Foreword to Issue 1

With this issue we are proud to launch Expanded Field, a biannual, online and open-access English-language journal for creative writing and image/text experimentation. Why Expanded Field? Following from art critic Rosalind Krauss’ 1979 article “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” we want to draw attention to the tenuous manner in which various creative practices are set in relation or opposition to one another—and how we can further question the sustainability of genre- or medium-specificity. To this end, with Expanded Field we want to offer a platform for the exhibition of original and translated works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comics, image/texts, and other experimental works not so easily or readily classified.

While we realize that launching our journal with an issue on death might make you think we’ve taken our aforementioned goals too seriously or, perhaps, that we’ve been gathering on moonlit nights, draped in black cloaks to glorify gloom and morbidity—and while I might wish this were the case—the choice of the theme didn’t arise from such scenarios. Rather, in reviewing the submissions, we realized how often death, loss, and decay carve their way into the symbolic, if not also the literal, and effortlessly attach themselves to so many other themes. Death thus naturally arose as the perfect theme from which to birth our journal.

In this first issue, we also want to take the opportunity to introduce our editorial board. Within these pages you’ll find works from our managing editor, Camilla Hansen; our copyeditors, Nicholas Burman and Jasmine Palmer; our designer, Angelo Zinna, who also designed the cover; and me.

We would like to thank, first and foremost, our contributors to this issue. We’d also like to give special thanks to Dr. Erin La Cour, our faculty advisor and Dr. Jannah Loontjens, who has graciously accepted our invitation to lecture at our launch party. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank Prof. Dr. Diederik Oostdijk, not only for his creative contribution to our first issue, but especially for his trust in us and his support of our endeavours.

In closing, I hope this very issue will stand out as a significant start of a journal that moves, amuses, and charms its readers, whether on moonlit nights or sunlit days.