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.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

"The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really just say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed?" - Claudia Rankine

This article discusses author Claudia Rankine's 5th volume, called "Citizen: An American Lyric". I admire her standpoint of understanding her past and the history that is naturally buried within your race. It's not about letting go or as she states "moving on is not synonymous with leaving behind." It's about coming to terms and accepting it and going ahead with life the way you would want to live it as if people weren't going to target you with racial assumptions.

Article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/27/color-codes?intcid=mod-yml


-Nova



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