evidence, artifacts & heirlooms: Kids From All Around The World Show Off Their Favorite Toys

This course explores the ways in which objects and material culture embody personal narrative. Moving back and forth from ephemeral traces of events and experiences to the culturally invested luxury goods that create legacy to the objects that facilitate daily life, this class will use, as its primary references, examples that draw from queer and African American cultures to underscore the potential of objects to tell the stories that not only reflect majority traditions and experiences but those of the disenfranchised, the details of whose lives are often obscured. In addition to readings that will provide background for class discussion, student will be asked to play the roles of detectives, archeologists, and curators at various sites around New York City. Each student will also be asked to create an annotated material record that reveals the public and private lives of one individual. That record may consist of texts, objects or any variety of media chosen or designed by the student. This blogs serves as an archive for the work done in the context of this course and related materials that become relevant to this exploration.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Kids From All Around The World Show Off Their Favorite Toys

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti has done a project in which they had kids from around in which he asks them to gather their toys and favorite items, which he then photographs them with. The project shows the interesting contrast between what toys and items are played with in different countries, including even how many toys are owned in different countries. The contrast also raises the question - just how many toys do children really need to be happy or even to have a childhood? Full series here.