So, it’s the end of June, and I’m halfway into my Honours project—SCARY THOUGHT. If you don’t know what my project is about, you might want to read this post though my objectives have altered slightly as time’s passed. Now is the perfect time to critically reflect on my progress throughout the first semester. We were given the opportunity to present our process and findings in a quasi-formal verbal and visual (poster) presentation on the 10th and 16th of June. (Well, actually, it made up 75% of our total grade, so it’s a bigger deal than I’m making it out to be.)

Luckily for me I was assigned to the latter date, so that gave me a while to collate my ideas together, following my marathon completion of my artist book for my elective unit. In a nutshell, I formulated a new question/thesis, emphasising the merits of ornament over modernism, excess over restraint, maximalism over minimalism. The difference being a lot of me mixed into the concoction. I turned to critical theory and other texts to validate my arguments, and I believe I was able to confidently and convincingly articulate my ideas on, and more importantly my passion for, this subject.

I’m …

So I have an essay due very, very soon that’s supposed to detail what on earth I’ve been doing for the past half year of my Honours degree, which hasn’t really felt all that much, actually… However, I’ve noticed during this time that whenever I do engage in some discourse regarding kitsch in a public domain, it evokes such passionate responses from  people – sometimes bemusedly with a hint of derision, or simply with nostalgic affection and warmth as one recalls a different time and place. It got me thinking, we need even more discussion on this very topic; having read many texts already on the subject, I still struggle to define this concept that is kitsch. Is it just a mass-produced object, a failed commodity, some worthless trinket you find in a carboot sale? A pretentious social construct that just brushes sentimentality aside, scorning an object simply because it “looks bad” or in bad taste? Or is it a kind of sensibility/mentality in the way of neo-baroque, or put more crudely, perhaps, an aesthetic/style in itself?

I ask these two questions (that kind of branch out into other modes of thought…):

What is kitsch to you? Don’t tell me what …

Last December I got accepted into Honours this year for Visual Communication, and I’ve decided to base my “thesis” per se on kitsch and collecting the mundane, which is the original title of my proposal. No doubt this will change with time. (I wanted to do a project purely on Batman, but that’s not exactly substantial in this context. At least this way I can chuck him in there somewhere, because he is a part of me. :P)

I am making a master list of kitsch films, books, magazines and every other periodical, TV and music, and whatever else pops up in my mind through out the year that I am investigating this topic. Feel free to leave a comment or better yet make a suggestion! I’m starting to notice that a lot of my lists are material mostly harks back between the 40s and 70s, the HEIGHT of kitsch appeal. Then again, I think, arguably, pretty much everything from any era can be considered kitsch—it’s a product of whatever era from which it derives. And it seems mostly exploitative, horror, sci-fi and smut reigns supreme in this category.

I will document my findings here and on my Flickr account, …