Listen to “My Ex-Guru” by The Fiery Furnaces [download]

I have known the aging to gripe at the prospect of something turning from contemporary to nostalgic. How many early 40-somethings rolled their eyes when the aesthetic of the 1980s came back into vogue, declaring it a period of history so dark it wasn’t worth recalling– not even ironically?

Because it hit so close to home for them, there was no way they could understand the inherent value of New Wave music so cheap that it was priceless, the quaintness of high school films so unrealistic that they became classics, the unrelenting hodge-podge of weird fashion, or the alluring mystery of a decade’s muddled values only a few steps removed from our own cultural confusion. It must have been hard for those who couldn’t escape the apparent idiocy that the youth was now electing to celebrate to understand what anyone could see in that decade.

Now they have something else to complain about. In the past few years, the signs and symbols of the another decade have crept back into our consciousness, as every day of George W.’s reign puts distance between ourselvesand the day-glo 90’s.

I know I’m not the only one who’s been enthusiastically revisiting the biker shorts and youthful optimism of “Beverly Hills 90210″ as the early seasons have begun to creep into the DVD market. White-framed sunglasses are all the rage, and artists like Paper Rad are exploiting strangeness of early 90’s tech-art for all that it’s worth. It was on an amazing DVD compilation called Cartune Xprez, which features some of Paper Rad’s animations, that I came across the work of video artist Shana Moulton.

Shana Moulton clearly understands the allure of 90’s imagery. Her static, staged short films use a palette of pastel neons to portray the sinister and hysterical implications of a new age sensibility that screams “early 90’s”. But Moulton’s work is far from a base parody of antiquated new age trends– it just uses that eerily familiar imagery as a foil for commentary on our alienating, rapidly changing culture. There is a sense of muffled frustration here. Moulton is like a less explicit Miranda July, casting herself as a quiet woman trying to find inner peace in all the wrong places.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t laugh at the Lisa Frank-esque world Moulton has painted herself within, or take delight in her vigorous chugging of a glass of Crystal Light. Says Moulton, “I aim to create worlds in which the goofily fantastic and the humiliatingly banal brush against each other and where the body’s boundaries can be expanded to include strange fantasy worlds through the infinite capacity of the mind.” So just relax, plug in your electric waterfall, and enjoy the videos.