In the Middle of Things : On Researching the Infraordinary
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Doctoral thesis (monograph)
| Defence date: 2024-02-02
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Authors
Date
2024
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Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
164
Series
Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL THESES, 1/2024
Abstract
The infraordinary is a phenomenon first addressed by Georges Perec in his 1975 text Approaches to what? The in-fraordinary is presented in Perec’s text as an awareness and a questioning of things and events happening in our everyday life. These everyday happenings are not qualified as grandiose; but rather, the phenomenon focuses on the significance of the banal, the common, the things we label as ordinary due to their relationship with functionality or their recurrence in our daily lives. Through his work, Perec invites us to question the ordinary, what we encounter in our everyday lives, objects, situations, routines, and things which we have lost contact with when we dismiss them or qualify them as obvious. In this dissertation, I propose the question What is the infraordinary? not as an interrogative subject, but rather to raise the possibility and purposeful search, and re-search, of the phenomenon. This questioning delves into the processes through which the phenomenon becomes visible and inquiries about the dynamics present in this process. This dissertation approaches the questioning in two parts. The first part, In the middle of things, is practice-based research that seeks through 114 fragments to circumvallate the infraordinary and, in the process, determine which features and characteristics of the phenomenon are visible and how. This first part engages with experimental writing with the purpose of having content and form intrinsically woven. It follows the structure of the book Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, which invites the reader to choose one of the three (or possibly more) orders to read the book. In the same way, the document In the middle of things invites the reader to decide how to engage with it: either linearly from 1 to 114, or by following a suggested order which is found at the beginning of that part, or by free association by moving at random from section to section. The research in this first part follows a way-finding methodology through a selection of concepts such as visibility, gesture, space, everyday life, and experience, among others. Additionally, In the middle of things engages with the two artistic components included in this doctoral research (the exhibition There was no thought, but a thrive for the visibility of something yet to be named in HAM gallery, and the piece What happens when nothing happens exhibited in Huuto gallery), as well as with related methodologies and practices employed by other artists and writers. The second part, On researching the infraordinary, elaborates on a framework of research on the infraordinary and on the work of Georges Perec in Literary studies and Artistic research. On researching the infraordinary also contains a formulation about the artistic research methodology employed in the section In the middle of things. Researching the infraordinary phenomenon brings forward the opportunity to observe and dwell on different facets of everyday life and to re-consider our relationship with our daily lives. In Approaches to what? Perec invites us to question our teaspoons, why? Why is questioning what is found in our pantries useful? What are our pantries saying to us? What do we encounter, and what do the things we find say about our everyday lives, our contexts, the place we live, the supermarkets, the social dynamics, and the politics of it? To inquire about the infraordinary is not an action delimited by the pursuit of an answer but an opportunity to engage with what surrounds us. A chance to take a moment, to look around and discover all that is already there speaking to us.Description
Supervising professor
Laakso, Harri, Prof., Aalto University, Department of Art and Media, FinlandThesis advisor
Paenhuysen, An, PhD, independent curator and writer, BerlinKeywords
infraordinary, Georges Pereci