Everyday Aesthetics

There grows the neighbourhood’: Green citizenship, creativity and life politics on eco-TV

by Tania Lewis

Published in International Journal of Cultural Studies May 2012 vol. 15 no. 3

Argiilma poeetika ja pidulik elu

by Epp Annus

Annus, Epp (2009). Argiilma poeetika ja pidulik elu. Methis. Studia humaniora Estonica, 4, 134 - 144.

The poetics of the everyday and festive life


This article investigates ways of writing about the... more The poetics of the everyday and festive life


This article investigates ways of writing about the everyday in contemporary life. It starts by posing the question of why literature thrives especially on violence and extraordinary events. If literature strives to speak to us through our experience of being in the world, and aims to help us understand our common human experience, then shouldn’t it rather avoid the extraordinary?
Without doubt, a topic needs to captivate its writer no less than its reader—otherwise the writing and the reading would not take place at all. Facing death in literature proposes that a given text is something to be taken seriously; it signifies that here one is dealing with existential matters, not just with the myriad small nothingnesses of the everyday. Nonetheless, the present article analyzes a different way to intensify the quotidian: to turn the everyday into an experience of beauty. A writer can find moments of special importance from inside the everyday, thus relieving the reader from the boredom of „nothing happens“ otherwise than through an encounter with death and the extraordinary.
Through a close reading of several Estonian novels (Indigo by Peeter Sauter and Tõde ja õigus by A.H. Tammsaare), the article suggests that, instead of underlining the burdensome boredom of the everyday, literature has the potential, through the power of its imagery, to aestheticize the everyday, even against the conscious will of the writer. If the routine of the everyday involves the automatization of life and a loss of the intense feeling of being in the world, Heidegger reminds us that the work of art opens up being in the world as a whole—and does so precisely by relying on the everyday, not on moments of extraordinary significance. Thus, art would imply the disappearance of the everyday as a locus of boredom, unfullfilment, obligation and repetition, and the replacement of the everyday with pidulik elu, a life at once festive and solemn. For Heidegger, the everyday is a based on a structure of Care. Care is the existential meaning of the everyday and the basis of human existence. Insofar as literature might aim towards revealing the structure of care, this effort would involve the creation of festive life precisely out of the ordinariness of the everyday. Thus, in addition to the way literature may depart from the everyday with the violent and the extraordinary, literature may also recover the solemn festivity of the everyday as a way to make a piece of fiction readable, create loci of desire and interest in the text.

Houses in motion

by Greg Seigworth

Rethinking Everyday Life: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

by Greg Seigworth

Review of Everyday Aesthetics

by Katya Mandoki

It was no one's fault

by Benjamin DiZoglio

The reality of life is why we escape into art sometimes. I like to try to capture the reality we're all running from.... more The reality of life is why we escape into art sometimes. I like to try to capture the reality we're all running from.

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Aesthetics and self-built houses:: an analysis of a Brazilian setting

by Doris Kowaltowski

Creating 'festivity': household Christmas lights displays and community cohesion.

by Steve Millington

The Lighting Journal: The Official Journal of the Institution of Lighting Engineers. June, 2010. 34-40.

In a paper which challenges social cliches and stereotypes, Tim Edensor and Steve Millington examine the... more In a paper which challenges social cliches and stereotypes, Tim Edensor and Steve Millington examine the often-denigrated phenomenon of residential Christmas lights - and argue for their positive role in the creation of local identities and community cohesion.

Artistic Dropouts

by Kevin Melchionne

collected in Aesthetics: The Big Questions, edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer, Blackwell, 1998.

Of Bookworms and Busybees: Cultural Theory in the Age of Do-It-Yourselfing

by Kevin Melchionne

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 2, spring 1999.

Argues that the leading models of cultural practice in Cultural Studies fail to account for quasi-artisanal consumer... more Argues that the leading models of cultural practice in Cultural Studies fail to account for quasi-artisanal consumer practices like do-it-yourselfing.

Collecting As An Art

by Kevin Melchionne

Philosophy and Literature 23.1 (1999) 148-156

Describes the ways in which collecting may be seen as an artistic practice. Describes the ways in which collecting may be seen as an artistic practice.

Living In Glass Houses: Domesticity, Interior Decoration, and Environmental Aesthetics

by Kevin Melchionne

originally published in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 56, No. 2, spring 1998.

Also in INTIMUS: Interior Design Theory Reader, edited by Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston, Wiley, 2006 and The... more Also in INTIMUS: Interior Design Theory Reader, edited by Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston, Wiley, 2006 and The Aesthetics of the Human Environment, edited by Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant, Broadview Press, 2007.

Front Yards

by Kevin Melchionne

collected in The Environment and the Arts, edited by Arnold Berleant, Ashgate Press, 2002.

Offers an interpretation of the suburban front yard as a genre of gardening art.
Offers an interpretation of the suburban front yard as a genre of gardening art.

Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life: A Reply to Dowling

by Kevin Melchionne

British Journal of Aesthetics, October 2011

Recent articles addressing the aesthetics of everyday life have ventured competing views of the implications of... more
Recent articles addressing the aesthetics of everyday life have ventured competing views of the implications of the aesthetics of everyday life for aesthetic theory. The author argues for a strong conception of those implications, arguing that, properly construed, everyday aesthetics challenges discursive and art-centred conceptions of the aesthetic.

Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life: A Reply to Dowling

by Kevin Melchionne

British Journal of Aesthetics, October 2011

Recent articles addressing the aesthetics of everyday life have ventured competing views of the implications of... more
Recent articles addressing the aesthetics of everyday life have ventured competing views of the implications of the aesthetics of everyday life for aesthetic theory. The author argues for a strong conception of those implications, arguing that, properly construed, everyday aesthetics challenges discursive and art-centred conceptions of the aesthetic.

La ligne burtonienne : mise en scène(s) du quotidien et du fantasque

by Estelle Bayon

Éclipses, « Tim Burton », n°47, décembre 2010

Comme dans la majorité des films américains, le cinéma de Tim Burton cherche à s’extraire du quotidien pour déployer... more Comme dans la majorité des films américains, le cinéma de Tim Burton cherche à s’extraire du quotidien pour déployer un récit qui laissera éclater la scène d’une imagination débordante. Faite de costumes morbides et de fantasque, de mouvement et de monstrueux, la scène burtonienne est littéralement une aire de jeu, pour Alice ou Beetlejuice, située du côté d’un irréel qualifié tour à tour de baroque, néo-expressionniste, postmoderne ou néogothique.
Mais il est une autre scène, celle du monde quotidien et ordinaire : cet espace d’extraction jouit d’une véritable mise en scène, une mascarade de masque, codes de poses et de langages, costume, un maquette – parfois au sens propre – régie par la ligne, imperturbable, régulière, droite. Burton procède donc, littéralement, à une mise en scène de la vie quotidienne que ne renierait pas Erving Goffman, véritable aire de jeu à travers laquelle il interroge la mythologie américaine. Car Burton travaille la ligne droite comme la ligne fantasque qui le caractérise, et c’est à travers l’étude de l’espace – diégétique et pictural – et de la ligne qui l’agence que cet article propose une analyse de la scène quotidienne burtonienne, éclairé par la lecture de Goffman et de Bruce Bégout

Xings; in search of playful artefacts for the accessibility of a shared moment

by henrik svarrer larsen

Master thesis Interaction design (pictures deleted to ensure anonymity)

A practical and theoretical study of how a design space –conceptualised as a creative construct of distinctions– for a... more A practical and theoretical study of how a design space –conceptualised as a creative construct of distinctions– for a complex context of social interplay, families, child development and disabilities can be explored through design experiments. The design framing addresses the interplay and being-togetherness around tangible artefacts in families with children that has profound and multiple disabilities and is informed by social theory as well practical knowledge from the field of Multi-Sensory Environments. Design experiments is constructed on basis of distinctions emerging from the design framing and explored as means to let users affect the design process at an earlier stage than prototypes and more aimed than with technology probes. Tangible participation is suggested as a feasible way for the child without language or abstract thoughts to take part in the design process. For this rather sturdy yet crude design artefacts –labelled Rou-Phi Probes– is used for probing in a family. These artefacts can be seen as polarised materialisations of design space distinctions, that the user through actions can respond to as if they were open questions. The outcome of this thesis is not a design concept, but primarily methodological reflections with a basis in the 'research through design' activities of intervening with tangible digital technology, as well as reflections on interactive aesthetics.
Terms
Design experiments, design methodology, design space, ideals of interaction, (re)habilitation, research artefacts, research through design, social interaction, tangible computing, technology probes.

Ronald Hepburn and the humanising of Environmental Aesthetics

by Isis Brook

This is a short piece on Ronald Hepburn's work and its value for contemporary and future environmntal aesthetics.  It is the editorial of the special issue on environmental aesthetics of the journal Environmental Values vol 19:3, 2010

Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience after Phenomenology

by Wood Roberdeau

Contemporary Aesthetics, vol. 9, 2011, 1-7.

This article explores the complex relationships among two different types of critique, the socio-temporal zone known... more This article explores the complex relationships among two different types of critique, the socio-temporal zone known as "everyday life" and the moment of the encounter by those who are encountering art works. It proceeds with a close study of the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mikel Dufrenne, and tests their key concepts against generalized contemporary art practices that question a model of the traditional aesthetic experience by suggesting the possibility that within the expanse of postmodernity such a paradigm has shifted, (although it is not completely irretrievable). The paper argues that this shift has been achieved by remobilizing readymade objects and banal customs within spaces otherwise reserved for extraordinary experience. Thus, it also considers the problem of authoritative experience and Jürgen Habermas' extension of the Husserlian Lebenswelt in order to map out the urgencies of our current cultural sphere.

Comics and Everyday Life: from Ennui to Contemplation

by Greice Schneider

European Comic Art, v. 3, p. 37-64, 2010

This paper discusses the recent growing presence of the everyday in comics from different traditions, works where... more This paper discusses the recent growing presence of the everyday in comics from different traditions, works where ordinary situations and apparently insignificant events take the place of extraordinary worlds and adventure stories. Drawing predominantly from the French perspective of Everyday Studies (Lefebvre, Blanchot, Perec, De Certeau), the ambiguous dynamics of the everyday will be here studied in relation to the contrasting concepts of boredom and strangeness. This paper addresses not only comics that bring these two attitudes as a theme, but also those which manage to awaken emotional responses in the reader, specifically ennui and contemplation. The aim here is to identify different strategies proper to the language of comics capable of arousing everyday moods in the reading experience, particularly in those cases where the temporal dimension is manipulated, reinforcing a sense of slowness.