Under The Sign of Regret

My research focuses on aesthetically mediated responses to regret. That is, what are the qualities of the feeling of regret and what does it produce (as objects and as experiences)? The inquiry traces regret as a form of memory and as a way of narrating ourselves (which in some cases may amount to the same thing).
Through my artistic work I will attempt to address the temporality of regret, the suspended state of action, the delayed decision, the hesitancy it provokes, and test if this obstruction can be felt in film. My academic research on regret intervenes in the territory charted by Affect Theory and thinks about regret as an aesthetic category in the sense defined by Rei Terada, it approaches the emotion as condensed “interpretations of predicaments.” Regret, in this way, is not easily discernible from other emotions such as worrying, anxiety, melancholy, but rather works together or alongside them to render visible a general state of obstructed agency. I am thinking of the ways in which our imagined self does not align with who we really are and the psychic energy that is used to leverage the difference. In other words, I am questioning the function of regret in navigating between these two selves. I am interested in the narrative structure imposed by the lens of regret.
My research also looks at regret as an aesthetic mode through the methodologies and tropes employed throughout my artistic practice and through selected case studies (particularly, Alberto Moravia’s novel Contempt and Jean-Luc Godard’s filmic adaptation of it as well as Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape). The hypothesis is to consider regret as a generative force, as a bittersweet drama of adjustments, and as a way of questioning perspective itself.