Acts of Curation and Censorship
Our homes are filled with objects that evoke memories of important moments: old refrigerator magnets, postcards from friends, framed family photographs. As these objects demonstrate, we are the collectors and curators of our own lives.
Like curators in a museum, we make judgments about what objects and stories we value while letting others fall by the wayside. For every object displayed, there is an object forgotten. For each framed photograph, there is a bin of warped and yellowed portraits hidden in the attic.
But what exactly do we choose to forget? What does this process of forgetting tell us about ourselves?
Producer Emma Vecchione searches for an answer in examining the police raid of a 1978 art exhibition, a collection of pictures at the RISD Museum, and the family photographs on top of her mother’s television set.
Thanks to
Laurie McDonald and the RISD Archives for sharing footage from Private Parts (video recording, 7:00) / camera and editing by Laurie McDonald, assisted by Larry Heyl, with an excerpt from “Tongue Twister” by Alan Powell
Becca Bender, film archivist at The Rhode Island Historical Society, who helped me locate news footage about Private Parts from WPRI-TV.
Shuriya Davis, Kathie Florsheim, Lynette Labinger, Andy Martinez, Dennis Hlinsky, Lynette Labinger, and Maureen Vecchione