Frederic Tuten Papers at Ohio State University
Assitant to the author
Archival Organizer and Researcher
Ephemera Preparor, 2017 - 2020
Project Description and Scope
“The Frederic Tuten Papers contain correspondence, drafts, notes, publicity, computer files, and recordings related to Tuten’s career as a fiction writer, film and art critic, essayist, and educator. The collection also holds materials related to Tuten’s personal life, including his education, his social life, his family, and artwork created by him. Some material, including reviews of Tuten's work are in languages other than English, including French, German, Spanish, Catalan Swedish, and Danish. The materials in the collection are dated 1920-2014. The bulk of the materials date from circa 1958-1998.”
Yes, that’s me next to those boxes.
The New School Student Oral History Project, Passion for Fashion
Oral Historian
Transcriptionist
Custodian of Audio Materials, 2017 - 2018
Project Description and Scope
“Prospective Passion is a project that aims to use the oral history method as a basi to explore two narratives about the same topic: the passion for fashion. The project positions the narrative of a young, fashion merchandizer, Ming Cong, against an archival interview of her favored fashion icon, the late Alexander McQueen. In both interviews, the narrators describe their first memories of fashion and their attitudinal shifts toward the industry overtime. They also discuss the feeling of adjacency to their peers, the perversion of the self in their work, as well as their greatest accomplishments.
When positioned next to each other, the audience will sense the tonal differences between the two speakers as they contemplate their futures. Ming expresses hope and ambition, whereas McQueen exhibits ghostly disappointment and fatal nihilism.
The outcome of this project takes two forms. The first is an experimental AudioDoc that intercuts the two interviews atop musically ambient sounds. These sounds are distortions of backgroun noise from the original audios, where a woman can be heard singing somewhere outsid of the interview space. Because it was important to collaborate and create an outcome that could be used, potentially, as an audiotrack for one of Ming’s future fashion shows Ming curated the utterance arrangement.
The second form of this project, the textual essay, uses the same utterances and redistributes them in visual form. The AudioDoc has a palpable aesthetic and disorienting effect. The experience of listening is intended to mimic the overarching narrative themes present in both interviews.”
