Catastrophic Snow Globes as Oneiric and Mnemonic Gadgets

Abstract

While at first glance, snow globes might seem trite or trivial objects, on closer reflection, they are revealed to be symbolic realms that provide clues to the desires, dreams, nightmares, and memories of the cultures that produce them. When we consider snow globes as products and reflections of the social world and the individual’s place within it, it is not surprising that some artists and designers use these objects to depict some of the darker sides of contemporary life. Considered in this essay are snow globes of catastrophe, representing loss and malevolence, which trouble the notion of snow globes as comforting keepsakes. Here, I argue for a reading of snow globes as oneiric and mnemonic gadgets that magnify our human dramas and disasters, induce memory, melancholy, and nostalgia, and allow us to see our fears and our nightmares more clearly, exposing the relationships between matter and memory, objects and persons.

The Practice of Oldhammer: Re-Membering a Past Through Craft and Play

“…They are meant to be moved and in doing so move us. They are oneiric and mnemonic devices (Freeman 2016). The tension between the form of statues and their minute scale is in sympathy with Boym’s reflective nostalgia in its ambivalence.…”