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.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Women In Clothes

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/communal-dressing-room

This article discusses the book Women In Clothes... An interesting reflection on women's relationships with clothing from famous celebrities to refugee survivors. At the books launch party the contributing woman were asked to bring a piece of clothing that they would donate to a "swap rack." The article's author donated a crocheted top with a note attached to it:
This is from the seventies. 
I think it’s handmade.
I found it, new, in a shop on Bleecker Street.
It is time for it to be reincarnated.
I have worn it to a Dylan concert with a pair of harem pants; on vacations, with a sarong; for an ill-starred honeymoon, over a Gaultier skirt.
The right woman could wear it with leather shorts.
This article/the book Women In Clothes, illustrates how much we identify with clothes (and even in the rejection of identifying with clothes, you are still in a way are identifying with them). A piece of clothing can represent so many things: a fond memory, the hopes of a potential one, or it can even determine the way you see yourself and live your life.
(by Isabelle Hay)

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)