Powers of Recall: The Narrative of the Posessor

POWERS OF RECALL The Narrative of the Possessor

In the establishment of modern society, the individual act of sightseeing is probably less important than the ceremonial ratification of authentic attractions as objects of ultimate value, a ratification at once caused by and resulting in a gathering of tourists around an attraction and measurable to a certain degree by the time and distance the tourists travel to reach it. The actual act of communion between the tourist and attraction is less important than the image or the idea of society that the collective act generates. The image of the Statue of Liberty or the Liberty Bell that is the product of visits to them is more enduring than any specific visit, although, of course, the visit is indispensable to the image. A specific act of sightseeing is, in itself, weightless and, at the same time, the ultimate reason for the orderly representation of the social structure of modern society in the system of attractions. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (1976)

POWERS OF RECALL The Narrative of the Possessor

For me, the gift shop has always been a draw, sometimes one that overshadows the actual attraction; the reward at the end of the visit. Why is it that the artifact of an experience (one that maybe hasn’t even been realized yet) can hold so much value?

This project started with my small collection of postcards from various travel experiences. They are the physical representation of my memories. But the accuracy of the memories they represent is questionable. I look at them and I can’t always remember when I was at this place, who I was with, or what I thought of the experience...yet, it does not negate the event, or the importance of what happened.

Powers of Recall uses my postcards to explore the idea of memory and narrative, objects that hold memory, and how those objects and the memories hold value. The value is not in the reality of what happened, but how we recount the story or hold the story in our hearts. Memory is fuzzy. Accuracy in memory is ephemeral...one day you may remember or recount a detail, but the next time it could be left out. Sometimes we have false memories, but they are still a part of the fabric of our being. In her essay, “Objects of Desire,” Susan Stewart beautifully and intelligently expresses the importance of, and our relationship to, the souvenir.

I chose seven of my favorite postcards, for each card I asked a few people to write–using the postcard as inspiration, a “memory” of being at this place. It did not matter that some people had not traveled to the assigned locations. It is not apparent which memories are “true” and which are made up, but they are all equally entertaining and provoke the imagination. The postcards, living in a box, up on a shelf, seemed to be of little use. Their roles as souvenirs were unfulfilled; the contributors to this book have given the postcards a second life and a way towards a realization of intended purpose. As Otl Aicher articulated in his essay “Analogous and Digital,” truth does not necessarily equal value, and value, whatever that may be, is determined through use.

LB, 5·2·2010

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The following text, which runs through the book, is excerpted from the essay “Objects of Desire,” written by Susan Stewart.

The essay appears in her book On Longing.

W

hen the body is the primary mode of perceiving scale, exaggeration must take place in relation to the balance of measurement offered as the body extends into the space of immediate experience. But paradoxically, the body itself is necessarily exaggerated as soon as we have an image of the body, an image which is a projection or objectification of the body into the world.

Thus the problems in imagining the body are symptomatic of the problems in imagining the self as place, object, and agent at once. We have seen that there are a number of ways in which the body and the world, the experienced and the imagined, mutually articulate and delimit each other.

First, the bodily grotesque of carnival offers the possibility of incorporation: the image is not detached from the body here; rather, it moves within the democratic space of carnival, that space of the face-to-face communication of the marketplace. But in the miniaturized world of the freak show, the body is taken from movement into stasis. Through the transcendent viewpoint offered by this variety of spectacle, the body is made an object and, correlatively, is something which offers itself to possession. Hence, while the freak show may seem, at first glance, to be a display of the grotesque, the distance it invokes makes it instead an inverse, display of perfection.

Through the freak we derive an image of the normal; to know an age’s typical freaks is,

in fact, to know its points of standardization. Microcosmic thought–the use of the body as a model of the universe and of the universe as a model of the body–is another example of the image’s role in the creation of the body. Starting from assumptions of perfection and balance, microcosmic theories make the body metaphoric to the larger “corporeal” universe. It is clear that in order for the body to exist as a standard of measurement, it must itself be exaggerated into an abstraction of an ideal. The model is not the realization of a variety of differences.

As the word implies, it is an abstraction or image and not a presentation of any lived possibility. Hence, in the case of the human models of advertising, we are given anonymity rather than identity. Indeed, when a model’s name becomes known it usually means that he or she is about to become “animate” as an actor or actress. In contrast to this model body, the body of lived experience is subject to change, transformation, and, most importantly, death. The idealized body implicitly denies the possibility of death–it attempts to present a realm of transcendence and immortality, a realm of the classic. This is the body-made-object, and thus the body as potential commodity, taking place within the abstract and infinite cycle of exchange.

Within the development of culture under an exchange economy, the search for authentic experience and, correlatively, the search for the authentic object become critical. As experience is increasingly medi-

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ated and abstracted, the lived relation of the body to the phenomenological world is replaced by a nostalgic myth of contact and presence. “Authentic” experience becomes both elusive and allusive as it is placed beyond the horizon of present lived experience, the beyond in which the antique, the pastoral, the exotic, and other fictive domains are articulated. In this process of distancing, the memory of the body is replaced by the memory of the object, a memory standing outside the self and thus presenting both a surplus and lack of significance. The experience of the object lies outside the body’s experience–it is saturated with meanings that will never be fully revealed to us. Furthermore, the seriality of mechanical modes of production leads us to perceive that outside as a singular and authentic context of which the object is only a trace.

Here we might take Hegel as our model: ‘The truth is thus the bacchanalian revel, where not a member is sober; and because every member no sooner becomes detached than it eo ipso collapses straightway, the revel is just as much a state of transparent unbroken calm. . . In the entirety of the movement, taken as an unbroken quiescent whole, that which obtains distinctness in the course of its process and secures specific existence, is preserved in the form of a self-recollection, in which existence is self-knowledge, and self-knowledge, again, is immediate existence.” The rending of the body of the god. takes place

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in the delirium of immediate experience.

In this act of distortion, dismemberment, and ultimately composition, the social is constituted: we have only to think of the authentic con game offered by Chaucer’s Pardoner and the fantastic restoration of the relics of the crucifixion as they served to delineate the West from what it was not.

It is no accident that the closing pitch of the freak show It was that sense of being out of place, but yet is often also somewhere you want to stay. I felt anything I manifest- did was ok since I knew I would not be here after ed by the a few days. The cobbled alleys, reminded me souvenir.

Consider of bedtime tales my grandmother used to read this pitch to me, as if I was in this imaginary place, but it from the was real now. But it was more than that. The air end of the smelled of pleasure, and the colors were different giant and half-lady than anything else I had seen – as if a bunch of show at kids had picked the paints. Even the music had Strate’s a pleasant beat – even though I hated dancing, I Carnival, kind of felt my legs move at times to the beat of Washington, D.C., the tunes. in 1941. The giant, Mr. Tomainey, says: And notice the size of the hands-watch the hand please-and the size of the ring I have here, so large you can pass a silver half a dollar right through the center of the ring Watch this, a silver half a dollar right through the giant lucky ring, believe it or not. Right through the center of the ring. Now each one of these rings have my name and occupation engraved on

I didn’t mean to go to Florence but I ended up there anyway. I was backpacking across Europe but got sidetracked by an Irish boy in a hostel in Montpellier and missed the friend I was supposed to meet in Rome. So I backtracked to Florence instead to crash on the floor of the room of two girls from Dallas I had met in Malaga a few weeks earlier. When I got there I had been on a train for days. I was dirty and lonely and the woman at the front desk of the small hotel across the river was expecting me. She let me into the room I didn’t have any right to with a marked kindness. The bed was covered in shopping bags. I passed out amongst to them. When I awoke that evening someone had placed a bowl of fresh fruit by my head. There was an address to a restaurant sitting near it. Somehow I understood that my friends would meet me there. I showered and borrowed a dress from the closet. When I ran out onto the cobblestones the sun had set and everything was glowing, the lights of the city and their reflections in the river equally. The air was balmy and mild and charged with potential. I was 21 years old, narcissistic and absolutely reckless, loosed in a city which seemed to exist only so that I could feel it humming around me. Nothing was impossible.

I have to say, Florence has been pretty amazing, perhaps more so than I expected.

It’s just really pretty, and calm and well… foreign, in the best sense of the word. I was fortunate to meet some other travelers at my hotel. One of them seems to be a wealthy heiress. I don’t know the details, but she’s provided plenty of fun. Another couple turned out to be local con artists. It was kind of an amazing scam and that cost me dinner for a few nights, but in the end it was more amusing than upsetting. Plus, it’s hard to remain angry when the views are so spectacular. Wish you were here.

them, and I’m going to pass them out now for souvenirs, and this is how I do it I have here a little booklet, tells you all about our married life, has the life story, photographs of both of us and ten questions and answers pertaining to our married life and. Now all you care to know about us two is in this booklet Now we sell the booklet and for each and every booklet we give away one of these giant lucky rings Now if you care to take home an interesting souvenir of the circus, hold up your dimes and I’ll be very glad to wait on you 10 cents is all they are.

The souvenir both offers a measurement for the normal and authenticates the experience of the viewer. The giant begins with the two authenticating signs of origin: the graph itself and the mark upon the world made by his labor. As we saw in the discussion of the bodily grotesque, the freak show as spectacle permits a voyeurism which is at once transcendent and distanced. Thus a miniaturization is effected through the viewer’s stance no matter what the object is. Furthermore, the marriage of the freaks presents a proportionality of extremes; the cultural sign triumphs over the limits of the natural.

This souvenir domesticates the grotesque on the level of content, subsuming the sexual facts to the cultural code. But the souvenir also domesticates on the level of its operation: external experience is internalized; the beast is taken home. The giant’s ring is lucky because it has survived,

because it marks the transference of origin to trace, moving from event to memory and desire. Like all wedding rings, it is a souvenir of the joining of the circle, the seamless perfection of joined asymmetrical halves.

But in this case there is a second displacement of that event in the proportional joining of disproportionate parts. The giant repreFor me, Paris is a city full of architectural jewels and sents excess; the amazing works of art. From the Eiffel Tower, to Notre half-lady, Dame, to the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, to Sacre Coeur. impover- I remember walking all over the city, finding historically ishment. significant sites at every turn. My favorite place is the JarAnd the din de Luxembourg. I enjoyed sitting in the green chairs audience scattered around fountains and water features. The array is now of colors of the garden’s flora and the open space were so witness soothing to see. Also I took pleasure in the people-watchto this ing. There were families with children, teenagers, dating spectacle couples, and friends engaging in lively conversation or of culture delighting in their very French picnics. I loved hearing the forcing sound of little kids speaking French and the twitter of the nature into the birds in the trees. There was so much harmonic. joy in the scene.

We might say that this capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the souvenir. The souvenir distinguishes experiences. We do not need or desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable. Rather we need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative. Through narra-

After making our way through the Tuileries on the clear New Year’s Day, I saw a beggar on the sidewalk. This was not unusual for Paris, or any major city for that matter – but for some reason the memory of this man stays with me. He was not missing limbs, or especially miserable looking. He was younger. He had set himself in the margins of a wide walkway, along with a few other vagrants. While the others sat up and shook cups at us, he was on his knees, bent over, with his forehead touching the ground and his hands open, simply.

tive the souvenir substitutes a context of perpetual consumption for its context of origin. It represents not the lived experience of its maker but the “secondhand” experience of its possessor/owner. Like the collection, it always displays the romance of contraband, for its scandal is its removal from its “natural” location.

Yet it is only by means of its material relation to that location that it acquires its value.

In this is the tradition of “first-day covers” for stamps and the disappointment we feel in receiving a postcard from the sender’s home rather than from the depicted sight. The souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not an object arising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia. The souvenir

My favorite memory in Paris was the eating and drinking. I’m fairly certain I gained 10 pounds there and don’t understand why they say “French Women Don’t Get Fat” but, the cuisine or even a baquette is something you can’t pass up. Sitting in the sun on a warm day along les Champs Elysées with a great food, a glass of wine and amazing friends could never be forgotten.

Buttery and savory morsels of goodness packed into bite sized ellipses of epiphanous perfection.

The macarons at Laduree Champs Elysees.

Raspberry, caramel with salted butter, chocolate with passion fruits and limes and cherries, blackcurrant violet, mango with jasmine…. stacked horizontally, one next to the other, resembling poker chips from what would be a rainbow colored casino. Delicately baked gradients ranging from sea foam green, to beach chair pink, to ladybug red, to volkswagon beetle yellow, all the way to care bear purple. And just when you think you’ve savored each and every flavor, a new one is created with the turn of the season, as an homage to the birth of this Parisian delicacy, this jewel toned, sometimes pastel, but always subtlety hued nugget. If you took everything, Everything, and shaved off all the negativity and sadness, you would be left with this tiny, round, cakey sandwich made of 2 discs of almonds, eggs, and sugar, hugging a creamy layer of ganachey goodness. Happiness in its most primal form.

It’s everything you need and more.

Aah Sicilia! Siracusa! I twisted an ankle running up those amphitheatre ruins,but perhaps that was the best part of the trip.

Limping around made me all the more charming and easy to the single men in the coffee shop patios. After all, what dark Italian Stallion would not want to seduce a natural blonde who barely understands a word, needs to sit down every few minutes, and has absolutely no way to quickly escape? Of course that was also the bait...

generates a narrative which reaches only “behind,” spiraling in a continually inward movement rather than outward toward the future. Here we find the structure of Freud’s description of the genesis of the fetish: a part of the body is substituted for the whole, or an object is substituted for the part, until finally, and inversely, the whole body can become object, substituting for the whole.

Thus we have the systematic transformation of the object into its own impossibility, its loss and the simultaneous experience of a difference which Freud characterizes as the fetishist’s both knowing and not knowing the anatomical distinctions between the sexes. Metaphor, by the partiality of its substituting power, is, in fact, attached to metonymy here. The possession of the metonymic object is a kind of dispossession in that the presence of, the object all the more radically speaks to its status as a mere substitution and to its subsequent distance from the self. This distance is not simply experienced as a loss; it is also experienced as a surplus of signification. It is experienced, as is the loss of the dual relation with the mother, as catastrophe and jouissance simultaneously.

The souvenir is by definition always incomplete. And this incompleteness works on two levels. First, the object is metonymic to, the scene of its original appropriation in the sense that it is a sample:

If I save the ribbon from a corsage, the souvenir is, in Eco’s terms, a homomaterial replica, a metonymic reference existing between object part and object/whole in which the part is of the material of the original and thus a “partial double.” Within the operation of the souvenir, the sign functions not so much as object to object, but beAfter we climbed up and down the spire and walked yond this the roof of the Monreale cathedral we walked across relathe piazza for what had become our daily gelato fix. tion, metThere was no bad gelato in Italy...it’s hard to improve onymon near perfection, but this establishment offered ically, as something we hadn’t encountered on the mainland object (and would discover seemed to be a Sicilian treat), to event/ they put the gelato into fresh buttery brioche rolls... expedefinitely the best ice cream sandwich I’ve ever had. rience.

The ribbon may be metonymic to the corsage, but the corsage is in turn metonymic to an increasingly abstract, and hence increasingly “lost,” set of referents: the gown, the dance, the particular occasion, the particular spring, all springs, romance, etc. Furthermore, a souvenir does not necessarily have to be a homomaterial replica. If I purchase a plastic

Today I walked for 4 hours, across the island and back. At the edge of the island I encountered the water and decided to go for a swim. When I was done I walked back home through the ruins, which don’t seem very historical to me anymore.

I detoured into a small foreign movie theater that was playing Citizen Kane which I watched with great interest, it was the first English speaking entertainment I had seen in two weeks. Then I picked up some food and headed home. On my way to the hotel I saw a beautiful boy. A model with tragic hair, but tragic in a very good way. I like the air here, it’s cool and dry. The days have been warm which is perfect. The colors of the city are faded in a way that makes me think of L . A in the summer. Yesterday we went into the mountains and had a picnic. The view encompassed the old ruins against the edges of the land lined with beautiful buildings and of course endless water. The trees were very tall and we picked flowers for the hotel room. Tomorrow we are going bird watching.

Last summer, my friend Davis and I went on a trip… but it wasn’t just any trip, it was a skateboarding adventure. Where else would we travel for skateboarding other than Barcelona! There’s beautiful marble ledges, smooth ground, nice weather, and different places to skate for days! Barcelona is literally a skateboarder’s paradise. It’s featured a million times in every skate video you’ll ever watch and every photo in any magazine you’ll ever read. However, our trip wasn’t as magical as I thought it would be. Why? It was raining. The whole time. Nonstop thunder and lightning. We didn’t get to skate any of the famous spots that we’ve seen in numerous videos because they were all outside in the midst of the storm. Instead, we got to walk by them in coats and umbrellas minonly and we spent the whole trip visiting these “exciting” iature evoke of the and places featured on this postcard. I guess next time Eiffel resowe’ll check the weather before we spend a ridiculous Tower nate amount of money to visit a so-called paradise. as a to, and soucan venir never of my trip to Paris, the object is not a entirely recoup. In fact, if it could recoup homomaterial one; it is a representation in the experience, it would erase its own another medium. But whether the souvenir partiality, that partiality which is the very is a material sample or not, it will still exist source of its power. Second, the souvenir as a sample of the now distanced experimust remain impoverished and partial so ence, an experience which the object can that it can be supplemented by a narra-

As I write this postcard, I am sitting outside eating paella. The sun is shining and the sound of flamenco guitars can be heard in the distance.

Yesterday I made my way up to Montserrat, a mountain outside of Barcelona with a monastery on top. The place is considered a holy place and many people make a pilgrimage there each year. Well, the wine is going to my head now and siesta soon approaches. It would be culturally insensitive not to adopt the customs of the area, especially when they involve sleeping.

As a high school graduation gift I sent myself to Europe. It was me and my best friend. She went ahead of me by a couple of weeks and by the time I met her she had already fallen in love in London with a boy she had met only days ago. Isn’t that how it usually goes?

I met her in Barcelona, the city that she had been dreaming of for over a year. She was incredibly quiet. This was not her usual self, but it was dramatic, and she had everything to do with drama. She had the kind of charisma that made everyone think they loved everything about her.

But in Barcelona everything meant hardly nothing at all.

And so it’s always felt to me like she was in a very particular kind of heaven.

tive discourse, a narrative discourse which articulates the play of desire. The plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower does not define and delimit the Eiffel Tower for us in the way that an architect’s model would define and delimit a building. The souvenir replica is an allusion One of my most vivid yet blurry memories of Barcelona and not took place on a famous yet completely ordinary square a model; during a night of rowdy eating and drinking. By the it comes time my friends and I reached our last destination that after the night, we were barely standing and probably had no fact and idea who or where we were (some cavernous club). remains I apparently started dancing with some guy and then both next thing I remember, I’m in a nearby police station partial to where some very friendly officers and a couple local and more guys are handing me my wallet--which had apparently expanbeen stolen. Imagine my surprised delight to get my sive than wallet returned when I didn’t even consciously know it the fact. had been taken! Of course there was some dread and It will not a queasy feeling mixed in there – what???? huh?–but I function skipped and danced the whole way back to my hostel withwhere a very-nervous Rob was waiting for me, wonderout the ing if I ever found my wallet. supplementary narrative discourse that both attaches it to its origins and creates a myth with regard to those origins.

What is this narrative of origins? It is a narrative of interiority and authenticity. It is not a narrative of the object; it is a narrative of the possessor. The souvenir as bibelot or curiosity has little if any value attached to its materiality. Furthermore, the souvenir is often attached to locations

and experiences that are not for sale. The substituting power of the souvenir operates within the following analogy: as experience is to an imagined point of authenticity, so narrative is to the souvenir. The souvenir displaces the point of authenticity as it itself becomes Sitting outside on Sharia’ Wost al-Gezira, opthe point posite the Flamenco Hotel—a third-rate haunt of origin for German tourists looking to save a buck—the for narglass of shai brought from the basement of the rative. soviet-era apartment building smells of coal ash Such a narrative and coffee grinds. From inside the shop Ibrahim cannot is giving the same hard sell I have heard a hunbe gener- dred times by now. The papyrus represents the alized to oldest love story in the world. In other places, encomthey will try to sell you banana leaves. This is pass the papyrus. Not at the Lovely Bazaar. Ibrahim calls experience of me in to prove my American-ness, to prove his anyone; trustworthiness, to prove he is cosmopolitan and it perthat one day, he will leave this place. I oblige, tains only and in the end, they buy the papyrus and a stone to the possess- obelisk and some perfume and I go back up to or of the the street and drink my tea. object. It is a narrative which seeks to reconcile the disparity between interiority and exteriority, subject and object, signifier and signified. We cannot be proud of someone else’s souvenir unless the narrative is extended to include our relationship with the object’s owner or unless, as we shall see later, we transform the souvenir into the collec-

Our first stop in Cairo was the Egyptian Museum. The tour guide was a slender man with maniacal hair. His name was Abayomi.

He took us through the museum at a brisk pace spouting out historical facts as we passed sarcophagi and golden masks. We were able to maneuver around larger tour groups and skip to the front of most exhibits with some strategic tipping. Baksheesh is Arabic for tip and most things in Cairo require some palm greasing. The highlight of the museum was seeing King Tut’s golden mask. After we finished with the museum, we took a bus to the pyramid of Giza. It’s difficult to describe seeing this iconic structure in person for the first time. Up until this point I’d only seen photographs. Standing at the base and looking up was a surreal experience. We traveled by camel to the Sphinx.

I was a bit disappointed at how small the Sphinx actually is in reality. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it seemed like a Hollywood miniature of the “real”sphinx which in my mind was at least twice the size of what I saw before me.

I went to Egypt and all I got was this lousy postcard. Isn't that how that phrase goes? But usually a shirt, right? But this is for real. ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY POSTCARD. It was just 2 weeks after my first year in college and Nate I and were headed out on our first international trip. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing we discussed late one night during Spring Break, a little stoned, and hanging out in the dorm lobby, fingering through at the L . A . Weekly. Visit Living History.

The travel ad in the Weekly was hypnotically gazing at us, or was that the pharaoh with the eyeliner? Anyway, it was reasonably priced and we thought we'd go direct to Cairo, then just kind of hitch train rides up into Europe and return home from Paris. Just see how far our money took us.

Ok, so we arrive in Cairo. We're waiting for our bags for what seemed to be an hour and a half when this short little guy with a thick bushy mustache comes up to us. "I have a room for you two guys. Yes, 10 American dollars each night.

You're Americans, yes?" But we already have a room. We're staying at the Dahab Hostel. "Hostel?! No, you guys come with me. I have great room for you two. Television, marble floors. In the center of the city. Bars, dancing, everything you like." Nate and I nodded in agreement and once our bags came, the guy threw them in the trunk of his beat-up beige sedan—complete with what looked like a homemade spoiler. Along the drive, I noticed this tray glued to the back of the guy's seat, holding these postcards. How much? " You keep it, my friend."

We approached the downtown area and witnessed as chaos consumed the area. I don't know if there was a celebration going on or what, but it was insanely packed full of people. There was shit going on absolutely everywhere you looked. Just then, we pulled up to the curb in what appeared to be the eye of this storm. "Here we are, my friends."

Nate and I jumped out. The street was filled with vendors, shoppers, people moving in and out of shops, bikes strolling by, people shaking out rugs, and cars spewing exhaust everywhere. Not less than a second after my foot was out of the car, our "friend" zoomed off with our bags. Seriously?!

We didn't even have this guy's name. Left with only $50, our passports, and this damn postcard, we took our cue and got the hell out of Egypt. Thanks Tut.

The year was 2005. I had just graduated from college and was ready to start the rest of my life. But how could I start a career, a family, a grown-up life without first fulfilling my dream to ride a camel?

No way, I couldn’t do it. So I hopped on the Internet and bought a plane ticket, dug my passport out of the closet, and made my way to Egypt. My friends told me I should check out the pyramids and the Sphinx and the tomb of Tutankhamun, but I had one goal and one goal only. Riding on the humped back of Samuel the Camel changed my life. I will never forget the feeling. tion. This vicarious position, we might note, is that of the owner of the heirloom.

For example, consider the plot of John P. Marquand’s novel The Late George ApleyA Novel in the Form of a Memoir, in which a family bitterly quarrels over the disputed possession of “a badly worn square of carpet upon which General Lafayette inadvertently spilled a glass of Madeira during his visit to Boston.” Such a memento is a souvenir of everyone in the family and of no one in the family. Its possession is a state-

ment of membership, not in the event, but in the prestige generated by the event. The narrative of origins generated is in effect a genealogy, as Veblen suggested when he wrote that anything giving evidence that wealth has been in a family for several generations has particular value to the leisure classes. The function of the heirloom is to weave, quite literally by means of narrative, a significance of blood relation at the expense of a larger view of history and causality. Similarly, the wide availability of

high-quality photographs of various tourist sights does not cancel out the attraction of taking one’s own pictures of public sights or the continual production of tour books with titles such as “My France.”

In his work on tourism, Dean MacCannell notes that I was five years old, visiting New York City with while my family. New York is nick named the Big Apple sights – and as a three foot tall five year old it seemed and larger than life. I had never seen that many people attracor cars on a street before in my tions are life. My mom told me to hold collected her hand as tight as I could and by entire I did. We were walking around societies, visiting various monuments souveand museums and all of a sudnirs are den I hear loud sirens coming collected from down the street. I turn by indiaround and I see these shiny vidual blue cars with bright red lights tourists. speeding down the street. They Describwere beautiful. I couldn’t stop ing some talking about them, I was a little kid and too easily typical excited. My mom explained to me that they were souvenirs, Police officers driving to help people. She bought Macme a postcard with the exact police car on it so I Cannell could always remember that day. writes: In addition to matchbooks, postcards, pencils and ashtrays that carry the name and/or the picture of a sight, there are the less common items such as touristic dish towels and dust cloths overprinted with drawings of Betsy Ross’ House or Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace. These

We were planning on staying up late and watching cable because three hundred channels were hard to come by then.

You kept talking about Lewis Carroll and books and portals. Chez Es Saada is closed now. Was this the same year you jumped off the pier and hit your head?

I was the one who actually found the it under the mattress. Or was it you? At first we were afraid to touch it. Was someone knocking on the door after that? I think it all happened in the afternoon soon after you arrived. Then bed bugs, smoking and loud sounds.

A thesis looms. Something needs to set it off. You may find answers at home, or not. To get me to the city, this was all.

Then, a New England girl at 13 visits. Desert hour and a jasmine tea offer; a Trade tower.

Soft Grand Hotel and A Secret Garden Playbills. A glossy Billy Elliott Playbill marks 16 years have passed. The Dia, last day: You see I am here after all, several thousand vintage postcards of Niagara Falls. Attractions. Notations of place and time existence. Anonymity.

It was in those minutes I felt, that is all.

He kept the photograph and the city it held the way I kept her: full and close to a warm beat, honest, precious in her left pocket, wrinkled and scuffed, the police car that rushed pass us, howling like some child on a continuous tantrum, howling through the space between us, two people lip-syncing a lifetime promise, unheard by the swarm of rushing hats and suits downtown. The two of us share a whisper in the street, uninterrupted the heart that hears another, never knowing the meaning of the word goodbye.

are not intended to serve their original purposes, but are fixed instead so they can be hung on kitchen walls. There is also a special type of square pillow covered with a white silk like cloth, fringed in gold braid, that is made to serve as the canvas for little paintings of sights like Niagara Falls. These latter items are spurious elements that have come out of the closet, occupying visible places in the domestic environment.

Whether or not such items are “spurious� is beside the point. From a different point of view, what is being effected here is the transformation of exterior into interior. Spatially, as any postcard tells us, this works most often through a reduction of dimensions. The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and

the threedimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, or into the two-dimensional representation, that which can be appropriated within the privatized view of the individual subject. The photograph as souvenir is a logical extension of the pressed flower, the preservation of an instant in time through a reduction of physical dimensions and a corresponding increase in significance supplied by means of narrative. The silence of the photograph, its promise of visual intimacy at the expense of the other senses (its glossy surface reflecting us back and refusing us penetration), makes the eruption of that narrative, the telling of its story, all the more poignant.

For the narration of the photograph will itself become an object of nostalgia. Without mark-

Halfway up the mountain, I just thought to myself whyyyy did I agree to this, what am I doing here!?

I’d tagged along with a few friends to Ponderosa state park thinking this’ll be fun…snowball fights, warm fires, a weeklong snow day…but boy was I mistaken. We get there, and everything is hunky-dory the first night, just like I thought it’d be. I started getting a little worried when I heard the words “crack of dawn” and “hike” and “all the way up.”

Just as I had feared, we did wake up and leave by the crack of dawn, and began to hike, and they had really really meant what they said about “all the way up.” I remember thinking, man…there’s now way we’re hiking all the way up this thing…”

But after several hours of trailing behind my friends who might as well have been running up this stupid mountain, we got to the top. I was exhausted. I could have slept right there on the snow for the rest of the day… I knew there was no way I was hiking back down this monster, my knees would just downright explode.

But just as I was about to lose all hope, my friend pulls out a few inflatable intertubes out of nowhere! It’s safe to say that the mountain looked farrrr prettier all of a sudden.

ing, all ancestors become abstractions, losing their proper names; all family trips become the same trip-the formal garden, the waterfall, the picnic site, and the undifferentiated sea become attributes of every country.

Temporally, the souvenir moves history into private time. Hence the absolute appropriateness of the souvenir as calendar. Such a souvenir might mark the privatization of a public symbol (say, the Liberty Bell miniaturized), the juxtaposition of history with a personalized present (say, the year 1776 posited against today’s date with its concurrent private “dates”), and the concomitant transformation of a generally purchasable, mass-produced object (the material souvenir) into private possession (the referent being “my trip to Philadelphia”). That remarkable souvenir, the postcard, is characterized by a complex process of captioning and display which repeats this transformation of public into private. First, as a mass-produced view of a culturally articulated site, the postcard is purchased. Yet this purchase, taking place within an “authentic” context of the site itself, appears as a kind of private experience as the self recovers the object, inscribing the handwriting of the personal beneath the more uniform caption of the social.

Then in a gesture which recapitulates the social’s articulation of the self-that is, the gesture of the gift by which the subject is positioned as place of production and reception of obligation-the postcard is sur-

I initially texted “just landed” when I got on the airport shuttle in Boise....Waited for about 5 minutes....No response....Next texted “boise, id = waynesboro, va”...Going for the laugh to get some/any reply.... A “ha” or “ha ha”.... A “really?

That sucks!”....But, got nothing...

Just needed to leave it alone...“Can u believe it? I just flew over 2,000 miles to see a place 20 miles away from us!”...Still nothing...Ugh...

Shouldn’t have used the word ‘us’....

Should have used ‘you’ or ‘me’...

Gotta recover quickly from that one... “Get this...No snow”...How many texts has that been? What’s the time difference?...She has to be getting these texts...The phone says that they’re going through...I’ll forward a text to myself...The texts are definitely going through...

It’s early February, I get a phone call from my good friend Keegan Valaika who tells me that he is driving 15 hrs straight to Wyoming. Apparently, Idaho is getting a serious snow storm leaving 4 feet of snow in the Jackson Hole area. Within 2 hours Keegan picked me up from CalArts entrance and we took off. We pass through Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and finally arrived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A midwinter trip to Jackson Hole is more than a snowboard vacation-it’s a life-changing cultural experience. Jackson butts up against the Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Elk and Moose roam freely, eagles fly overhead, and cowboys amble through town. As much as the West has been marketed and packaged, the real thing doesn’t disappoint. There we meet up with Bryan Iguchi and Travis Rice who are willing to give a tour of the mountain and scope out some spots that we can build jumps. Those two riders are so experienced and so dialed in that they can read mountain lines like no other. They know where to drop in and where to turn to reach the powder karma. I am excited to be here with all these riders.

rendered to a significant other. The other’s reception of the postcard is the receipt, the ticket stub, that validates the experience of the site, which we now can name as the site of the subject himself or herself.

We must distinguish between souvenirs of exterior sights, souvenirs such as those MacCannelllists, which most often are representations and are purchasable, and souvenirs of individual experience, which most often are samples and are not available as general consumer goods.

In fact, if children are the major consumers of mass produced souvenirs, it is most likely because they, unlike adults, have few souvenirs of the second type and thus must be able to instantly purchase a sign of their own life histories. The souvenir of the second type is intimately mapped against the life history to an individual; it tends to be found in connection with rites of passage (birth, initiation, marriage, and death) as the material sign of an abstract referent: transformation of status. Such souvenirs are rarely kept singly; instead they form a compendium which is an autobiography. Scrapbooks, memory quilts, photo albums, and baby books all serve as examples. It is significant that such souvenirs often appropriate certain aspects of the book in general; we might note especially the way in which an exterior of little material value envelops a great “interior significance,” and the way both souvenir and book transcend their particular contexts. Yet at the same time,

these souvenirs absolutely deny the book’s mode of mechanical reproduction. You cannot make a copy of a scrapbook without being painfully aware that you possess a mere representation of the original. The original will always supplant the copy in a way that is not open to the products of mechanical reproduction. Thus, while the personal memento is of little material worth, often arising, for example, amid the salvage crafts such as quilt-making and embroidery, it is of great worth to its possessor. Because of its connection to biography and its place in constituting the notion of the individual life, the memento becomes emblematic of the worth of that life and of the self’s capacity to generate worthiness. Here we see also the introduction of the metaphor of texture. From the child’s original metonymic displacement to the love-object, the sensual rules souvenirs of this type. The acute sensation of the object-its perception by hand taking precedence over its perception by eye-promises, and yet does not keep the promise of, reunion . Perhaps our preference for instant brown-toning of photographs, distressed antiques, and prefaded blue jeans relates to this suffusion of the worn.

Thank you to all who helped and contributed.

FLORENCE, ITALY Pouya Jahanshahi, 13 Kate Johnston, 14 Peter Kaplan, 15 PARIS, FRANCE Eileen Hsu, 18 Diana Arterian, 19 Allison Doughty, 20 Jessica Huang, 21 SICILY, ITALY Ania Diakoff, 23 Laura Bernstein, 25 Julie Moon, 26 BARCELONA, SPAIN Chris Burnett, 28 Stephen Lee, 29 Caroline Park, 30 Kate White, 31

CAIRO, EGYPT Benedict Bernstein, 33 Jeremy Matick, 34 Jesse Lee Stout, 35 Becky Piedel, 36 NEW YORK, NEW YORK Bijan Berahimi, 38 Tiffany Dantin, 39 Lucy Cook, 40 Duy Van, 41 SUN VALLEY, IDAHO Lila Burns, 43 David Gonzalez, 44 Masato Nakada, 45

Stewart, Susan. “Objects of Desire,” Part 1: The Souvenir. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection.

Durham: Duke University Press, 1999

This publication was designed and printed at CalArts, May 2010. ©Laura Bernstein