In 2023, our inaugural symposium launched at the Milieux Institute for Art, Culture and Technology on Friday 4th February. We offered:
- 7 panelists exploring media, technology, and nostalgia;
- A recorded keynote from Dr. Katharina Niemeyer on “digital nostalgia”;
- 2 workshop sessions led by 8 facilitators;
- Interactive “nostalgia walls” for attendees to share their memories.
All symposium presenters and artists are listed on our Network page.
Symposium Line-Up
The symposium was divided into two themes:
POTENTIALITIES OF THE PAST and THE FUTURE IS BORN,
with participants presenting generative possibilities of nostalgia.
For example, artists Leo Morales (BA, Computation Arts) and Annie Harrisson (PhD, Communications) at Concordia hosted a workshop, titled Traces of Memory, inviting participants to draw their inner child on paper or a template that were offered to them. During that time, Annie and Leo engaged with the participants, drawing beside them. As participants discussed the history of their sketches, they stopped drawing with the stencils, and began telling/drawing their stories freehand. The aim of the workshop was to trace memory itself. Participants were prompted to reflect upon how they chose to capture their nostalgia, using tools that would exaggerate, minimize, or alter the memory entirely. Like our digital devices, these tools provide us with different modalities of engagement with our past, forever partially remembered.
Another workshop was run by Richy Srirachanikorn, who presented the Global Warning Wall, a large moveable board with four large papers taped onto a blue backdrop. Throughout the day of other panel and workshop sessions, participants were encouraged to fill in their nostalgic reactions. At the end of the symposium, the board was filled to the brim with snippets of childhood cartoon titles, significant world events, people’s memories of pre-pandemic life, and obscure forms of media.
Global Warning helped demonstrate Richy’s argument that we are constantly “Lost Again” in our future and past. Simply put, we have become full-time nostalgics. Towards the end of the symposium, Richy invited four volunteers to tear down the sheets of paper on the wall, leaving behind pre-cut out shapes that were taped to the backdrop. What was left became a mural resembling the melting polar ice caps.
Acknowledgements
The “LOSTAGAIN” 2023 symposium was organized by:
- Derek Pasborg
- Rowena Chodkowski
- Annie Harrisson
- Leo Morales
- Shahrom Ali
- Poki Chan
- Richy Srirachanikorn
Our symposium was sponsored by the Dean of Arts and Science’s “Special Initiative” Award at Concordia University, and the Hexagram Research Network.
Thank you to the Milieux Institute, particularly: Ariana Seferiades Prece, for help with media communications and the virtual live production of the symposium.
Michael Iantorno, Shahrom Ali, Shirley Ceravolo or Swarm, and Juan Miceli: thank you for your photos and media of the event.
Special thank you to the creative, energetic, and playful forum that this the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) research center, where we founded the Nostagain Network and actualized our ideas.
To all presenters, artists, workshop facilitators, nostalgia enthusiasts, and attendees — THANK YOU FOR BRAVING THE SNOW AND FOR COMING TO OUR FIRST SYMPOSIUM !
Contact Information
Derek Pasborg, Event Communications
Richy Srirachanikorn, Network Organization
THENOSTAGAINNETWORK
Released: February 7th, 2023
Last updated: February 14th, 2026