Archives of the Everyday

Finding what is hidden in the dress archive

Much has been written in recent years about the role, position and display of dress in museums, about the ways that fashion exhibitions function as manifestations and metaphors for the predominant preoccupations of our times. Less explored, however, are the numerous garments that reside within museums archives, things which are ...
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Archives of the Everyday

Dancing is Work

And it’s one of many ways we experience magic time

I asked Vernon Scott, President of the Board of Directors, if he would do me a favor: hold this event on Wednesday -- because it’s my 95th birthday. He said no. In the mid 1950s, I was sitting on the steps of my loft residence on East 17th Street talking with ...
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Dancing is Work

The Boogie Down Brigade

Celebrating Bronx Fashion Superheroes

--- Local heroes like Amaurys the Ambassador have a plan to win the support of the people. His weapon of choice is his fashion line, The Bronx Native. His bullets are iconic Bronx-specific-imagery, like Cardi B’s sassiness and bodacious bodegas. ILLUSTRATION BY: MIKAILA BROWN Jessica the Influencer is using Instagram to embolden women ...
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The Writing on the Wall

Orozco, Benton, and Arnautoff

Student and activist groups have campaigned for the removal of the murals, arguing they were detrimental to the education and well-being of students of color, who had to confront these images as they walked the halls or ascended the staircase. On the other side of the debate, art historians and ...
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The Art of Change Opera 0.1

An ongoing libretto

The following is the opera’s libretto, conceived and developed by the philosopher and writer Chiara Bottici. In accordance with the spirit of the Centennial and of The New School’s legacy, it will be an ongoing and open libretto: we invite all readers to suggest changes, to propose quotations from their ...
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Fleabag, Let Things Get Lost

Wonder, confusion, and why film needs more of it.

I want to talk about wonder in film. Wonder isn’t some starry-eyed luxury. It’s tantamount to messy, confused, vulnerable searching where all the possibilities of one’s world are up in the air, and one’s bearing is anxious. Wonder peeks out in mainstream film, but filmmakers should follow it and see ...
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Blood for the Future

The Northern Ireland “Troubles” in Les Levine’s Resurrection

These events form part of the Holy Cross Dispute, a period of eight months of acute sectarian tension in Northern Ireland. During this time, Holy Cross Girls Primary School, a Catholic elementary school in a Protestant enclave of Ardoyne, north Belfast, was picketed by hundreds of loyalist Protestant protestors trying to stop ...
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Silenus’ Cup, Drained by AI

A Review of The Dead Walk into a Bar

Set within an ‘orbital facility’ in an un-specified future, the film opens inside a cavernous hall. The scene carries a strange echo for visitors to Steyerl’s show: a musty provincial gallery, sepulchrally lit, clad in dark wood -- that is, much like the Armory, where the entire work was filmed. ...
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True to the Paradox

An exhibition for the centennial of a contradiction

This essay was originally published on August 21 2019. To mark the centennial, The New School approached Anna Harsanyi and myself (we are both alumni of The New School) to curate an exhibition in the Sheila Johnson Design Center. For me, the task raised many questions, bringing me back to the ...
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