Of Diminishing Memories and Old Places: Singaporean Films and the Work of Archiving Landscape

The Singapore socio-cultural and historical landscape has undergone such rapid development and constant change that it has spurred a strong interest in heritage and nostalgia. This paper considers the role of digital independent Singaporean documentaries as part of “an ecology of associated hypomnesic milieus” (Bernard Stiegler), more specifically their role in archiving the disappearing and disappeared Singaporean landscape. This ecology of memory consists of blogs, social networking sites, and other uses of digital technology and the Internet. The personal stories found here include those of growing up in Singapore as late as the 1980s, and assert a sense of continuity and belonging, an affective experience derived from occupying Singapore’s past. I suggest that rather than merely documenting, archiving, and recreating the past and present, some of these nostalgia projects in effect act as premature archives, mourning a future loss and farewelling the present. But can nostalgia be productive? In what ways and for whom?