Paper short abstract:

Through the case of Montreal, Canada the role of retro as a cultural memory is analyzed. I will suggest that retro can be a productive counter memory aware of the exchange between the local and global and of the specificity of modern culture.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses the way retro culture responds to and even creates a regional identity through the distribution of modern culture. From being about general references to the recent past, retro culture has developed a demand for the site specific past and local specificity. This awareness of the local context and the vernacular history that I will call "retro with accent" ties retro closer to the perspective of cultural memory and heritage culture where the past is used to create a modern identity as well as a common past.

I will present this through the case of retro in Montreal, Canada. Montreal is a complicated cultural context as a bilingual, multicultural city in Quebec with a history of colonial and central Canadian political influence and American cultural dominance, but also with a history as a vibrant center for modern culture creating a present modern heritage. Through the interest in clothing, design and pop culture with a distinct local flavor previously deemed as inferior, the retro culture is an important part of this creating the cultural memory of the modern past.

The retro culture in Montreal refers to two sides of modernity in the city's history. The seedy, red light vice city era of the 1940s and 1950s as a night side of the modern, and the confident 1960s culminating in the Expo 67 World Exhibition with its popular modernism as a bright, daylight side of the modern. These myths show important sides of the attraction of the modern past and retro's use of it.