By Anissa Jousset
Arts & Culture Editor
Fall 2012: I am in my room minding my own business, with the door wide open (a college paradox) when a group of 1st years on a hallway scouting mission walks by. They stop, stand in my doorway and stare intently at the black and white photographs and 1960s LSD art on my walls. Apparently they were looking for directions. One girl, in all her Dutch bluntness looks me up and down and asks “Do you live here?” A little bit confused I say “Yes…why?” to which she replies “You don’t look like a student, are you an artist or something?!”
Labels are for jars. Never judge a book by its cover and so on. One can be easily fooled by tags and appearances, and so was I, upon my registration at UCR, which was still the Roosevelt Academy at the time. This was not a classic case of bait and switch as much as a just out of high school student who was under the impression that the Arts & Humanities/Science/Social Science dynamic would be different from that of public high school in France. Boy was I wrong.
I quickly learned that being a Theater and Media studies major meant acquiring systematic knowledge of Brecht’s theory, living and breathing Shakespeare and studying the Nouvelle Vague as if it was just yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, this can be highly amusing, until the point when you decide to write 300-level papers about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in your third semester. The sudden revelation that academics have the power of making anything painfully dry left me wondering why I hadn’t just gone to film school in the first place. Luckily enough, there are a large number of committees to cater to the individual interests of the student population, and if they don’t exist, somebody will create them.
Over the past three years I have witnessed the evolution of these committees who have gone from being lopsided and inside-jokey to relevant parts of our extracurricular lives and pillars of the UCR artistic community. Part of this evolution is due to the fact that a number of highly committed individuals have taken creative control of the school’s art related committees in order to help them develop, stand their ground, and not be forgotten. Amongst these: CameRA, the filmmaking committee has upped its game significantly since my arrival at UCR. They have managed to generate interest in the medium of film in students from different academic departments and think outside of “the bubble” by working with the local library. ArtCo and PhoRA have demonstrated their joint abilities in the creation of last semester’s Humans of Middelburg expo. PhoRA has finally grown out of the “what do you guys do again?” phase and has managed to make a name for itself. More recently, I had the chance to sit in on one of TheatRA’s final rehearsals of Brave New World. It is safe to say this committee has strayed away from insular humor and taken on masterful pieces such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (and Brave New World). Last but not least, the creation of the RAW journal in 2012 made way for a new medium of creative outlet that both UCR students and alumni could contribute to and enjoy. The RAW journal strikes me as both a beacon of hope for the arts and, having been created by a hardcore science student, physical proof that art is not reserved for the “artsy students”.
No amount of statistics, theory or academia could have taught me what I have learned over the past three years by following UCR’s creative scene. For that, I would like to thank all the enthusiastic students and alumni who, pardon my French, give a s*** about art. Over the past year I have had the pleasure of being both on the RAW and PhoRA boards, working with CameRA and being Arts & Culture section editor here at Tabula Rasa. In this, I am somewhat patting myself on the back, but I would like to think that I, and the other students who have taken a stance for art at UCR have made a difference. Jokes about Art History diplomas and hipsters set aside; I would like to highlight creativity, whether it is in a sketchbook or in a laboratory as being the unifying principle of the student population here at UCR. Maybe we’re all artists…or something.
With this I bid you farewell and hope that the new editors and boards of these creative units will keep the presence of art strong at UCR.
Anissa Jousset, Class of 2014 is a Philosophy and Theater & Media studies major from New York City, New York, United States.
