Generated Nostalgia

Video Project

Zeynep Atik

 MAIAD 26

I have these fragments of memories that live in my mind which for a long time had me wondering why I remember them in the first place, as well as fearing that I might forget them at some point. Their material traces no longer exist—there are no photographs, no objects left to hold onto—only the sensation of having been there.

I find beauty in remembering emotions I didn’t yet know how to name as a child: the quiet melancholy of a radio playing in the car, the weight of time spent somewhere unfamiliar, the change of aesthetics in places I visited.

Working with the machine as a tool for collaboration in reconstruction, made process cyclical: memory informing the prompt, the prompt reshaping the memory. I resisted the urge to fully reconstruct or “complete” the memory. Instead of asking the machine to fill every hole, I let emptiness, vagueness, and silence stay visible. Between my memory and the machine’s logic, the memories returned not as they were, but alive again.