Melencolia, een hommage non-stop

An essay which is at the same time a very personal homage to cinema and the history of visual art. Using early film footage as illustration, Decostere unfolds his reflecting piece in a setting that calls to mind pictures by Escher and Magritte. What exactly is nostalgia? For Decostere at least, the answer is plainly not mystification, but more a desire to return to the beginning, to the time when freedom to experiment was virtually infinite. Even now, the projected image is like some kind of virtual counterpart to reality - analogous to the dream in its processing of the unconscious. And history is not dead either; it lacks only a contemporary vehicle. Art and film as an exercise in negative theology: the attempt to express the inexpressible. To show by not showing.