Editorial

The Boomerang will be out soon, which means...I'll be lazy and post my boomerang articles instead of new content. To start with, my very own editorial "On Enthusiasm"

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Let me start by getting something out of the way. I, the new Arts & Kitsch editor, am a science major, taking four science courses. What, then, am I doing writing and editing articles about the Arts?

Call me an enthusiast.

Enthusiastic mostly about movies, but also about music, books, TV shows, paintings etc. I have an ever-increasing DVD collection, always have music playing in my room, and have read avidly ever since I was five. To say it in a corny fashion, Physics might have my brain, but the Arts have my heart. I love it when I suddenly discover something marvellous, eye-opening and moving that I’ve never even heard about before. It makes me all giddy, puts a grin on my face. And it makes me want to share what I discovered with anyone who will listen.

Do you ever get that feeling?

If so, then you’ve found a listener here. Its name is the Boomerang Arts & Kitsch section.

We’re looking for many short and long pieces about anything artsy and kitschy, whether it falls under high or low culture, whether it’s celebrated and not, whether someone besides the artist him or herself has ever heard about it or not. Whether loathe or adore it. We are especially looking for articles that make people aware of arty things that are unknown, but not entirely inaccessible. Articles about indie or foreign movies, about music that flies just below the radar, about small exhibitions, about original comics, online or off line, about things that float just out of reach of mainstream status, if you catch my drift.

Articles about things like the guy playing out the entire Star Wars trilogy on his own (www.onemanstarwars.com), doing all the parts, all the voices, all the sound effect. Or like the unexpected poetry of things people overhead in the Big Apple. (www.overheardinnewyork.com). Or like a website that randomly combines images and text from blogs into a fascinating and ever changing transitory work of art (http://turbulence.org/Works/dynamo/index.html).

These examples have a common connection to one another, and this is not entirely a coincidence. The Internet has opened up new opportunities for expression for arts enthusiast, just as it did for enthusiasts of all other kinds. And lucky for us, access is more or less free. I could tell you a certain book is fantastic, but how many would buy it? I could write an entire article about a DVD box set I think everyone should see, but what’s the point if we’re all living on small student budgets? However, surfing to a website address is easy, cheap, and there are so many fascinating websites buried beneath layers and layers of porn and spam. One other big advantage of the Internet is that there exists at least one fan club for everything you could possibly think of. Every fandom, every hobby, every fetish has hundreds or thousands of websites and blogs dedicated to it. And because the sheer immensity of the Internet makes it almost impossible to penetrate directly to its good material, some signposts or shortcuts are usually not superfluous.

Let me also say that I think we have a very nice collection of articles in this issue. Three fans of the TV-series Lost (airing on Friday nights on Net 5) offer their theories on what lies beneath the plot. Elvira offers an overview of all the major high-art museums you could be visiting. Jelmer tells us about his experience listening to a man and his electric shoe. There’s my confession about loving slash, and even a crossword to keep you occupied in between classes.

But our palms are always open, eagerly awaiting more contributions by our readers. I might know quite a few unknown movies and artists but one person’s taste is always limited, and one person’s knowledge too. You’re not going to see me recommending obscure hip-hop bands, review kung fu, or tell you about new experimental video art, not because I think those topics are unworthy or irrelevant, but because they are outside of my area of expertise and, I’ll admit it, because they’re not something I am personally a big fan of. But I don’t plan to dominate this section by what I like, and by what I know. This section is meant as a platform for everything people can get enthusiastic about within the domain of the Arts and the Kitsch, and I am very much looking forward to what worlds you can reveal to me, and to your other fellow students.

Of course, enthusiasm has a flip side. It often implies a certain lack of judgment, lack of criticism. When you’re truly enthusiastic about something you tend to dismiss its less fabulous characteristics and ignore any dissenters we might encounter, telling ourselves they just don’t “get it”. Despite this, criticism is a valuable thing, and something I would also like to see in this section. In reactions to what we have written, but also just if you’d like to give your balanced, well-defended opinion of something.

There is so much Arts & Kitsch out there. So much of it we do not know. This section will hopefully open our eyes to just a little bit more than what we knew before.