the old bureau #1 • nostalgia

the old bureau

nostalgia

‘Nostalgia’ is derived from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (suffering). It literally describes the suffering caused by an ungranted wish to return to the past. While it is true that there is an aspect of nostalgia that is painful, and that there are potential negative effects of taking too much comfort in it, it plays a big part in building traditions and helping people reflect upon the positive forces within their lives. In a time of political, social, economic and environmental uncertainty, more and more of us find ourselves looking to the past to find stability. From Tesco adverts to blockbuster films like La La Land, for better or for worse, we seem to have entered into an age of cultural and political nostalgia.

In the first issue of the old bureau, we wanted to explore the good, the bad and the ugly of nostalgia. The result is a picture of nostalgia from across the world, with a focus on its effect on our own lives. We hope that you enjoy the words and images on the pages that follow. We hope that it does bring you comfort. But we also hope that it will make you ask questions about the power of nostalgia, and how fine the line is between comfort and torment.

Izzy and Olivia

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contents 6 • Sarah Isabelle Tan 11 • ‘Ways of Seeing William Eggleston’, Izzy Woods 16 • Freddie Churchill 20 • Juliana Rico 23 • ‘The Colour of Love’ 24 • Kristina Maria 28 • ‘Places’, illustrations by Maria Nikla, words by Rebecca Shears, Izzy Woods and Freddie Churchill 32 • ‘From Neurons to Nostalgia’, Joe Reynolds 34 • Lizzie Adsett 37 • ‘AFAB (Assigned Fantasy at Birth)’, Bella Wheaton 41 • ‘Thugz Mansion’, Miles Angerson 45 • ‘Nostalgia’ playlist 46 • ‘Letting Go of Letting Go of the Creeping Meatball’, Josh Mead 54 • ‘Cold’, Brittany Young 56 • ‘Spanish Bombs: Fascist Weaponisation of Historical Memory’, Joe Reynolds 58 • Rebecca Shears 62 • Artist Bios 64 • Credits & Notes

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The Distance Between Us confronts the paradox of the material photograph, as it oscillates between proximity and distance: tangibly real and yet somehow remote. Through my experiences of being physically present among the landscape while feeling the absence of everything else around, I explore the parallels of the refusing, impenetrable state of the material photograph. The experience of working with handmade print processes that is central to this body of work inscribes the touch and trace of my hand through the accidental specks and smears, emphasising the tangibility of the photograph.

Bound by its materiality, the image is yet the untouchable. The desire to abolish distance only leads to more distance.

Sarah Isabelle Tan

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Ways of Seeing William Eggleston // Izzy Woods I didn't even have to think about it. To me, William Eggleston and nostalgia seemed synonymous. I’m not sure when Eggleston’s photographs entered my world, but they feature in my A-level sketchbooks along with some questionable explorations of colour theory. I think about him a lot. As someone whose aesthetic and academic interests often find their way back to colour, how could I not be enamoured by the rich, saturated tones in his photographs? They evoke a nostalgia for a time I never lived through. The beauty of his work paints a picture of a world seen through rose tinted glasses, and it’s a comforting world I want to surround myself with. Yet, beyond the familiar scenes of cars, consumerism and the home, there lurks a sense of something not quite right. A sense that beyond the picture there is a hidden danger, initially obscured by the warmth and familiarity of Eggleston’s subjects. God, he is smart, I think. For him to question and blur the line between beauty and danger, the known and the unknown and to consider the formal elements of colour, texture and composition? Well, he must be a genius.

I dove straight into research for this article. I had studied Eggleston before, but only through my own visual analysis. I googled ‘William Eggleston nostalgia’ expecting to find paper after paper on how his use of light and colour creates a nostalgic haze, how his familiar subjects are used to appeal to a nostalgia within all of us. Nothing. What I found, or rather what I didn’t find, created a dilemma for me and the subject of this article.

William Eggleston was born in 1939 and has lived most of his life in Tennessee. He began photographing his surroundings in the 1950s, later experimenting with colour photography in the 1960s. Eggleston made his MoMA debut in 1976 with an exhibition titled “William Eggleston’s Guide”. Aside from his groundbreaking use of colour photography, his work provided an unprecedented view into the American South. He called his approach ‘photographing democratically’ since there were no heroes or political agendas within his images. In his own words: ‘It was just there, and I was interested in it.’ His profile on the Gagosian website calls him a modern day flâneur, and the more I read about him, the more this made sense. Eggleston observes, and in photographing these mundane scenes he lifts them and gives us permission to see. It was simply the case that he liked what he saw, and that was enough. As this was beginning to settle in my mind, the more it seemed ridiculous for authors to try and attribute meaning to his work. It seemed almost inauthentic and propagandist. His work isn't meant to be analysed - his whole process is intuitive, rather than analytic.

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Howard, Alistair and Beryl

Did this mean that I was amongst these writers who I myself was laughing at? After all I felt a strong sense of nostalgia looking at Eggleston’s photographs, and interpreted them as a commentary on the complexities of beauty, capitalism and poverty, amongst other things. I didn’t know how to reconcile the reality of his practice with the photographs’ place in my own life, especially since I was meant to be writing a piece on the very subject. Increasingly I became concerned that I would be trying too hard to force Eggleston and nostalgia together. In the end, opposites did not attract. I decided to scrap the article.

It was only a week or so later after deciding to reread John Berger’s Ways of Seeing that I had my lightbulb moment. It was the little push I needed to help me unravel whatever was buzzing around in my head. In the first chapter, Berger presents the concept of mystification, whereby our assumptions about the present obscure the realities of the past. It is hard to separate these two things - our only experience is of the time we currently live in, and while this doesn’t stop us from having knowledge of another time, it does render it almost impossible to fully understand past notions of beauty, taste, civilisation, etc. Berger cites the example of pictures on a TV screen. Whatever is shown on the screen enters the viewer’s house, and becomes embedded in that space, surrounded by the viewer’s belongings, their furniture, their family. In Berger’s words, ‘It lends its meaning to their meaning.’ Reading this felt like a eureka moment. It was ok that I got a sense of nostalgia from Eggleston’s photographs. I felt like I knew this already though. I’ve always appreciated the ability of art to appeal to individual thoughts and experiences. Something about 12

John, Joan and Helen

Eggleston’s work made it hard for me to reconcile the gap between the artist’s intentions and my own experience of his work. Perhaps it was the very stark contrast between the simplicity of his work and the complexity which I had attached to it.

I’m still not too sure.

This brought something else to mind. In my last few years at secondary school, I developed a hatred towards my art teacher because I just could not understand why he seemed to maintain that every piece of art had to have a meaning. Of course, much of it is steeped in allegory and concept, but why couldn’t things just look beautiful for the sake of being beautiful? This made me question the impact my history of art degree has had upon the way that I see art. So much of it was the consideration of hidden context and symbol, and my interest in conceptual art means that a lot of the art I do consume requires some extra reading or investigation into the meaning of the piece. I don’t feel like I’ve lost my belief that art for beauty’s sake is more than enough, but my anger has faded after it became the norm to analyse works of art until they fell apart. Analysing Eggleston’s work changed my relationship to it by attaching meaning through implication.

What is probably clear by now is that through the writing of this piece I have experienced somewhat of an existential crisis. I’m writing this in the UK’s sixth week of coronavirus induced lockdown, and it’s safe to say I’ve had a lot of time to think. In the style of Eggleston, I have spent a lot of this time looking democratically. I’ve been trying to slowly enjoy my surroundings, noticing things 13

that I’m usually moving too quickly to see. I was at the point where I felt comfortable acknowledging that Eggleston’s photographs evoke a sense of nostalgia in me, even though this is far from where he was coming from in the act of taking them. But one thing remained for me. Why did I get this feeling of nostalgia? It seemed so obvious that I should feel this way about them. But why?

The golden haziness of Eggleston’s photographs reminds me of my grandparents’ photo albums that I would spend hours pouring over when I was young. I consider how Eggleston’s work was received at the time. His use of colour photography was revolutionary, and his lack of interest in traditional subjects was widely criticized. In the 70s, his work was new and modern and shocking. Fifty years on, his photographs have acquired this nostalgic aura, given fuel in a time where lack of stability in the present attracts us to the security of what has already been. Even so, it is a world we recognise. It seems that part of the nostalgia of his photography is more of a pan-cultural nostalgia. The centrality of 'Americana' in his photos (i.e. McDonalds, diners, old hot rods, Coca-Cola machines etc.) is part of a pop culture we all experienced growing up in a society dominated by American media. Eggleston doesn’t need traditional beauty or art historical tropes to attract people to his work.

The appeal lies in his commitment to capture life, as it is, and without pretence. It is an honest reflection of our lives.

We can all take what we want from Eggleston’s photographs. Perhaps that’s the beauty of the simplicity of his work. His act of ‘photographing democratically’ gives the illusion that his scenes are a stage for life to play out on, his familiar subjects appealing to a sense of nostalgia within all of us.

(Due to copyright I’ve been unable to include any of Eggleston’s photographs in this article. Instead I’ve used some of my family photos that echo some of the visual cues that I find so appealing in Eggleston’s work. Having said that, do give William Eggleston a quick google because his work really is beautiful - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.)

Jill, Andrew, John and Helen

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The images above are stills from ‘siri 2 silent’ which can be viewed on Freddie Churchill’s website (see artist bios for link)

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Siri 2 silent was part of a developing idea I have been exploring in my practice regarding the relationship between technology, land and humans.

It draws on a romantic painter style composition and looks at the land with reverence and majesty. I position myself in the work to form a visual relationship between the two worlds of nature and technology. I hold a phone and talk to Siri and ask it questions - I would ask questions that a simple AI wouldn’t understand, and due to its inability to even understand my experiences I confuse it. The work shows the simple boundaries of understanding, as nature has no ability to understand us, and neither does the AI we create.

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Freddie Churchill

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818 19

Juliana Rico

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the colour of love

Today I have been slapped in the face with some cold, hard nostalgia. And it really aches.

Goodbye to your room, to our room. I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again. It felt like a home.

It’s cradled me since I first entered it all those months ago. It has acted as a motivational constant through those rocky months of fuck ups and incredible, exciting, beautiful growth.

Sometimes I felt ashamed to go back to your room, but it always accepted me with its orange glow. I immediately feel warm.

In this city I fell in love with you, and it feels like ours. But your room is what is truly ours. No one who stayed there before or stays there in the future matters. Our love is embedded in the walls, it floats in the air, it reverberates through the springs in your bed. It will be the same for every one of our future rooms, but this was the first. The colour of love will always be orange.

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Kristina Maria

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If I think about a place that fills me with pride or love or accomplishment, or even frustration, I always go back to the darkroom. From printing in one for the first time at sixteen and completely falling in love with photography, to completing my degree and spending hours on end consumed by the chemicals, to spending the summer at the bottom of my garden printing in a shed my dad made into a darkroom for me...

It’s the smell of chemicals, the sound of running water washing photographs and the warm glow of a red light that fills me with a love like no other.

Rebecca

It was a really poky little house. I remember moving in - it was the first time I’d seen it and I was on my own. Fuck. It was very cold and dull and sad. What happened over the next year was nothing short of magic. So quickly it turned into the warmest place I knew. It didn’t matter that I could see my breath in the bathroom, or that the cold of the floor made my feet hurt. So many people passed through our door, and so much life happened between our walls.

Izzy

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Green neon light pierced the black of night. It hugs your gentle figure, you radiate. I walk to the balcony, the air like water, thick and humid.

The dying light of the city burns out as shapes drawn across the buildings stretch and tear. Radio silently bounces around me as 1000 TVs hum with static life, streets wind and turn like snakes, the horizon is snapped with iron and clay. Warm. Glowing.

Tierra y mar, fuego como piedra.

Rum with mint leaves fresh and sharp. Because we all love a bit of the dumb stuff! The sand is grey. Turquoise cotton rolls around you and for a moment you forget where you are. You could be anywhere. But you are here and now. For now at least‌ Freddie

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From Neuron to Nostalgia // Joe Reynolds Some memories burn brighter than others, that is a certainty. I can (just about) remember my childhood friend’s phone number from thirteen years ago, yet I struggle to remember my WiFi password despite typing it into my phone only three days ago. Both of these strings have around the same number of digits, yet the phone number appears with an instinctive clarity. Did I simply spend more time committing the phone number to memory? This is one possibility. However, the equations of motions I memorised relentlessly for two years of A-Level maths are a foggy blur in my mind. My ability to reflexively recite the phone number is due to its inextricable link to previous emotional states. Calling my friend was more than just an action – it was the excited anticipation of hanging out, the nervousness of his parents answering and the disappointment of nobody picking up.

Often our clearest memories are the most painful or the most embarrassing, the ones that sneak up on you in the shower. They don’t just play episodically in your head like a stilted school drama, they feel as if they transport your whole body back to the time when they were formed. You can still feel that pain in your chest. Nostalgia is often discussed in terms of a subjective feeling – but what can neuroscience tell us about the processes behind it?

Short term memories are processed in the frontal cortex, where they linger for approximately thirty seconds, and after they are replicated in the hippocampus to be stored long term. The hippocampus connects strongly to an area of the brain concerned with emotional processing, the amygdala. When a memory is stored at a time of emotional activity, the imprint it leaves is stronger, possibly due to reciprocal neurotransmitter release between these regions. Neuroscientists have used light sensitive proteins called channelrhodopsins (ChR) to label specific neurons that encode a memory, known as an engram. When these labelled neurons are exposed to a specific frequency of light, they are reactivated. Dr Tonegawa and his team at MIT used this technique in mice which were placed in an environment, and after a few minutes received a mild foot shock, causing them to learn to fear that particular environment. The neurons which activated during this experience were tagged with ChR. Later in a completely different environment the tagged neurons were exposed to triggering light pulses – and the mice froze in fear. It was demonstrated that memories could be reactivated, and with them a very specific emotional state. Not only are memories stored in specific neurons, they are deeply connected to the emotional centres of our brains. Often, nostalgia feels good, and it has been shown that the reward centres of the brain, the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area, are activated upon hearing nostalgic music.

Nostalgia is a powerful expression of humanity, one of longing, sadness and hope, and it seems counterproductive to reduce it to a series of action potentials, reciprocal connections and neurotransmitters. The question brings neuroscientists to the hard barrier of consciousness, the precipice of what can be explained by biochemical phenomena – we can observe what matter does, not what it is in itself – and this can be applied to consciousness. Descartes believed the mind could not be explained in this way, that ‘I think, therefore I am’, yet advances in biochemical techniques have allowed us to pry into the mechanisms behind cognition in ever more minute detail. Whatever science does reveal about our mind, I don’t believe that it detracts from the experiences we have, and the meaning they bring to our own lives. Nostalgia itself simultaneously reminds us who we are, and who we were.

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seasonal access,

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lizzie adsett

to perennial emotions

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AFAB

(Assigned Fantasy At Birth)

Wind lancing through the woven iron ringlets that hang down my back, Hooves thumping against the burnished brown of some seldom-travelled track; We carve a path together upward, parting charted pasture from mountain and glade Breaking through a threshold of clouds so frigid that it cuts into my cheeks like a blade.

I am wild and I am alone: now under the soles of my feet water churns and timber groans, The witness to whipping walls of water; turquoise lights spooling acres; icebergs stark as bone; The horizon is a sliver of pearly light restraining an eternity of seething sapphire from placid sky My destination is doubtless wisdom- I will wander as far as my mind accords by the weight of its eye.

Eventually I return, wind-scathed and moon-bathed, at the altar of the hearth I will break my name, Over rough oak and molasses I will recount long-wrought tales to the masses, my annals to claim I conclude with sharp words and a flourish to the highest table, in hopes of catching her gaze; Cast bronze by the light of the blaze, wood-smoke lingers heady in our half-snatched days.

I scarcely deflect the edge’s blow, its blunt force ricocheting brain matter against skull The heavy iron threatens to teeter from the crown of my head, and I fain a brief lull, Spurred by hesitation he swings high and I duck low, passing under his guard; My crashing shoulder trips him over my heel, sprawling onto the yard His laughter cracks out like the clash of two mauls, But as he accepts my hand there are no prideful squalls; Two abreast welcomed to the cloud-caressing spire of stone The sheer throng of people unlike anything I have ever known.

Genuflecting to the greatest gentry to honour mercy as my goddess I am transformed anew into his arm and throat, the solace of the forests That echo with brays of brotherhood, roars of adversity, the psalms of steel; Riding through the night armed with knowledge of a waiting toast and fine meal.

The force of my gaze demands to be met; my seat at the table no token asset We draw from solemn circumstances the same blood-soaked silhouette.

The lines of battle folding and the empty chairs that stand waiting For those lost beneath the spit and blood, red mist reverberating; Yet if that parry is my last at least my bones will lay avowed

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By carved stones, as I float amongst notes sung aloud.

My tongue is coiled in my mouth like a snake as they raise me aloft- the accusatory cold of the lake is nothing compared to their screeches. The only home I have ever known offers me a choice: the last sound I hear can be the duck of the stool; an innocuous swish, a splash.

A final serenity: the sunlight dapples across the water in impossible shining ripples I force myself to choke in a breath Or submit to the shriek of my pulse-Break surface. Splutter. Strange hands seize my sodden clothes as I am dragged, out, away- hung out to dry by my neck, the pyre is finished. Suddenly I can breathe. Only The smell of fresh birch hits the back of my throat The smoke hits my eyes and I scream; my hair singes before igniting; scream; my skin seethes; bubbles. I scream My father tells me I must go and live with this man now, although I have never even heard his name uttered before this day. He has lived twice my days-- but parson and person and god himself agrees that we are man and wife. on Earth and in Heaven. It hurts when he forces himself inside me yet I save my tears and swell. My sweat and blood pours into nothingness as umbilical cords sever and I relinquish my baby girls to a world I know will churn and chunter as they have done to me. There is no passion but conformity; her soft hands cannot control the choking rubber mouth-bit as they smash sparks through my skill, or writhing for freedom grateful to snatch a lungful of air as the feeding-tube is twisted; history holds for me no affection. I yearn for a time that never existed.

Bella Wheaton

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Miles Angerson 41

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Helter Skelter, The Beatles The Boys of Summer, Don Henley Nothing, Bruno Major

• Bella

• Bubble Punk

• Rebecca

Transatlanticism, Death Cab for Cutie Visions of Gideon, Sufjan Stevens

• Sarah

• Olivia

Scarborough Fair, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Space Song, Beach House Halah, Mazzy Star

• Izzy

• Joe

Best of Friends, Palma Violets Sarah, (Sandy) Alex G Natural Blues, Moby

• Josh

• Lizzie

• Kristina

Ten Years Gone, Led Zeppelin

• Maria

Freedom is Free, Chicano Batman Flat Beat, Mr. Oizo

• Freddie

• Juliana

• Tasha

Thugz Mansion, Tupac Walk of Life, Dire Straits

• Miles • Brittany

Listen to the playlist on Spotify (the old bureau) by scanning the code above

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Letting Go of Letting Go of the Creeping Meatball // Josh Mead Using the bands branded crassly across the fronts of fast fashion behemoths’ budget T-shirts mass produced in South East Asia as a barometer of what is currently culturally significant, you could be forgiven for assuming that the revolutionary sensibilities of late sixties counterculture are re-emerging. Like an unwashed phoenix from the patriarchal, overdriven flames, images of topless, long haired, Kerouac citing, shamanic demi-Gods with well publicised drug problems co- opting symbols of peace and love in the pursuit of record sales are seemingly somewhat ‘in’ right now. Their faces can be like totally paired with some vintage Levi’s and white Converse for that so West Coast vintage look (hashtag paid ad).

Whilst not all wide-eyed Arcadia worshipping 20 somethings care about the countercultural connotations of wearing say, a Jefferson Airplane T-shirt to the office, it’s exciting to see those flowery radical rhetorics and insurgent images lining streets being occupied by Extinction Rebellion protesters and marching on parliament. The Airplane, a band who (despite eventually becoming the face of the late seventies’ burgeoning Capitalist Rock scene, Jefferson Starship) put out one of the Woodstock Nation’s most important statements with ‘We Can Be Together’, the opening track of 1969’s Volunteers. Lifting its refrain from a pamphlet written by Catalan Dada-influenced painter, Ben Morea, a founding member of New York’s anarchist affinity group, The Motherfuckers, the song’s core sentiment (‘Tear down the walls, motherfucker’) is as vital on a global scale today as it was in the context of the conflict in Vietnam.

Great music maybe shouldn’t have to be the bed-mate of great philosophical or political ideas to be great, granted, but never has a period and a genre of music been so pinned to a cultural movement as the rock and roll of the extended sixties and the Hippy movement. ‘When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake’, Plato said in The Republic and, for me, there’s nothing that shakes the walls of the city, of my skull, or of my rib cage as hard as a great piece of music. The Woodstock Nation’s mode of music lost that power after Altamont which, for most, proved to be the death of flower power. Anyway, to paraphrase Morea’s Black Mask posters of the late sixties, flower power was never going to stop fascist power. That’s not important. It was never important. However gluttonously the record companies allowed revolution to become a fashion statement and however aware of that you become as a listener to Country Joe and the Fish or Hendrix or Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell or The Airplane in 2020, it doesn’t stop the walls of your brain from shaking. Yes, bands at Woodstock played along with radical rhetoric onstage to sap the last bits of life out of dehydrated runaway teenagers high on acid and then fought over their fees backstage, but it didn’t matter one bit to those teenagers and it matters very little to any listener until you overthink the thickness of the glass in popular history’s rose tinted Ray-Bans and the walls of the city come crashing down on you.

The nostalgia for a certain time or certain scene that you’ve never even lived through is beautiful whilst Jean Shepherd’s call to, ‘RISE UP AND ABANDON THE CREEPING 46

MEATBALL’ means something. As soon as it’s lost in Topshop Tees and hashtag vintage vibes, it starts to take something away from the music that stops you punching strangers in the face on morning bus rides and that scares me. If great music or great art makes you happy it shouldn’t matter that its creators don’t believe in its message, right? It shouldn’t matter that Jagger never had any intention of being a Street Fightin’ Man but knew that protest was trending in 1968, right? It shouldn’t matter that The Doors sold, ‘Light my Fire’ to the Buick car company and then preached ‘breaking on through’ to lost and desperate teenagers seeking somebody to follow? It’s a real bummer of a line of questioning to contend with. We are powerless to stop the flaws of other humans crippling this kind of vicarious nostalgia which we rely on them so heavily to experience. Realising that love of music relies much more heavily on real people you actually know and appreciate than hollow caricatures of initially interesting, plagiarising charlatans can be pretty liberating.

If the power music is imagined to have, in a sociopolitical sense, has been exaggerated all along and facades of songs endowing power to the people or leading to satisfaction past the purely carnal were conceived in mendacity, that’s not to say that music has no power at all.

Truthfully, my pals and I got so deep into music, in part, because of a subconscious belief that a deep knowledge of lost, obscure Zappa B-sides would make us more interesting. To some extent, it did and, for the somewhat socially inept, pasty faced grammar school boy with the confidence of a baby bird being shepherded out of the nest by a mother who has just condemned three flightless bastards to the ether, intense love of music became my one discernible characteristic. Burrowing deeper and deeper into sounds and scenes became enmeshed in my definition of who I was and, beyond the superficial yearning to have something to separate me from other people, it allowed me to better understand the confines of my own head. If I didn’t know how I was feeling, Karen Dalton would, you know? If I 47

‘There’s something entirely unique about the understanding between two humans listening to beautiful music in silence. Breathing synchronises, nostrils flare in and out in unison, pupils dilate, hands shake, lips dry out and, for four minutes and thirty seconds, there’s no wind, no rain, no cold, no sunlight and no darkness (we would often be vastly underprepared for these ventures, clothing, torches and umbrella-wise), just a mutual understanding.’ couldn’t work out how to look people in the eye one morning, Metal Machine Music would blast the cobwebs out and guide me towards assimilation. Perhaps more importantly, if I felt lonely or afraid, there were not only dozens of bands wrapped up in paisley or suede or leather, there were my pals, who ‘got it’.

This notion of being ‘got’, of being on the same page, of being understood, of the workings of your brain and each cell mutation being mapped out and appreciated by another human, is as deathly important in adulthood as it was to a seventeen year old me, but I don’t know that I’ve felt it so plainly and unapologetically since then. The period of discovery between the age of fifteen and say, twenty, holds sky shattering potential. With an understanding by this point of how much effort you need to put in at school to get whichever piece of paper with whatever letter on it that your mother desires you attain, ‘free’ time increases and the scope of your interactions diversifies. You’re reading more broadly; you read Huxley because Jim Morrison read Huxley and he was interesting, so you develop an interest in experimenting with drugs; you (inevitably) read the early beats and the synapses of your brain erupt in thunderous excitement; you read Henry Miller and all you want to do is explore the bodies of strangers; you read Hunter S Thompson, Rachel Carson, Betty Friedan, Truman Capote, Malcolm X, Pablo Neruda and with a wild orchestra of their words bouncing around your brain constantly, you are presented with a blank canvas of a world and a million opportunities.

One particular buddy of mine and I approached this period influenced by a similar body of worthy works, with similar sensibilities and similar tolerances for whichever poisons we wished to experiment with at any given time. The town we grew up in has this quite unknown, under appreciated and rarely explored wasteland stretching out of its arsehole and into a Thames estuary where we’d just take these four or five hour walks, get high and drunk or whatever, sometimes talk of romantic dalliances, higher powers, football, the meaning of life etc but mostly just listen to music. There’s something entirely unique about the understanding between 48

two humans listening to beautiful music in silence. Breathing synchronises, nostrils flare in and out in unison, pupils dilate, hands shake, lips dry out and, for four minutes and thirty seconds, there’s no wind, no rain, no cold, no sunlight and no darkness (we would often be vastly underprepared for these ventures, clothing, torches and umbrella-wise), just a mutual understanding. ‘The Long One’ on the second side of Abbey Road (the medley of ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ through to ‘The End’) used to bring on this state of chemically altered mutual understanding on a regular basis, as did Dark Side of the Moon on repeat for four hours, the first Doors album and each moment of superfluous Jimmy Page soloing wherever we could find it in the crevices of Led Zep I to III. Gazing out into the brown abyss of the river Medway and cracking open a third bag of budget corner shop brand potato based snacks/supermarket cookies, we ‘got it’.

The friend in question and I went to different universities, he’s since moved to China and both of us continue to search for that indomitable power of music in the shadows of every day existence. Through the dark magic of the internet, we communicate primarily through sending songs we’ve been writing back and forth and it’s a ritual I’d be lost without. It’s through these intimate, idiosyncratic relationships with real people that music reveals its true power, not through its half baked messages of political urgency. I’ve been spending time in my home town again recently and when I’m sat at my mother’s piano playing ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, I’m not lambasting the wasted opportunities thrown asunder by sixties rock and roll bands with the power to change the world who neglected to do so, I’m remembering bashing that same piano at three in the morning with my pal after getting through six litres of White Ace and two bottles of blackcurrant squash. It’s so easy to get caught up in assigning too much meaning to a whole bunch of stuff that gives human beings a reason to carry on - music, art, film, literature, sex, love, family, financial security, twitter followers - but it’s in the overwrought thoughts and contemplating on this meaning that real power and beauty is lost.

People who got too caught up in ‘tearing down the walls (,motherfucker)’, missed Jefferson Airplane play Woodstock because they were sat in prison cells after the Yippie protests at the Democratic National Convention the year before. Too caught up in abandoning the creeping meatball, in shedding the shackles of creeping capitalist comfort, in commune living, in anarchy, in ‘free’ love, people missed an avalanche of beautiful music in the late sixties. Sixty years later, I still get hung up on it and let it cloud my judgement and enjoyment of things which are objectively just great bits of music played by great musicians who are good friends. That’s the crux of it. Yes, music isn’t like it used to be, but there never was a ‘used to be’, it’s always been a business. Abbie Hoffman put it best; ‘loving rock music just makes you a good consumer. It was only revolutionary because we said it was’. Who cares that loving something makes you a consumer cog in the capitalist machine if it brings you joy? Being a cynic gets you nowhere and I’ve found that it drags you further and further away from cosmos colliding drug fuelled awakenings experienced in post-apocalyptic suburban wastelands after school, which can only be a bad thing.

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Cold /// Brittany Young 3 counts in, 2 held, one out.

I’m in your car. the wind no longer bites, as warmth radiates and drags me from the cold. the open air becomes smothered with your sideways smile and summer’s scent, and all i can breathe is you. sunsets peek in through rolled down windows, obscured by the smoke of your cigarettes eating at me, masking you watching me disappear from the driver’s seat. no space for light in here. hands entwined, speeding down country lanes, escaping to remedy the struggle that we are united in,

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armed only with the reckless abandon of youth. we’d stumble down dark streets, no headlights, just stars and the sweet warmth of alcohol to tide us home. reciting lines to impress, competing and battling in our game of words, never really listening but smug in our own superiority. the smell of your cigarettes embraces me now. wrapping itself around me and consuming me. just as you once did. the engine’s thrum and laughter swells through me, my limbs loose and free, relaxed and happy for one blissful moment in the meeting of minds, and when I breathe out, I release you. escaping my lungs, you leave me. shivering, driving on without me by your side.

I turn to walk home. it is so very cold.

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Spanish Bombs: Fascist weaponisation of historical memory Joe Reynolds On the 24th of October 2019, the remains of Francisco Franco were quietly exhumed from a grave in the Valley of the Fallen, his resting place since 1975. The construction of the site was ordered by Franco himself, a monument to those who perished from both factions of the Spanish Civil War. While the fascist governments of the Axis powers were forcibly removed, their constitutions re-written and their states re-organised according to the wishes of the victorious Allies, Francoist Spain lingered on as a fascist remnant on the edge of Europe, overlooked by its democratic allies in an attempt to stem the popular communist movements sweeping Europe.

Upon Franco’s death, Spain transitioned into a liberal democratic system, and subsequent governments have slowly begun dealing with the legacy of Francoist rule. The ‘Historical Memory Law’ was passed in 2007 by a Socialist government, one of its provisions being the removal of Francoist symbols from public buildings and spaces. In the period after Franco’s death, the far-right had enjoyed limited electoral success, until this year, where the most recent election has placed the far-right Vox party in third position. The memory of fascism and Franco is fading even here, and his grave has remained a focal point of far-right memory. On the anniversary of his death, groups make their annual pilgrimage to his tomb to pay respects to a man who they see as a political and moral beacon for modern Spain. In moving Franco’s body to a small cemetery North of Madrid, the Spanish government confronts a problem growing across the Western World: the rise of nostalgia.

Nostalgia was initially coined by a Swiss doctor during his tenure treating mercenaries and was diagnosed as a painful longing for 56

one’s homeland. Today, it is commonly used to describe a temporal longing rather than a spatial one, a desire to return to a previous era.

The Western World is no stranger to crises, whether they be political, economic or social.

However, in recent years, sentiments of discontent and disillusionment appear to be gripping it. A profound sense of malaise and a distrust of democratic institutions have led to rising populist movements, their hallmark being a ‘return to the past’ rather than any coherent ideology. While these movements appear to be flimsy and fluid, their strength lies in their ability to assemble a coalition of the dissatisfied. Those who believe their country is in decline rally to these ideas, with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ being the starkest example. This phrase has recurred previously throughout American history, also being used by Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign. The idea extends to a more complex set of sentiments, not only one of national and economic decline, but also a perceived social and moral decline. In the UK, a Demos study reported that 63% of British Citizens believe life was better when they were growing up than currently, compared with 21% that believed life was better now.

Discourse surrounding Brexit, especially with older demographics, returns to a vague sentiment of ‘the good old days’, a murky half-memory of how things used to be. Often these memories are temporally incongruent, belonging to no one specific era or point in time, but instead a hazy reminiscence of a better society.

The true danger of nostalgia lies in its power to obscure our own histories. To be blinded by it allows us to forget truths that should not be forgotten. Germany, the country in which fascism took one of its strongest grips, has

spent the 70 some years after its defeat in the Second World War acknowledging its crimes and atrocities, and educating the next generations in the hope of preventing another catastrophe. One of the greatest powers of the Nazi regime was its control over the aesthetic modes in Germany. Walter Benjamin described the aestheticization of politics as a key indicator of a fascist movement, and the Nazi regime suppressed new musical waves such as jazz, atonal music and pieces written

by Jewish composers. Modern art was also banned and removed from museums, decried as an insult to the ‘German feeling’ and labelled as degenerate. The State Bureau of Culture was established to tightly restrict art and culture, and in doing so allowed the Nazi state to manufacture a new history and instil a new nostalgia. By creating the mythos of the glorious German past and contrasting it with the grim social realities of the post Great War era, the Nazis could construct a narrative of a lost future. The people were angry about an ideal past being stolen from them, despite it never having existed in the first place.

Perhaps to better understand the anxieties and desires of a society, one can look at the media it produces and consumes. Recent trends in television and music borrow heavily from ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s aesthetics and period pieces such as Downton Abbey, The Crown and Victoria are enjoying a resurgence.

Hollywood has shied away from new creative projects, instead choosing to remake old classics – yet completely failing to recapture the imagination of the originals. The old Utopian science-fictions such as Star Trek have also been replaced by an upsurge in dystopian fictions. If our media is becoming more stagnant, could it indicate that our society has reached a creative impasse? In the face of rising inequality, environmental disaster and an uneasy geopolitical

landscape, people are increasingly looking towards the past for answers. It is these nostalgic reactions to late modernity, such as the recycling of previous cultural motifs and aesthetics that are trapping us in a form of anterograde amnesia, unable to imagine and construct new societal forms. According to Fukuyama, the fall of the Soviet Union heralded the End of History, the victory of Western liberalism over communism. Yet the promises of the end of the Cold War have failed to materialise, and with it, the Western intellectual elite have failed to imagine a better future.

And now, in the infant years of the 2020s, far-right movements continue to rear their heads across Europe and the World. Last November, the city of Dresden declared a ‘Nazi emergency’ in response to increased Neo-Nazi activity. The coup in Bolivia has left indigenous rights in jeopardy. Far-right parties have enjoyed renewed electoral success across Europe and the Americas.

Though it is difficult to suggest a cure to this paralysis, we must continue to struggle against submission to nostalgia. Politicians need to address increasing inequality and clamp down on the super-rich, while connecting with voters on a deeper emotional level. Historical education must be strengthened to ensure the past remains clear and the virtues of tolerance upheld. Perhaps in this decade, a new generation will come forth and propose change that will radically alter our society, just as Marx did a century and a half prior. The ultimate victory against nostalgia comes from a vision of a new and better future.

On 31st May 2020, President Donald Trump declared Anti-Fascist Action a terrorist organisation.

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Sarah Isabelle Tan is an artist whose work delves into the ontology of the photographic. Working across the still and moving image, her recent work is a contemplation of distance—both physical and notional—through an examination of her own relationship with the photographic object and medium. Through personal encounters of loss, memory, fleeting moments, and a longing to possess what is always beyond reach, Sarah’s practice is driven by an unconscious search for answers to questions that offer no concrete resolution.

Instagram - @sarahisabelletan www.sarahisabelletan.com/ Miles Angerson - ‘I've been drawing the same stuff for as long as I can remember, since before I could read or write. I was inspired by Lower East Side activist comic artists like Eric Drooker and Seth Tobocman as well as other masters like Eduardo Risso and Eric Powell. Being from the LES, I think I'm not the only one who feels like their way of life is threatened. We are displaced, dispossessed by the resulting housing crisis from rapid waves of gentrification. That is why I made this comic (which is different from my usual sci-fi / fantasy / steampunk comics); I felt I should share my story so far, and express what the Tupac poem meant to me.’

Instagram - @wet_tobacs Rebecca Shears is a fine art photographer who bases her practice around the process of analog photography. Working with large format cameras to produce tintypes or printing in a darkroom at the end of her garden, her work always comes back to notion of time and how fragile the process to make the image is and the subject matter itself.

Instagram - @rebeccashears Maria Nikla is an illustrator from Greece, where she is also based. Other than drawing, she derives the most joy from simple things such as the view of the Athenian skyline at night, the flowers during springtime, and a good meal or coffee shared with friends or family.

Instagram - @marianikla marianikla.myportfolio.com/

Juliana Rico is a visual artist and educator working primarily in photography and video. She earned her MFA in Creative Photography from California State University Fullerton and BFA from San Jose State University. Rico’s work investigates various crossings of identity including ethnicity, culture, social norms, and the body to showcase a new intersectional American narrative. Rico’s work has been showcased nationally including Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, the University of Texas at Arlington, the Museum of Latin American Art and throughout California. Rico is co-founder of the Emerging Artist Society and teaches photography at several institutions in Southern California.

Instagram - @_young_suave_ julianarico.com/ Kristina Maria - ‘Free feel. I like to feel these words when I’m creating. With all the aspects art can offer you to express, I often feel overwhelmed and want to do everything that exists perfectly good. But in the end it turns out everything is just scratching the surface.

The series you see in the old bureau is from a time where I wanted to start deep diving into one medium.

It turned out to be photography, as I felt it was the time for it. I went deeper and deeper until I came to a point where I felt ‘this still isn’t it’. Still I will keep photographing whenever someone asks me for a favour or I feel I want to, but I made peace with this medium and can go on. Even so, I still keep creating characters and worlds that are inside me. Here with the theme ‘nostalgia’ you can see my knocks on the front door to the deeper unknown world that I will as a person and as an artist keep exploring. So feel free to feel.’

Instagram - @koreandermoon fuergedankenfreiheit.blogspot.com/?m=1 Bubble Punk is an American designer and meme maker whose work focuses on remixing advertisements and art styles from the 60s-90s. The statements in their pieces are a mixture of raw statements of human emotion, sharp societal satire and infantile fart jokes.

Instagram - @bubblepunk

Freddie Churchill - ‘As an artist I enjoy small things. I have never made big work and I don’t think I want to. The subtlety to work is what is important to me. Not what the work looks like or overtly presents as but how you interpret and misinterpret the art. Having just finished my degree at AUB, my art has moved into the realm of performance and video. I am moving to a masters in London, however I will miss Bournemouth. It was a wonderful location and this piece (page 30) feels like a homage to a part of my life I am leaving behind.’

Instagram - @freddiechurchillart_ freddiechurchill.wixsite.com/freddiechurchill

Izzy and Olivia c. 2019

Tasha Dale - ‘Hi I’m Tasha, I’m a freelance illustrator based in Bournemouth, UK. My practice is inspired by cultural and social issues, experiences and everyday life. My background in health and social care often influences the work I produce. I’m drawn to projects that have a positive message or serve a purpose in some way.’

Instagram - @tasha_dale_illustration www.tashadaleillustration.com Lizzie Adsett is a photographer, artist and musician from Bristol. She spends her days noticing and collecting beautiful things and pockets of light.

Instagram - @adsetty Izzy Woods is a history of art graduate with undetermined direction. She has an unhealthy addiction to Oatly and is a huge fan of jazz. Of an evening you can find her eating chocolate digestives, watching Drag Race and reading about feminism, critical race theory, colour theory and all the other good things. Favourite fact: citrus is botanically a berry.

Instagram - @_izzywoods_ Olivia Grace Middelboe is a history of art graduate and aspiring curator from the middle of nowhere in Kent. She cares a lot about sustainability, contemporary art and independent cinema. She has a tendency to eat too much hummus, buy too many books, and watch far too much 90s TV. Instagram - @oliviagracemiddelboe

Jill and Alison c. 1982

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the old bureau is a compilation zine started by Izzy Woods and Olivia Grace Middelboe in 2019, produced in Manchester, London and Kent. Our contributors are local to the UK as well as international, from the United States to Germany and Greece. Issues are published digitally and available as limited physical editions.

theoldbureau@gmail.com

We would love to hear from you! For submission deadlines, future themes and more, stop by @theoldbureau on Instagram or get in touch with us via email

INTERNET

CREDITS & NOTES Cover Images: Front Cover: Sarah Isabelle Tan Inner Front & Back: Tasha Dale Back Cover: Izzy Woods Illustrations: Page 5: Ashley Noel-Hirst Pages 10, 31, 36, 39, 44 & 52: Bubble Punk Pages 15, 33, 53 & 63: Izzy Woods Pages 40 & 50-51: Olivia Grace Middelboe Page 47: Tasha Dale

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CONTACT US

WANT TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK?

@theoldbureau (Instagram) the old bureau (Spotify)

THANK YOU! We want to say an enormous thank you to all of our contributors who gave us their time and creativity and allowed us to produce this zine. It’s been a fairly long time in the making and we’re so proud of what we’ve managed to produce collectively.

SPECIFICALLY: Lizzie Adsett, Miles Angerson, Bubble Punk, Freddie Churchill, Tasha Dale, Kristina Maria, Josh Mead, Maria Nikla, Ashley Noel-Hirst, Juliana Rico, Rebecca Shears, Joe Reynolds, Sarah Isabelle Tan, Bella Wheaton and Brittany Young IMAGES ARE NOT TO BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION