its objects, its shows, and its sounds to hold on to this simulation and turn the past into something of the present, even if only for an instant.
At a time when information is fast-moving, news, objects and our own learning are quickly becoming obsolete; it is a paradox that retro is always a trend. Or if we think about it better, perhaps it is a direct consequence of this. I believe that the easy way in which we forget yesterday’s newspaper news and the successive change of aesthetic and opinion trends, makes us acquire a taste for what happened the day before yesterday. All this is based on nostalgia. That’s why Instagram filters are so trendy. The photos, in whatever way, took us back to the paellas at three in the afternoon in the village with our grandfather and to summer evenings watching the sunset from the balcony of your parents’ house. And going back to your memories, friends, friends, that is priceless. Or, well, it’s payable.
The Business
Nostalgia is nowadays a huge business, beyond old photo Apps or Taylor Swift cassettes. We can see how the aesthetic trends of the 80s come back in huge trends, or the sounds of the 70s or the fashion of the 90s (😱). Video games, books, fashion, decoration, series, films, even architecture … all prepared and packaged for nostalgia lovers. Those people who are looking for a vital sense, singularity in a uniform world of pure joy through the things they own or surround themselves with.
Have a look at Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ and you can see the nostalgia business in all its glory. Kevin Smith bringing back He-Man. Cobra Kai bringing back a mythical film from our childhood like Karate Kid. The return of the Mighty Ducks on Disney+ with Gordon Bombay back with the stick.
Something happens at the same moment when I want the Mighty Ducks jersey even though I’ve never picked up a hockey stick in my life. I want to be a part of it. I want to be a Mighty Duck, and I’ll pay 60€ if I have to. But do I really want to be a Mighty or do I want to go back to being the kid who watched the film in the 90s?
I want to go back to being the kid who watched the film
The characters in the film, the clothes or the objects, they are all unique. Everything happens during a period of time in which they are captured. The objects and us. Singularity creates in our eyes artefacts and unique experiences. Exclusive. Something that has been broken in this century with products for the masses and the infinite reproduction of the digital (I won’t talk here about NFTs, that gives me another article).
In this world of industrialized and digitalization, a cartel with manual typography transports us to a collective imaginary where the artisan and the authentic are a guarantee of quality and exclusivity. I say imaginary because many of us cannot remember, or have not lived, cartels and experiences based on aesthetic trends of the early 20th century (and I remind you that this was more than 100 years ago).
Designers return to earlier forms to recapture their signature on objects. Their look at the legacy of our predecessors is impregnated with more than just nostalgia. Here we could call it signature. The objects of the past have a piece of the designer who has spent hours and hours thinking about every line and shape of the object you hold in your hands. But hasn’t my child’s Paw Patrol toy or Amazon Basics toaster gone through the same process? Yes, but no. And that, but isn’t what makes a 1960s toaster made in Detroit by an Irish immigrant more valuable… when it’s exactly the same. It’s just that one toaster has the patina of time and the other a killer price. Both were born in the heat of industrial design and capitalism.
Is it then the object itself or is it the idea of the object that makes it special? Is it time that gives the badges of authenticity or is it us through nostalgia?
Deathly Hallows
When J.K. Rowling decided to have Voldemort keep his soul in 7 Hallows, she knew what she was doing. The dark lord keeps a part of his essence in the objects that mark him throughout his history. A ring, a diary, a tiara, a comb, a pet (the Basilisk was one, in the end 🐍)… and so on. All these objects have a story written alongside Tom Ryddle’s, but it is HIS story, and although it is still a fictional novel, it is telling us something very interesting: the objects and the story associated with them are different for each person. The soul is in the eyes of the eye of the beholder and the imaginer.
Everything, after all, is related to our emotions and our feelings. An antipathy against mass-produced objects for the people. The quality of the authenticity. The dedication and stamp of the artisan. The soul in objects and their stories. The memory of our grandfather’s paellas. Our childhood toys. Our imagination and the certainty that everything that came before was always better.
A hole to look through or a piece of the Delorian to travel back in time — isn’t that what it’s all about?
Emotions and Shelter
There is a lot of science behind all this. Many authors speak of social emotions, of shelter, of evoking happy feelings to bring them back to the present… but be careful with this because the brain is inclined to trick us. The patina of time causes things to deform and we reconstruct them at will for our delight or for our protection. We hold on to things to bring back memories where we were happy or had something we long for. Was everything really so great before? Were you that happy? Were our ancestors happier, or do you want to believe that? Were objects then more special? Was the artisan an artist? Did the industrial revolution corrupt that or did it allow it to be democratized?
Maybe we were happy. Maybe we were children. Or you were with that special person who is no longer there. Or you were able to do something you can’t do today. Or it was a special moment and there was always an object or a smell or a sound next to you or surrounding you or… The brain tends to trick us. To create sweetened memories or, better yet, to eliminate the negative parts to keep only what we liked. A wonderful survival resource, by the way.
Do things have a soul, or do you?
Recently, Máximo Gavete wrote the following in Honos, his Sunday newsletter:
Whether it is a watch, a guitar, a pair of boots… whatever it is in each case, they are objects that have crossed any border between the useful and the beautiful. Their relevance resides neither in their usefulness nor in their beauty, but springs directly from our relationship with them. For anyone else, your object is incomprehensible, unattainable and radically strange, as if it were from another world or another culture. For us, on the other hand, it is skin, it is flesh and it has a soul breathed into it by us.
The soul of things needs just that, something to contain it and someone to give it to it. Beauty is subjective. Utility learned. Soul given.
Things are themselves containers of memories, but not only things as we have already seen. Objects seem to be containers of nostalgia, of memories or evocations. Sometimes they are trompe l’oeil, like Stranger Things, and sometimes they come directly from the past to remind us that they were once present. The latter take on the concept of personal relics. For Máximo, in his reflection he was talking about his mug:
As I write these lines I drink coffee from a mug that is one of those objects. Mug-companion, mug-transcended, mug-inhabitant, mug-sign, mug-soul, mug-me. And just like me, she has her years, her injuries, her moves and her old mug quirks: the microwave doesn’t agree with her, she complains about the teaspoon that hits her inside and she dreads the dishwasher. I respect her whims and she lets me know if the coffee is too hot just by stroking it. I have known couples who communicated worse with each other than my cup does with me.
I will see a mug. He will see his morning companion. His daughter will surely see a relic containing a fragment of her father’s soul.
Does nostalgia live on objects exclusively?
I have talked a lot about objects and design along these lines. You might be tempted to believe that nostalgia is based on the tangible, but it’s really something that happens inside us. The object is the tool, the artefact to transport us to another place, but… think for a moment about what Iván Leal writes in his highly recommended newsletter Superfluor:
I believe that the personal connection we have with objects is completely intimate because our relationship with sound is also intimate. (…) Each sound leaves an unrepeatable and non-transferable sound footprint in each person, which can end up sticking to their memory.
Every sound leaves a unique and singular mark on each person. I could not agree more with this affirmation.
And I’ll add something else: think about the smell of your grandparents’ house when you were a child… What do you feel when you walk into any other place and perceive a similar smell? Or when you enter their house after a long time? I’m sure it’s coming to your mind right now, isn’t it? It teleports you back to that moment. To your childhood. To a time when we were invincible, …
That feeling that even I can experience right now as I write these lines is so powerful that it is capable of creating an empire around it. Here we are calling it nostalgia.
In one of the visual files of Javier Cañada’s “Interacción” library, we can hear a reflection that has stayed with me:
Would you prefer to have a picture of your grandfather or his voice talking to you when you were 6?
Hearing this, my response was simple:
I would burn all his stuff to hear him again.
Our senses are the switches that activate memories and emotions in our brains. Objects to touch, images to look at, tastes that take us to places in our memory, smells or sounds that have stayed in the back of our brain, ready to remind us of who we are and where we come from.
Conclusion
Objects are made up of shapes, colours smell and sounds that become evocative of memories. Memories are formed by sounds, smells, colours and objects.
What is nostalgia if not a resource to travel to our home? Feeling that something is no longer with us is a way of telling ourselves that we once had it. And who wouldn’t pay to have a piece of that desire in their hands? Companies know this. We are fetish collectors of souls. We are seekers of experiences that we quickly turn into memories. We are non-conformist beings who always want to be something we are not. Let’s give all these feelings a physical form and put a good price on them so that they end up in our hands in the form of a Nintendo 64 controller, on our smartphones or as candidates for the White House.
And where are you saving a piece of your soul for others to protect for you?
Note at the bottom of the page
When my Dad became ill, he began to forget what things and objects were for, the names of people and how to get to places. He began to forget little by little until he was left with only the memories of when he was a child, where nothing could hurt him, where he was happy and cared for. A refuge he went to before he was left. I want to believe that when he did, in his head he was in his native Ourense, playing football while dreaming of being a professional player. Today I only have the memories of him and some old pictures of him making his dream come true and joining the history of football.
For you, it may be just another photo, but for me, in this photo, he is looking at me, in the same way as last time.
And I can’t stop thinking that he was safe there.
