WE’RE fond of the past in Norn Irn, but can old political artifacts really be ‘art’? With Germans currently appropriating and reinventing old East German (GDR) symbols and memorabilia in their own fad called ‘Ostalgie’, are we now about to experience something similar here, a theme explored in a photographic exhibition at Belfast Exposed? We’ve got Communist-era statues in post-ceasefire Belfast superpub (just visible) ‘The Northern Whig’ (with its own historical and political references), but are we ready to regurgitate more local troubled images in the same way?
We’re probably not quite prepared for this kind remembering of a grim recent past yet – for many, it’s still a little early for Troubles nostalgia, and we haven’t exorcised all our demons yet. Then again, we’re famed for our black sense of humour, and have you heard of some of the ideas for the Maze? And is it any coincidence that the photographer of ‘Archive_Belfast’ is German himself?
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