"Of All the Things"

OF ALL THE THINGS, (OATT)

We are Adwoa A. and Coren Denise – two, globally minded twenty-something year old women based in NY. In the summer of 2008, we met working at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Our keen critical eyes and shared interests in art, pop culture and literature brought us together in conversation.

The title of our blog is derived from a line in the poem, “Incident” by seminal Harlem Renaissance poet, Countee Cullen. Inspired by Cullen’s translation of memory, the process of reflection and ultimately, the understanding of one’s experience, Adwoa and I decided to record our ephemeral memories, ideas and conversations onto a tangible, yet digital medium. This blog presents our informal conversations about life, love, relationships, work (or the lack thereof), art, music, television – the best and worst of the West Coast, East Coast, and all things in between.

We hope to inspire interest in you, our readers, and form new connections between the academic and the kitsch, as we reflect upon our own understandings and positions in this ever-changing, yet sometimes static world.

Through the exploration of different forms of communication, Of All The Things hopes to be a site of dynamism. Evolving as constantly as the boundaries of racial definition, OATT will incorporate various media throughout the week prior to posting the current week’s conversation. In the future we hope to introduce new features and sections.


~~oatt.staff@gmail.com
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ADWOA A.

I am a graduate of Bard College, having obtained a B.A. in Art History with a concentration in Africana Studies. Through various opportunities in the last six years, I've found myself transported both academically and physically on a sort-of backwards journey through the Triangular Trade, and have never looked back.

With this blog I hope to explore a long-standing engagement with memory. Inspired by the “Incident,” I began thinking of all the things that I consciously commit to memory and of all the things that I don’t, and why. Actually, I had to memorize the poem for a 5th grade (or was it 6th?) recital and it has stuck with me ever since. A poem about childhood, loss, time, growth, happiness, race relations in America, and disillusionment with reality, “Incident” is not meant to recall something that happens once, but something that happens everyday all around us. This engagement with memory is a little bit of everything: of all the things that interest us, of all the things that give form and shape to our perspective; of all the things that we struggle to commit to memory, even when they are fleeting; and of all the things that effect our everyday life whether or not we choose to acknowledge them.

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COREN DENISE

I hold a BA in Africana Studies from Scripps College, a private women’s college in Claremont, CA., and one of the five institutions of the Claremont Consortium. Within my major, I focused on art history and aesthetics of the African Diaspora. I also earned a MA in Arts and Humanities Education from New York University.

In Cullen’s poem, “Incident”, I am drawn to themes about memory, experience and the formation of self. And like Cullen’s subject, I seek out ways to understand, situate and provide meaning for those experiences that have pressed themselves upon my memory. As a burgeoning theorist, critic and writer, I enjoy discovering the multitude of sides to a work of art, an element of visual culture or contemporary pop culture. It’s the pursuit of the puzzle that excites me, rather than its yield of answers. With this blog, my fellow writer, Adwoa, and you, our readers, I hope to uncover new facets of understanding for the visual world that (in)forms us.
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"INCIDENT" BY COUNTEE CULLEN

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.