Memory and Exile: Time and Place in Tarkovsky's Mirror
Titel:
Memory and Exile: Time and Place in Tarkovsky's Mirror
Auteur:
King, Peter
Verschenen in:
Housing, theory and society
Paginering:
Jaargang 25 (2008) nr. 1 pagina's 66-78
Jaar:
2008
Inhoud:
What if the place that we are in the midst of is different from the physical space that we currently inhabit? What if the things we yearn for are located elsewhere, in another place or in a remembered past, and all we now carry within us is an image of this place. We may remember only elements or impressions of it: there may be certain objects, smells, a smile or expression, particular acts or occasions, a word, all of which come out in a manner that we cannot control or understand. Yet any of these elements or impressions makes us feel “at home” in a way that we cannot find in the physical space where we are now stuck. This is the problem of exile, of being displaced and yet capable of remembering the particularity of place: it is the state of being dislocated yet able to discern what it is that locates us. We have a great yearning, but we cannot fulfil it with anything but memory. We can see this process of the internalization of the ordinary in the work of the Russian film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, in particular in his work, Mirror, which explores the loss of a childhood place and the attempt to recreate it. This paper explores the memory of place we are exiled from through an extended critique of this film. The basis of this critique is Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of the chronotope: the singular linkage of time and place - how place is always a place in time - and how this creates the significance of memories of a particular place. The paper suggests that particular places can be seen as stores of memories, as archives of the particular instances that help to determine us as singular selves.
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