• Home
  • Shop
  • Completed Costumes/Impressions
  • Emma and Her Dresses
  • Patterns & Kits
  • Free Patterns and Instructions

Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Search results for: dread scott

Same as it Never Was

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by kittycalash in Living History

≈ Leave a comment

I wrote this two years ago and never published it (I was still looking for a job at the time). It’s still relevant. 

Every time I go to a museum, I see a lost or wasted opportunity: galleries where connections aren’t made to collections I know an institution owns, changing galleries featuring a seemingly endless rotation of amateur local artists instead of meaningful interpretation of local objects– or, better yet, a show challenging those same artists to react to a museum’s collection. The same is true of many reenactment events.

Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market
John Lewis Krimmel, American (born Germany), 1786 – 1821. Oil on canvas, 1811. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001-196-1. 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Leisenring, Jr., 2001

I remain deeply frustrated with the way reenacting can use documentary evidence– which rarely includes women– as a means to perpetuate 18th century misogyny in a 21st century setting. The same evidence means events often lack enough children, African Americans, American Indians, and other non-white people to create an accurate vision of the past. We know this because the demographic evidence exists, even when a manuscript fails to mention a mixed group of people in a specific place and time. (When an 18th century newspaper account uses the word “people,” you can bet that the group described included women and non-white men; if the account is about “men,” then it’s white men. Language is always coded.) The changes in the past years to include more accurate working class impressions go a long way towards creating a more nuanced vision of the past, but we’re still stuck with scenes that lack the complexity of the past.

My discomfort with this bothers me greatly. To what degree is my dissatisfaction also grounded in the understanding that recreating events in small, stagey spaces and times can de-contextualize a historical event, ultimately rendering the experience shallow and ritualistic, leaching it of meaning?

To what degree does our fixation on the appearance of participants (clothing standards) over interpretive standards or research materials serve to perpetuate shallow, surface-only events? And does the smallness of events create a zero-sum game in which someone’s talents will always be wasted, unused, and unrecognized, further feeding resentment of the “progressive” reenacting culture, sometimes even by its adherents?

All of that seems so over-thought, but in the midst of overthinking, and while deeply admiring Not Your Momma’s History on Racked, I thought about the critiques I read on @twitter, especially the part of #blacktwitter I follow, and I had a more important thought: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.

Maybe it’s time for the white women to get out of the way, and to expend our energy supporting the people who aren’t included at all. Maybe I need to STFU and invest my energy where it matters more: helping ensure the really unheard voices are heard. Cheney McKnight, Dread Scott, and Michael Twitty all have important things to say about history- American history, African American history- that, at this moment in time, matter far more than what I have to say. Go follow them. Make a difference.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Rethinking Reenacting Redux

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Art Rant, Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, authenticity, interpretation, living history, Reenacting, transcendence

Some of you may recall my friend from the antediluvian age, Dread Scott. He was in town briefly and while I wasn’t able to attend his talk, I got my own special artist’s talk over breakfast.

Scott’s working on a Slave Rebellion Reenactment, (additional info here) so we had a lot to talk about.

Scuffle in the Square, Princeton, 2017. Photo by Wilson Freeman at Drifting Focus Photography

He had some great questions about what we do, and why we do it, especially around Princeton, and in talking about my end goal (getting the public to understand how the past informs the present), I said something about how in Newport in 2014, the cars disappeared and we forgot we were in the present.

Scott’s great reply was about keeping the present present, occupying two time periods simultaneously, to recognize that the past made the present. I know that seems obvious, but it isn’t always when we’re out in our funny clothes. It’s another layer of interpretation that we can build onto our reenactments and recreations, particularly when we are trying to talk about slavery. Slavery built the institutions we have today– like Aetna Insurance and Georgetown University– so if we acknowledge our surroundings in a place like downtown Princeton or Newport, we can talk about more than just the moment we are recreating.

Some of us seek historical transcendence. Some of us enjoy a social experience. And some of us seek ways to connect the present to the past in ways that help us understand how we got here, and how to make a better future.

The more I contemplate what matters to me, the more I think I’m seeking that last more than I am even transcendence.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

[Re-en]Activism

18 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by kittycalash in History, Living History, Philosophy, Reenacting

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

interpretation, living history, philosophy

Dread Scott performing “On the Impossibility of Freedom in a County Founded on Slavery and Genocide” under the Manhattan Bridge (photo by Hrag Vartanian for Hyperallergic)

Dread Scott performing “On the Impossibility of Freedom in a County Founded on Slavery and Genocide” under the Manhattan Bridge (photo by Hrag Vartanian for Hyperallergic)

So I know a guy. Where I live, everybody knows a guy, but this guy I went to high school with, and stayed in touch with off and on over the years– we’re both art school refugees, looking at “America” in very different ways.

The work he’s done over the years has been controversial. But it’s his latest stuff that I’m thinking about– yeah, I know, I missed it: he’s always scheduled for when I’m at Fort Moonrise Kingdom, or, you know, tearing my life apart and rebuilding it.

Dread Scott. Images of Oppression. After a whirling dervish of a weekend that culminated in some fancy early-morning driving in Boston, I’ve almost forgotten why I was thinking of Dread Scott and living history, but here’s the short version:

Why do we choose to reenact or enact the moments or events we do? We are, by default in our selections, limiting our characters because of the script we choose. In the main, we continue to choose to re-tell and enact the dominant stories that align with common myths about the founding and history of the United States. Until we choose to enact other stories about our collective past, we will continue to enact the same arguments that Our Girl History and I have made in the past. That’s too meta even for me.

As a friend asked a few weeks ago, “Why do we commemorate massacres and not Mondays?” Let’s commemorate some Mondays, shine a light on some moments, and reimagine what enacting history can mean.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Rodentia, or, A Parable for Our Times

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Fail, personal, Philosophy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Chicago, fail, French class, high school, John James Audubon, Lord of the Flies, narrative, personal, substitute teacher

Once upon a time, as most of us were, I was in high school. It was not a stellar experience for me, but it was defining. Aside from the very few people who became my friends, and whom I follow along with even now, high school was populated with people who did not particularly care for me. Then as now, détente was a reasonable, if not always achievable, hope. But for some, there was a literal breaking point: a Rubicon, if you will. It started in sophomore French class.

John James Audubon. Marsh Shrew, Plate CXXV

John James Audubon. Marsh Shrew, Plate CXXV

We had a substitute teacher one Fall Monday. Her English was not perfect, though her French was; she was a regular teacher stepping in for our regular instructor. This was a pre-lunch class, but there were three 20-minute lunch periods. My class had second lunch; this meant that about 20 minutes into French class, a bell would ring, signaling the beginning of first lunch. After another 20 minutes, a second bell would ring, signaling the end of class and the beginning of second lunch.

John James Audubon. Bridled Weasel, Plate LX

John James Audubon. Bridled Weasel, Plate LX

On our first day with the substitute, when the first bell rang, two boys convinced her that class was over, and no one contradicted them: we left at the 20-minute bell. The next day, the same boys tried the same ruse. Three quarters of the class walked out, but at least two other girls and I stayed: I raised my hand and explained that the first bell was not the end of our class period.

John James Audubon. Black Rat, Plate XXIII

John James Audubon. Black Rat, Plate XXIII

My nickname became then and stayed The Rat. My classmates taunted me and chanted The Rat in the halls. Drawings of rats were stuck to and shoved inside my locker. This lasted until graduation, when we had almost forgotten the origin of my nickname.

When I tell this story now, I don’t look for pity or sympathy: this is a pathetic Lord of the Flies played out in the grey-carpeted halls of a Chicago Gold Coast private school, where the stakes were low so the repercussions were high. This was where I learned about clothing conformity in the guise of Polo shirts, Tretorn sneakers, Levi’s 501 jeans, and Brooks Brothers shirts. I wore my classmates’ fathers’ hand-me-down shirts from the thrift shop; I wore their grandmothers’ dresses. A Rat requires some style.

John James Audubon Cat Squirrel, Plate XVII

John James Audubon. Cat Squirrel, Plate XVII

As an adult, I find that people haven’t changed all that much. The cliques still exist, and while adults don’t usually shout at you, ostracism and snubbing are deployed regularly. But I learned long ago how to be alone, or with a few true friends. Evidence always speaks for itself.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Kitty Calash FB

Kitty Calash FB

The Etsy Shop!

Kitty Calash Swag on Teespring

Archives

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,928 other subscribers

Blogroll

  • A Most Beguiling Accomplishment
  • Afroculinaria: Michael Twitty
  • British Tars
  • Clothing the Carolinas
  • Drunk Tailor
  • History Research Shenanigans
  • Kleidung um 1800
  • New Vintage Lady
  • Not Your Momma's History
  • Our Girl History
  • Picking for Pleasure
  • Places in Time
  • Ran Away From the Subscriber
  • Slave Rebellion Reenactment
  • The Hidden Wardrobe
  • The Quintessential Clothes Pen
  • Worn Through

Etsy Shop

  • Kitty Calash on Etsy

Resources

  • Casey Fashion Plate Collection, LAPL

Sutlers

  • Burnley & Trowbridge
  • Wm Booth, Draper
wordpress statistics

Creative Commons License
Kitty Calash blog by Kirsten Hammerstrom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Kitty Calash
    • Join 627 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Kitty Calash
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: