Archipelago - Issue 1

CONTRIBUTORS

Solène Livia Kirsty Alana Aiyi Mimi Temilola Aryn Amber Bee Amee

CONTENTS

Introduction from our team

Maus: Memory in Modern History

Unlike most of Van Gogh’s works, ‘Starry Night’ was painted from memory

Memory and Identity in ‘Perfect Blue’

Memory, Maternity and Silken slips: The work of Louise Bourgeois

The lost beauty of film photography Letter in February…

Memory Police

Censorship through Language in the Clockwork Orange

Introduction

I think many of you will agree that we have not been seeing enough of the arts around NLCS recently, and the Archipelago team have formed to try and change this This publication used to be very active but fizzled out a good few years back, but we are proud to be revitalising it and a glad to be picking up the torch.

From creative pieces of writing to critical analyses of animated films, and even a curated Spotify playlist, we feel we have covered all our bases in the arts and hope y ou agree with us.

This issue we are taking you on a trip down memory lane as we explore the presentation and use of memory in different artistic media.

On behalf of all of us in the Archipelago team, Enjoy!

Maus: Memory in Modern History

Maus by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winner, is a non-fiction graphic novel about the author’s father’s time as a Jew during the Holocaust. Its unique format of depicting the Jews as mice, and Nazis as cats separates the actuality of the events that occurred from human identity, while constantly reminding the reader of the cruelty humanity is capable of. Art Spiegelman writes the book in the 1 st person from his father’s perspective, while flicking back to his own perspective, creating a duality in the narrative, demonstrating the generational divide in viewing the memories.

Maus struggles with the idea whether or not one can truly relate to and understand another’s memories. Spiegelman struggles to sympathise with his father, due to his pedantic behaviour. Vladek is obsessed with saving everything, from money to resources, exemplified by him returning a half-opened pack of cereal, picking up stray wires in the street; Vladek’s scrupulous behaviour annoys Art greatly, so much so that he can’t bear to spend long periods of time with his father. Another example is when Vladek compares his second wife, Mala, to his first, Anja (Art’s mother), and it is this constant comparison which leads Mala to leave Vladek, although she does return. Spiegelman shows how Vladek has deified his memory of Anja, and therefore leaves Mala unable to surmount to anything worthy of her in Vladek’s eyes. Spiegelman does, however, evoke pathos when returning to the memories of Vladek’s time throughout the holocaust, especially when relaying the details of Richieu’s death (Anja and Vladek’s first son) about which Anja and Vladek find out many months after this.

Furthermore, Spiegelman draws attention to how his parents had the opportunity to give Richieu to a trusted friend who had also sheltered another child, who survived, highlighting how their decision could have saved Richieu from his fate. While Spiegelman does not deny his father is now insufferable, he does provide reason as to why his father behaves in the manner that he does. Art does not know the savvy and resourceful Vladek that once existed, before and throughout the holocaust, but instead the one that survived. The death of Art’s mother exacerbates not only Vladek’s behaviour, but also his own guilt, as Art feels responsible for her suicide. Spiegelman includes an extract from another graphic novel he wrote which depicts the aftermath of his mother’s death, in which he portrays himself in striped clothing, symbolic of what prisoners in concentration camps would wear, while he is forced to comfort his distraught father, to distract himself from his guilty conscience.

Spiegelman differentiates the version of him in the book, Art, to himself as the author as he draws from his memories. He does not refrain from illustrating how sometimes he was cruel to his father as he could not stand him, which is something he now feels remorseful for. Importantly, Spiegelman portrays how one is haunted by the wish to change these actions one

took within their memories. From Art’s dismissal of his mother to his parents' fateful decisions, Spiegelman does not shy away from the presentation of memory as a powerful and painful tool, especially shown by Vladek throwing away Anja’s diaries because the memory of her is too powerful, despite his hoarding tendencies. Afterall, it is not Vladek’s own memories being described to the readers, but rather Spiegelman’s recollection of his father telling him these which begs the question: Can someone truly narrate the memories of another accurately?

-AiYi

Eggbox, Alana

Unlike most of Van Gogh’s works, ‘Starry Night’ was painted from memory

Vincent Van Gogh, largely a self-taught artist produced more than 2,000 oil paintings, watercolours, sketches, and drawings, which became in demand only after his death. In his numerous letters which he wrote to his brother Theo, he expressed his thoughts on art and the importance of nature to it: “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better… Painters understand nature and love it and teach us to see.”

On the 23rd December 1888, Van Gogh had a breakdown which resulted in the self-mutilation of his left ear. This stark act made him voluntarily admit himself to the Saint Paul de Mausole asylum and marked the beginning of the depression that would plague him until the end of his life. Hence,

here is where he painted one of his most famous artworks, ‘Starry Night’, in his room whilst he was recovering, as opposed to outdoors which was Vincent’s preference.

‘Starry Night’ is based on Van Gogh’s observations from his bedroom window, a view of which Van Gogh painted variations over twenty-one times, committing it to memory. Nature and the people living close to it were one of the first inspirations that stirred Van Gogh’s artistic inclinations. In one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, he described his inspiration, “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big”, which is illustrated by the glowing yellow crescent moon in the top right corner of the painting. The steeple of the church resembles common ones in his native Holland and the swirling forms of clouds and stars in the sky provide fluidity between the elements. The combination of visual contrasts shows how Van Gogh found beauty and interest in the night, which, for him, was “much more alive and richly coloured than the day”.

Memory and identity ‘Perfect Blue’

Perfect Blue is a 1997 psychological thriller anime directed by Satoshi Kon. Although it was originally meant to be a live action film, after the Kobe earthquake in 1995 the production studio was damaged, and so the budget was reduced to an animation. The storyline is based on Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s novel ‘Perfect Blue’, published in 1991

The movie centers around Mima Kirigoe, a former J-pop artist pursuing a career in acting. As she deals with the stress and guilt ensuing her career change, coupled with the realization that she is being stalked, Mima descends into paranoia and psychosis. Kon establishes several themes, including that what initially looks to be real isn’t. In Susan Napier’s essay ‘Performance, the Gaze, and the Female in the Works of Kon Satoshi’ she writes that “the perception of reality cannot be trusted, with the visual set up only to not be reality, especially as the psychodrama heights towards the climax”.

In one scene, after Mima found an obsessive fan account describing her thoughts and actions in terrifying detail, utters, “who are you?”, before the scene turns to her saying the same line in ‘Double Bind’, a psychological drama she is starring in. Through these jump transitions the viewer’s spatial awareness is destabilized; not only does the viewer begin to question Mima’s reality, but they also begin to doubt their own. Kon refers to this as “trompe l’œil”, a French art technique meaning “to deceive the eye”. Perfect Blue uses continuity by using sharp scene cuts and edits to confuse the viewer whilst still preserving the narrative. As the film progresses, what initially appears as ‘real’ is revealed to be hallucinations, dreams, or scenes from ‘Double Bind’. The gaps in Mima’s memory destabilises her identity and the trust she has in herself.

-Temilola

Whilst watching Perfect Blue I found that I constantly mistook Mima with the character she played in ‘Double Bind’, as the circumstances of both were almost identical - this reflects Mima’s own distorted sense of self. Ultimately, I think this movie was so successful in making the viewer feel exactly how the protagonist does due to the relevancy of the messages and themes. Pop culture, consumerism and the struggles with identity are topics we are greatly familiar with today. To a certain extent, Mima represents a dramatized version of what we as viewers will or have gone through; the pressure to conform to how you want others to perceive you, difficulties in letting go of the past, and the eventual acceptance of reality.

“…there’s a gap between the image people see of me and what I see myself. Perfect Blue is about the tragedy caused by that gap becoming too large.” - Satoshi Kon. -Aryn

The Archipelago Team have also curated a playlist, so scan and enjoy:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Uf3PJUEuhTAmLVQYe7zVY?si=175c36dd5a5746c3

Memory, Maternity and Silken slips: The work of Louise Bourgeois

Born into a family of wealthy Parisian art dealers that specialised in antique tapestries in the early 1900s, fabric and clothing shaped Louise Bourgeois’ childhood. As a child, she was dressed up just as any young girl of her social standing would be; she was wearing Chanel and furs at 13. She believed fervently in the idea that clothing tells a story and as she grew up, she began to associate her undergarments with her ‘intolerable suffering because they [hid] an intolerable wound.’ Her particular emotion connection to underwear, specifically night dresses and slips, becomes prominent in her later works, making its first appearance in 1996, in Cell (Clothes), one in her series of ‘Cells’ she made in the latter half of her career.

In the same year she created one her most poignant works as part of another series of hers entitled ‘Pole Pieces’. Here she hung a selection of old undergarments and slip

dresses (some of which had belonged to her mother), on large, jutting cattle bones, which served as hangers. On the base of the metal structure are the words ‘Seamstress, Mistress, Distress, Stress’, words thatseem to summarise the psychological impact her upbringing had on her. Bourgeois was first inspired to incorporate items of clothing into her work when her assistant suggested they go through boxes of old clothes she had kept in her attic. She said they worked together to hang up all the clothes and categorise them according to the ones she would want to keep intact in her installations, those she would take apart and use in sculptures and those she would get rid of. This moment started her in a new phase of her career during which she tackled her childhood memories and trauma through clothing and textiles.

Throughout this exploration, she played on varied symbols of maternity in relation to textiles and clothing, most notably the spider. She has commented on how the mother spider does not grow angry when someone ruins her web, rather she begins to rebuild, a value she somewhat admires in them. This struck a chord with her as she grew up around tapestry restorers; she was trained to see beauty in the worn and battered. I believe she takes a similar approach to her own work, building on and working into her fabrics in order to make something beautiful from her traumatic childhood.

-Solène

The lost beauty of film photography

I remember the first time I received my first developed photographs in the post. I had been waiting for what felt like forever. The wait was worth it. Seeing my beautiful photos in person left me feeling satisfied for some time thereafter (a rare phenomenon for me). My camera had a life before me, starting with my Greatbought this camera upon his return to England in early 1960s after a long stint in Sudan, where he had worked as a railway manager. A decade or so later, his health declined, he became bedbound, and the camera was passed on to my grandfather. His Voigtländer II Vitomatic lay at rest for many years in a dusty cupboard - waiting. My Grandfather heard of my interest in old cameras and from the depths of his loft, dug out this camera for me which I now cherish. It’s a rather clunky camera; heavy with many awkward dials and twisty bits that don’t appear to do anything. After some ‘trial and error’, I learned how to use the machine and I took the 2 kg camera with me wherever I went (I was 11).

To take a photo on film, the photographer must centre themselves, consider their perspective and creative vision, in order to take an even slightly successful photo. The control one has over that

camera in that one second evokes a rare sense of control. Film photography also provides a contrast in our lives which we live gorging on our instantaneous desires and perpetually losing our sense of time. Life takes time. Film takes time. It brings us back down to the physical, analogue, earth which does not run on 5x time, but 1x time. It takes a few days to get the film developed, which is challenging for those of us who live on 5x time with an obscene lack of patience (me), but is, nevertheless, a good challenge. There’s something quite grounding about holding the incarnate capture of that moment; there truly is a unique beauty in capturing that second which may or may not be real in the grand scheme of life, but which lives on vividly for some period of time, perhaps not for long in our minds but for forever on that negative. In our society today it is virtually (hah) impossible to distance ourselves from our pixelated “lives”, yet film photography offers a “relâchement” from our digital lives and identities and a chance to connect with the beauty of analogue and the mechanical beauty of life. Via rejecting these normalized imbalances (e.g., patience) and embracing a part of our past that has been, is and always will be a key part of our society we gain a sense of connection. Through this we diminish the distance between us and our past which perhaps is used as a defensive barrier, to isolate our behaviour from theirs, when in reality we are all the same. There may well be ‘better’ alternative ways of healing that generational laceration, but this is one that simply proves the everlasting potency of visual art. We regain a primitive peace through connecting with our roots. Some may be with their memories. Mine is with the man whose camera I so love to use, whom I never met in person, but perhaps in our shared interest.

-Mimi

Untitled (Print, thread), Bee

February, Lëtzebuerg

I saw my first snowdrop of the year, my dear, and could only think of you. You, as you tossed yourself over those hedges old Samson cared for so lovingly, while hollering with plucky madness; you, as you tore up little worlds of grass with those scurrying heels; you, as you hid freshly plucked flowerheads behind the bookshelves and cabinets (for whatever reason I knew not). I would often discover them in fits of rage, since the only times I would chance upon those niches were after upsetting arguments with Mother. Then, I would cradle the fragile things and finally allow my tears to nourish the petals and trace snail slime trails down the stem. I felt better afterwards, and it usually improved my mood enough that I would consider making amends, rather pathetically, with Mother.

I find myself forgetting the intricacies of our childhood more and more, yet new souvenirs from those times surface, at inexplicable moments of my day, to shock me, possibly during a fitful spell of sleep, or a musingly quiet dawn of reverential prayers. Never have I thought that you would amount to the person you are now. You told me regretfully of the years you squandered in your twenties in relentless pursuit of something, yet that something you knew nothing of, at least not what it was. I can only know of my own flights of fancy, and know, with certainty, that I had no such carnal instinct; instead, I have always mused internally, reflecting on past and present.

Outside the stolid confines of my bedchamber, I imagine the cherrywood outlines of my bookcase and table, coloured brown by age, tinted rose by romance. The many tapestries hang as lieutenants to my timbered affairs: a skein of mustard-seed yellow; another of deep olive leaves; a red so dense it told of the Orient, and garnets, and bloodshed; and, finally, one of a rich, idyllic blue – a rolling river making the art one. I turn towards the sun. The Pont Adolphe scrutinises my blurred frame in the rain-pecked window. A thing of beauty, that, especially in the saturated summer months; I still pleasure myself with strolling beneath its arches. Walk another mile, and the soaring redcedars give way to brick, steeped in mire-like sensations. The city is certainly not without attraction, but I find the most peculiar diffidence overcome my person whenever I find myself wandering the streets. A group of youths emerge from a building with no discernible entrance, but many lurid-coloured signboards scattered fecklessly on the wall. Shocks of paint were dripping from the roof, and metallic poles scaled the length of the daunting building. Even the town square seemed like a cardboard edifice to me, awash with automatons of people, and thoughtless items wilting in store displays. An unfortunate product of a childhood swaddled by nature; I suppose.

I still have some time before I enter the final act, my dénouement of life, yet I feel antiquity introducing herself to me. Everything reminds me of the past I yearn to return to. I can detect no connection with myself of ages past – but only when I have preserved no memories of that inimitable time and place, those hallowed halls in which we were once reared. What I do remember, I cherish.

I cannot help to concur with Locke – as one’s memory fades, so does their identity. Sobering, is it not?

Yours, A -amber!

Ifmemoriescouldbecanned,wouldtheyalsohaveexpirydates?Ifso, Ihopetheylastforcenturies.

-He Zhiwu, Cop 223 (Chungking Express)

The Memory Police

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa is a short science fiction novel, written in 1994, exploring themes similar to those in Orwell’s 1984, but from a different angle. It won the American Book Award, was nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and was named finalist for the 2020 International Booker Prize and the 2020 World Fantasy Award.

The main character of the novel is a woman, but she is unnamed, as most of the characters in this book are. She is one of the many on the island who lose their memories of objects whenever that object is disappeared, but her editor, R, and her mother are both part of the few who can resist this. Ogawa’s decision to write the novel from the perspective of an ordinary person, rather one of the special ones, is what makes the mundane, accepting tone of the book work, rather than alienating the reader. The islanders simply grow accustomed to their fate, and the people who do resist are swiftly taken away, unable to organise any meaningful uprising. The islanders are “quiet, dazed” when they comply with the orders of the Memory Police, which could at first seem foolish to the reader, but through the novel, Ogawa leads the reader to understand the motivations of the islanders.

In the novel, memory makes up a key part of the personalities of the characters; as they lose more memories, they become hollow shadows of who they were at the beginning of the novel. One of the characters, the old man, says that when he was younger and he had more memories, the island felt “more real”. The seeming ambivalence of the islanders to their loss of memory could seem disturbing to readers, as memory is such a crucial part of us, but one of the characters in the novel, the old man, explains this oddity: every time memories are lost, a piece of the person's identity is lost, and they lose themselves completely over time. The few people who resist are either immune to the memory stealing phenomenon, or close to someone who is.

The mental capacities are more powerful than the physical, because even when the islanders see the disappeared objects, their eyes slide off them. Memory is obviously a significant theme throughout the book as the characters lose themselves as they lose their memories. Ogawa implies that our perception of the physical is controlled entirely by our mind, and that the physical aspects of our lives, like seeing flowers, or smelling perfume, can, disturbingly, be taken away with our memories.

-Kirsty

Censorship Via Language in ‘A Clockwork Orange’

Anthony Burgess’s novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is infamous for its abundant mentions of graphic violence, but the real force lies in the invented language, Nadsat, spoken by the narrator Alex. The language is emblematic of the lack of understanding between the governing forces and the populace, which, Burgess argues, is inevitably brought on by the powerful and its deceit.

Nadsat firstly moderates the graphic violence Alex and his friends (or ‘droogs’) commit. Alex, as the narrator, implements it to create empathy by trivialising the violence; ‘tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood’ is much more digestible than its English equivalent. The use of this dialect allows Alex to sanitise the explicit details of his actions, and thus he denies the reader a full understanding of his doings. He exploits this to make one feel a sense of empathy towards him. We later gain full knowledge of Alex’s violent crimes; however, this is juxtaposed by our empathy and pity for him, and Burgess draws a parallel from this as a criticism of authoritarian figures. Like Alex, those with power are able to use more sophisticated language to pull the wool over people’s eyes and manipulate people into bestowing trust upon them; Alex himself says he puts on a more ‘refined manner of speech’ when he tricks people into letting them in to his house. Rulers also use language also create a gap between them and the ruled, to create a clear power dynamic which cannot be overcome. However, Nadsat is established as the language of resistance, and used to display the barrier between the adolescents and the rest of society; it skews communication between the two groups. The linguistic divide between Alex and his friends, and authoritarian figures, such as parents, police officers, and prison guards, leads to the collapse of empathy for both parties as they cannot understand one another.

Anthony Burgess had a staunch anti-authoritarian stance for the most part of his life; he once criticised ‘the governing machine’ for ‘becoming remote, impersonal, even inhuman’. While censorship has been frequently employed by authoritarian governments claiming to be protecting their citizens, when a government shows its inhumanity and distance, it cannot work, and will lead to resistance, like in ‘A Clockwork Orange’.

Art Exhibitions in London

o Strange Clay at the Hayward Gallery

o William Kentridge at the Royal Academy

o Broken Spectre at 180 The Strand

o LuYang NetiNeti at the Zabludowicz Collection Cezanne at the Tate Modern

o Making Modernism at The Royal Academy

Literature Recommendations

Fiction:

o The Go-Between – L.P.Hartley

o The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes

o A Hero Born – Jin Yong

o The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro

o Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

o Untold Night and Day – Bae Shuah

o Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

o Everything Under – Daisy Johnson

o Kin Ji-Young, Born 1982 – Cho Nam-Joo

o Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo

o As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

o The Guest – Hwang SoKyong

o In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust

o The Remains of the Day- Kazuo Ishiguro

o Pale Fire -Vladimir Nabokov

Non-Fiction:

o Sky Burial – Xinran

o Metaphors of Memory – Douwe Draaisma

o The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows – John Koenig

Biography:

o The Tongue Set Free – Elias Canetti

o Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabokov

o Wild Swans – Jung Chang

Poetry:

o The Waste Land – T.S.Eliot

o Paris – Hope Mirlees

o Taking Leave of Cambridge Again – Xu Zhi Mo

o The House of Life – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

o Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey – William Wordsworth

o The Backbone Flute – Vladimir Mayakovsky

Short Stories:

o Wisteria – Mieko Kawakami

Theatre:

o Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

o Dancing at Lughnasa – Brian Friel

o Landscape – Harold Pinter

o Peer Gynt – Henrik Ibsen

o Creditors – August Strindberg

o The Glass Menagerie – Tennessee Williams

Upcoming Classical Concerts

o 11th Dec, Royal Festival Hall - Santtu and Yuja Wang: Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov (open rehearsal)

o 12th-14th Dec, Wigmore Hall - Recitals from Prizewinners of the 2021 Leeds Piano Competition

o 14th Dec, Wigmore Hall - Gould Piano Trio: Beethoven

o 14th-15th Dec, Barbican Hall - Sir Simon Rattle and Evgeny Kissin with the LSO: Revolution and Romance

o 17th Dec, Southwark Cathedral - Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

o 19th Dec, Cadogan Hall - Janine Jansen with an ensemble of violinists playing allStradivari violins: Chausson and Mendelssohn

o 21st Dec, Wigmore Hall - French Contemporary Trio: Chausson, Debussy and Poulenc

o 23rd Dec, Wigmore Hall - il Pomo d’Oro Choir: Vespro di Natale

o 27th Dec, Barbican Centre - The Best of John Williams (not strictly classical but sure to be enjoyable!)

o 17th-18th Dec, Barbican Hall - Sir Simon Rattle with the LSO: Sorrow and Serenity, Brahms’ Requiem

o 11th Jan, Barbican Hall - LSO: Storms of Passion, Janáček’s Katya Kabanova

o 12th Jan, Queen Elizabeth Hall - Leslie Suganandarajah and Leia Zhu with the London Mozart Players: Beethoven -Amber

Love, The Archipelago Team