Have a Cup of CoffeeAn Inquiry into the Domestic Everyday Interactions of People and Things

Written by Billur Turan

Tutored by Emmanuelle Dirix & Naomi House

Design Products

Royal College of Art

Word Count: 10,660

2/10/2009

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations 2

Preface 4

Introduction 8

London, July, sometime before lunch 11

Chapter 1 �– the subject 13

stanbul, Early September, a rainy morning 18

Chapter 2 the object 19

Chapter 3 �– the ritual 25

London, End of September, packing to move 34

Chapter 4 the setting 36

London, October, late at night 42

Chapter 5 the Everyday 43

Conclusion 47

Bibliography 49

1

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 - Goldfish and Palette, 1914, Henri Matisse

Figure 2 - Morning in a City, 1944, Edward Hopper

Figure 3 - Woman With a Coffepot, c. 1895, Paul Cézanne

Figure 4 - Self-Portrait, 1980 Alice Neel

Figure 5 - Le Meutre, 1934 Pablo Picasso

Figure 6 - What the Water Gave Me, 1938 Frida Kahlo

Figure 7 - An American Painting-For Rose Paul, 1979, Ed Baynard

Figure 8 - Table, Ocean, and Fruit, 1927, René Magritte

Figure 9 - Broken Objects, 1944, Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Figure 10 - Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Lord and Lady Passfield) , 1928-9, William Nicholson

Figure 11 - Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub, 1885-1886 Edgar Degas

Figure 12 - Daily News, 1983, Dona Nelson

Figure 13 - Table, Ocean, and Fruit, 1927, René Magritte

Figure 14 - Study for a Portrait, 1953, Francis Bacon

Figure 16 - Folding Dryer, 1962, Gerhard Richter

Figure 16 - Victorian Parlor II, 1945, Horace Pippin

Figure 17 - Portrait of Dr Hugo Koller, 1918, Egon Schiele

Figure 18 - The Family (John Gruen, Jane Wilson and Julia), 1970 Alice Neel

Figure 19 - Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1967, Francis Bacon

Figure 20 - Morning Sun, 1952, Edward Hopper

2

Figure 1

Just like in social sciences where the everyday existence of the ordinary people has been overlooked, still life painting depicting inanimate objects has been considered the lowest form of painting. This painting through its ideal geometry makes a spiritual, essentialist statement.1

1 Rowell, Margit, Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1997 p. 89

3

PREFACE

Ode to things

I have a crazy,

crazy love of things.

I like pliers,

and scissors.

I love

cups,

rings,

and bowls �–

not to speak, of course,

of hats.

I love

all things,

not just

the grandest,

also

the

infinitely

small �–

thimbles,

spurs,

plates,

and flower vases.

Oh yes,

the planet

is sublime!

It�’s full of pipes

weaving

4

hand-held

through tobacco smoke,

and keys

and salt shakers �–

everything,

I mean,

that is made

by the hand of man, every little thing:

shapely shoes,

and fabric,

and each new

bloodless birth

of gold,

eyeglasses

carpenter�’s nails,

brushes,

clocks, compasses,

coins, and the so-soft

softness of chairs.

Mankind has

built

oh so many

perfect

things!

Built them of wool

and of wood,

of glass and

of rope:

remarkable

tables,

ships, and stairways.

I love

all

5

things,

not because they are

passionate

or sweet-smelling

but because,

I don�’t know,

because

this ocean is yours,

and mine;

these buttons

and wheels

and little

forgotten

treasures,

fans upon

whose feathers

love has scattered

its blossoms,

glasses, knives and

scissors �–

all bear

the trace

of someone�’s fingers

on their handle or surface,

the trace of a distant hand

lost

in the depths of forgetfulness.

I pause in houses,

streets and

elevators

touching things,

identifying objects

that I secretly covet;

6

this one because it rings,

that one because

it�’s as soft

as the softness of a woman�’s hip,

that one there for its deep-sea color,

and that one for its velvet feel.

O irrevocable

river

of things:

no one can say

that I loved

only

fish,

or the plants of the jungle and the field,

that I loved

only

those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.

It�’s not true:

many things conspired

to tell me the whole story.

Not only did they touch me,

or my hand touched them:

they were

so close

that they were a part

of my being,

they were so alive with me

that they lived half my life

and will die half my death.

Pablo Neruda 2

2 http://sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl/chile/misc/odas.html (20 September 2009)

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Figure 2

Hopper frequently depicted female figures, nude or clothed in interiors. The women are seen in intimate, unsensational, unspectacular situations. Influence of Degas can be clearly seen in his depiction of an activity normally not witnessed by an outsider. 3

INTRODUCTION

�“Forget the ritual. You will not have a prescription with your design.

Just focus on the object itself. Feelings will follow.�”

Frustration�… Anger�… Then doubt settled in. Did he have a point? Have I been following the lost cause

of the modernist project without even realizing it? Who was I to tell people how to act, how to feel?

3 Kranzfelder, Ivo, Edward Hopper: Vision of Reality,Köln: Taschen, 1998, p. 39

8

This was the second tutorial since I had started designing a room in the process of losing its borders.

Wardrobes, cupboards, doors, and windows, were going through an identity crisis; dismantling and

mingling again into unfamiliar combinations. I was hoping the imaginary borders we have in our minds

would dissolve as the domestic environment transformed into a recognizable yet strange entity.

However designing for the domestic everyday has proved to be tricky. �“While studying the everyday

or designing for it, the realness is replaced by a reference to the real, a depiction of the ordinary, an

allusion to the common place.�”4 Trying to avoid this trap and clarify my interest, I started a genuine

inquiry into the most familiar: my everyday life.

I imagined my life to be a film. Every move I made and the slightest thought that crossed my mind

would be recorded and narrated respectively in the third and first person. I picked the ritual of making

Turkish coffee, at first instinctively. Though I came to realize it is quite appropriate for a few reasons; it

is an act that carries cultural and personal significance, it requires certain material tools at the same

time as staying independent of the �“physicality of the house�”, the preparation process incorporates all

the senses and it requires a time of non-activity. By that I mean standing and waiting for the coffee to

be ready.

It fitted well with my theoretical investigation in which I tried to break down the daily domestic rituals

into their elements: the actors, the setting and the time. I allocated a chapter to each element. Then I

used common themes such as time, awareness, care, subjectivity, senses, memory and identity to

analyze them.

Why do we have daily rituals? Do they change us? Do they offer creative power or passive escape

from time? Do they have any potential for catalyzing social change? Do the intrinsic qualities of the

objects affect the ritual? If so how? Up to what level do we share our response to an object�’s

materiality? Could we see objects as separate entities existing free from our interpretation?

4 Blauvelt, Andrew.�’ Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life �‘ in Strangely Familiar: Design and EverydayLife, ed. Andrew Blauvelt, Minneapolis, Minn: Walker Art Center, 2003, p.35

* A phrase used in Turkey to descibe people who live in Germany. In the urban use it resonates with contempt,whereas in the rural areas with envy, since they are consireded to be making easy money

9

Figure 3

10

London, July, sometime before lunch

He still has not called. A day and a half since he has arrived. So what!! Keep focused!! She jumps out

of bed, runs down to the kitchen, gets out the cup, the coffee and the pot. Will be home in 5 days and

will have coffee with mum. I can�’t believe she started smoking again... A teenager of 52. The sugar

has gone missing. With irritation she goes through all the cupboards, starts taking down spices. The

salt, the pepper, the mint, and finally the SUGAR!! A full spoon, a few stirs and the pot is placed on the

fire. Where were we when I taught him how to make coffee? Istanbul or Berlin? Of course it was

Berlin!! He had bought the coffee from a Turkish corner shop before I had arrived. He had even

asked the girl how to make it and she was not sure. It must be difficult for them to feel out of place

wherever they are; Almanclar * in Turkey and strangers here. The tiny brown bubbles make a rush to

the edge of the pot; she is quick to remove it from the flame. I had almost let him spill all the coffee

and ruin the electric oven in his office. We had been preparing a small treat for his colleagues. It is

incredible how he can make conversation with almost anyone. Then again he cares a bit too much

about what everyone else feels about him. She fills the cup, a bit too much, and spills on the way back

to her room. As the drops run down, they make obscure patterns on the outer sides. Is that a ship or

the crescent moon? Oh well, I�’ll never get any better at this. First thing when I�’m back, I will take

myself to a fortune-teller.

11

Figure 4

For a long time ordinary individuality �– the everyday individuality of everybody - remained below the threshold of description. FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish 5

5 Gutman, H., �‘Rousseau�’s Confessions: A Technology of the self�’ in Technologies of the Self: a seminar withMichel Foucault, ed. L. H. Martin, H. Gutman and P. H. Hutton, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,1988, p. 99

12

CHAPTER 1 the subject

The Self

Kant was immensely over taken by Rousseau�’s new conception of the self, even to the point of

abandoning his meticulous daily routine in order to read his autobiography. In his essay on

Rousseau�’s Confessions, Gutman argues that for a self to materialize, it has to be separated from the

totality of things. The self emerges from this division with a sense of security and centrality. This

feeling proves to be temporary and it soon dissolves into a sense of seclusion. The self, trying to feel,

once again, in harmony with the world, creates imaginary worlds.6

The paradox is that when lost in this imaginary world, the self dissolves into the unity. According to

Freud this �“oceanic feeling�” is an indication of the ego yearning to become one with the cosmos.7 On

the other hand, consciousness is the result of the ego regulating the openness to the world, through

adjusting the senses. Subjectivity is founded on these dynamics.8

I felt before I thought�….

By this statement in his autobiography Rousseau points out that feelings come first and that the

constitution of the self is progressive.9 Although he is being quite radical by putting feelings first, he is

not questioning the division between body and mind. After deeming the senses to be unreliable,

Descartes concluded that the only reliable knowledge is the thinking act. Thus the famous principle

Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical

discussion of the mind-body problem for many years after Descartes' death.10 This division became

one of the building blocks of Western intellectual thought and it mirrors the conflict between female

sensuality and male rationality. Opposed to this dichotomy, David Howes calls for a holistic view of the

self: one which integrates the sensuous relationships of body-mind-environment. He argues that if this

6 Ibid. p. 1077 Ibid. p. 1168 Stewart, Susan. �‘Remembering the Senses�’ in Empire of the Senses The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. DavidHowes, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005, p. 609 Gutman, H., op.cit. pp. 99 12010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes (20 September 2009 )

13

non-existent partition is eliminated, it would become apparent that the mind is embodied and the

senses are mindful.11

Figure 5

�“This is a variation of David�’s heroic painting of the Death of Marat; a pure scene of revolutionary martyrdom. Picasso includes Corday, with a huge butcher�’s knife, dismantled organs, and her mouth as the vagina dentata. Furthermore, she is attached to the signifiers of Western, middle-class, feminine domestic life- table cloth, high-heeled shoe, table, breasts. The female is a trap not just because she has a vagina dentata (unconscious) but also because she incarcerates the male �– the hero, the artist- in a hideous web of bourgeois triviality.�” 12

11 Howes, David. �‘Introduction: Empire of the Senses�’ in Empire of the Senses: the Sensual Culture Reader, ed.David Howes, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005. p.712 Nochlin, Linda, Bathers, Bodies, Beauty, Harvar University Press. Cambridge, mssachusetts, and london,england, 2006. Pp.103 107

14

He uses the term �“senses�” as Marx had defined them; historical executions and sources of material

memories. We may apprehend the world by means of our senses, but the senses themselves are

shaped and modified by experience and the body bears a somatic memory of its encounters with what

is outside of it. The environment is both physical and social. This is illustrated by the bundle of sensory

and social values contained in the feeling of �‘home�’.13

If each of our physical encounters is inscribed in either our conscious or unconscious knowledge,

then, as Bergson put it, there is no perception which is not full of memories. So perception, which is

understood to be internal, ahistorical and apolitical, is actually a shared social phenomenon.14

How to Take Care of Oneself?

How is this political, social sensuous self to be cared for without abandoning it either to the imaginary

or to the isolation of the reality? The body-mind-environment relationship that constitutes the self

might be the key.

Here we could follow Foucault, who studied the way in which the material environment, social

customs, and linguistic usage create a collective psychological milieu in which the individual mind is

immersed.15 In his later works, he turned his attention to methods of self constitution and definition.

Technologies of the self, as he calls them, are practices that �“permit individuals to transform their own,

bodies, souls, thoughts, etc. as to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom.�”16

Know thyself is a phrase we are all familiar with. It is known to be the golden principle of antiquity.

However Foucault argues that in Greco-Roman culture it actually was the consequence of another

principle: take care of oneself. Hence the meaning of the self is less important than the methods we

employ to understand it. The quest for such knowledge is itself a form of self-care.17

13 Stewart, Susan, op.cit. pp. 59 61 14 Stewart, Susan. �‘Remembering the Senses�’ in Empire of the Senses The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. DavidHowes, Oxford &New York: Berg, 2005, pp. 59 6115 Hutton, Patrick H., �‘Foucault, Freud, and the Technologies of the Self�’ in Technologies of the Self: A Seminarwith Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton, Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press, 1988, pp. 121 14416 Foucault, Michel, �‘Technologies of the Self�’ in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed.Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, p. 1817 Hutton, Patrick H., op.cit. pp. 121 144

15

�“The care of the self is the care of the activity and not the care of the soul-as-substance.�” Marcus

Aurelius, in his letter to his master Fronto, gives a detailed description of his everyday life. Recording

even the unimportant deeds of the day he writes; �“�… I relieved my throat, I will not say by gargling but

by swallowing honey water as far as the gullet and ejecting it again.�” Such details are important

because they are what �“he thought, what he felt.�”18 To him, self was not something hidden inside; it

was to be formed through attentive efforts. Thus at the end of each day he would ask himself �“What

bad habit have I cured today?

Care, Attention and Growth

How to be attentive in the everyday life which seems dominated by habit and inattentiveness?

Massimo Montanari who proposes slowness as a mode of attention and reflection in everyday

activities, underlines care to be central for this new approach. This attitude might reunite �“the

aesthetic, the political, the corporal and the everyday, by its insistence on the centrality of pleasure

and the body.�” 19

This kind of careful attention is opposed to alienated attention; what Marx called �“false

consciousness�”. It resembles flow which is a kind of integrated attention that serves to direct a

person�’s psychic energy towards realizing his/her goals. The key elements of the flow experience are

a merging of action and awareness, a centering of attention on a limited stimulus field, a loss of ego or

sense of self, and control over one�’s actions and over the environment.

According to Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, the free self is one capable of flow, of giving

attention to objects and activities in a way that allows the psychic energy invested to be returned to

the person as enjoyment. Through integrated patterns of attention, the self grows and cultivates its

goals. 20

They coin the term �“cultivation�” for this process of improvement, development, refinement, or

expression of some object or habit due to care, training or inquiry. They base it on Dewey�’s distinction

between perception and recognition. When confronted with an object, the user either interprets it

18 Foucault, Michel, op.cit. pp. 28 2919 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, p. 5920 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, The Meaning of Things: domestic symbols and the self / Mihaly Csiksentmihalyiand Eugene Rochberg Halton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 186 196

16

using a stereotype thus recognizes, or actively perceives the object so that its qualities might change

his habits or schemes, thus perceives. Perception means that the scheme through which we interpret

an object is challenged and expanded; which is how learning occurs.21

Figure 6

In this feminine bathtub self portrait, bathing is shown as an activity of reflection and reminiscence, leading to construction of identity.

21 Ibid, pp. 173 181

17

stanbul, Early September, a rainy morning

Coffee cups of all colours and sizes, from old fashion Turkish cups with oriental patterns to huge

mugs that could hold coffee for two, are all waiting patiently in their nothingness. Their silence is

only broken when she opens the cupboard and the emptiness fills with light. I cannot believe it�’s

raining at this time of the year. She reaches for the one with flowery patterns but hesitates. An

irregular day, I should make an exception. And she picks the blue cup, the last member of an old

six-cup series. She leaves the cup next to her mum�’s, for her to fill both with freshly made coffee.

The mother is sitting on a high stool placed next to the oven; neither paying full attention to the pot

nor ignoring it completely. I don�’t understand why her coffee always tastes better than mine. Better

then anyone else�’s really. You could say I am used to it, but others think so as well. As if someone

has whispered to her, mother picks up the pot, fills the cups till they�’re both half full. The rest is

boiled once again, this time rumbling violently, until poured down. She has done it again; perfect

bubbles, divided equally among the two cups. She moves towards the couch nearest to the

window, eyes transfixed on the drops rolling down the glass. Where did all this rain come from so

suddenly? The sea must have a billion hues in store, is dark grayish blue today. I love it when it

snows, then it turns a sweet ice green. Of course there is the happy blue if the sun is shining in a

cloudless sky. She opens the window, takes a deep breath and a sip from the coffee. Replaces the

old blue cup on the window sill, swirling vapours slowly vanish into the air. The smell of the coffee

mixes with the damp smell of the earth. Great grandma used to say this is the smell of the dead.

Weird thing to say to a child�…

18

CHAPTER 2 the object

We have to ask, as Georges Perec put it, �“How are we to speak of these �‘common things�’, how to

track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired,

how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.�” He

encourages us to look into ourselves and to be astonished by the endonic instead of the exotic.22

Brecht argues that in order to be aware of the familiar we must give up assuming that the object in

question needs no explanation. �“However frequently recurrent, modest, vulgar it may be it will now be

labeled as something unusual.�” 23

Figure 7

With its frontal perspective, linear organization and simple depiction of the vessels, this painting in whole resonates with a sense of stillness.

22 Perec, Georges, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, trans. John Sturrock, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997,pp. 205 207

23 Brecht, 1964, quoted in Highmore, Ben. �‘Introduction: Questioning Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday LifeReader, ed. Ben Highmore, London: Routledge, 2002. p. 21

19

Objects Abstracted

To classify objects and to illuminate their encounters with subjects, Jean Baudrillard leans heavily on

semiotics. For him the everyday environment of objects is to a great extent an �‘abstract�’ system of

signs. What the object signifies can only be understood by referring to the other object signifiers in this

system. Consequently objects together make up the system through which the subject strives to

construct a world, a private totality. Every object thus has two functions- to be put to use and to be

possessed.24

Even practical objects with functional value are continuously turning towards a cultural system.

Furthermore, the whole system of needs, socialized or unconscious, cultural or practical surge back

on the essential technical order and threatens the objective status of the object itself.25 Here Arvatov

could be mentioned. He criticizes the passivity of the thing in the bourgeois society which exists

merely as a category of pure consumption, dead and fixed, outside its material dynamics and social

process of production.26

However using language as a structural model is restrictive and over focused on the visual aspects

of objects. Judy Attfield states �“Dealing only with the visual features of the artefacts, obscures the

work of designers, makers and users as all involved in the making of meaning through things.�” 27 �“We

have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their

trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these trajectories that we can interpret the human

transactions and calculations that enliven things. Thus even though from a theoretical point of view

human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things in-

motion that illuminate their human and social context.�”28

24 Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict, London & New York: Verso,1996, p. 8625 Ibid. p. 826 Arvatov, Boris & Kiaer, Christian, �‘Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing ( Toward the Formulation of theQuestion )�’ in October, vol. 81, summer 97, MIT Press, p. 12227 Attfield, Judy, Wild things : the Material Culture of Everyday Life, Oxford: Berg, 2000, p. 4328 Appadurai, Arjun, �‘Toward an Anthropology of Things�’ in The Social Life of Things Commodities in CulturalPerspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 5

20

Figure 8

Magritte named objects in contradiction with what they represent, hoping to liberate the viewer from conventions, and make him question the nature of representation and language.

21

Material Existence of Objects

Roger-Pol Droit also claims that things reside outside of language and remain categorically removed

from our world of words.29 Following Perec�’s call, he embarks on a year long journey into the realm of

things. Right away he is confronted with the dilemma of either grabbing things in their singular reality

or seizing them in their ideal totality. He asks �“Do I really have no choice between describing things

without ever touching them, or else contemplating each one in an aphasic silence?�” Finally he finds a

way through the middle, to remain suspended, in-between. Seeing things as folds of ancient and

vanished phrases, he tries to discover ideas sealed inside some of the things woven into our everyday

lives hour by hour, gesture by gesture.

What is so impressive about his investigation is that although it is primarily philosophical, it takes its

cues from materiality of things and does not loose contact with their everyday use. As he questions

mundane things such as an alarm clock, a set of drawers, a train ticket, a statue, etc. he realizes that

that they link us to our past; personal and archaic. They can be loaded with both personal and shared

meaning.30

Things impress themselves on our consciousness through the senses, which remember each

encounter with the outside world. This explains why things are such powerful retainers of personal and

social memory. Materiality of objects as capable of triggering remembrance and awareness is central

to Walter Benjamin�’s texts on Proust. The past is somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect, an

unmistakably present in some material object (or in the sensation which such an object arouses in

us).31 According to Neil Cummings things catch the moment as it falls from memory and sit as

sediment forming our consciousness.32

The sensation initiated by an object is dependent on its intrinsic qualities such as, material

properties, form, use, personal history, and etc. For example the bowl is a figure of reassurance

because it temporarily stops the endless flow, functions as the container. The user does not

consciously think about this principle while using the bowl, instead its form and material intuitively

raise this feeling of confidence in the user. �“The bowl always fits the hand, more or less, and it always

29 Droit, Roger Pol, How are Things?, trans. Theo Cuffe, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005, p 7230 Ibid. pp. 10 1231 Proust quoted in Benjamin, Walter, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, trans.Harry Zohn, London: Verso, 1973, p. 112.32 Cummings, Neil, in Reading Things: The Alibi of Use, ed. Neil Cummings, London: Chance Books, 1993, p. 14

22

has the measure of the stomach. When the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, gives as its

unit of time for a prayer or a ceremony, �‘the length of a meal�’, it means this: the interval of a stomach,

a bowlful of time.�”33

Objects as Social Actors

The fact that objects are carriers of personal and social memory and that they can affect us without us

realizing it, raises the question; what role do they play in the formation of the society?

Bourdieu developed the concept of orders, such as spatial oppositions in the home, agricultural tools

and the seasons. Each tangible order was homologous with other less tangible orders like gender, or

social hierarchy. Therefore as people interacted with everyday things, they came to accept the

expectations characteristic of their particular social group. These became habitual ways of being in

the world. 34

Miller adds that objects�’ power in determining our expectations by setting the scene and ensuring

normative behavior is rooted in the fact that we do not �“see�” them. They determine what takes place to

the extent that we are unconscious of their capacity to do so. 35

By conveying his words with a tape recorder instead of lecturing in person, Debord tried to illustrate

that forms that are considered normal and not even noticed, are the ones which ultimately condition

us. According to him, alteration is always the necessary and sufficient condition for experimentally

bringing into clear view the object of our study, which would otherwise remain uncertain �– an object

which is itself less to be studied than to be altered.36

33 Droit, Roger Pol, How are Things?, trans. Theo Cuffe, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005, pp. 16 1734 Miller, Daniel, �‘Materiality: An Introduction�’ in Materiality ed. Daniel Miller, Durham : Duke University Press,2005, pp. 1 5135 Ibid.36 Debord, Guy, �‘Perspectives for Conscious Alterations in Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. BenHighmore, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 237 245

23

Figure 9

The overall theme of the work is the destruction of objects that were once whole. Depicted objects are from the artist�’s everyday life and they contain references to his feelings during the last years of World War II.37

Figure 10

The overall theme of the work is the destruction of objects that were once whole. Depicted objects are from the artist�’s everyday life and they contain references to his feelings during the last years of World War II.38

37 Stokes, Sims and Rewald, Sabine, Still Life: The Object in American Art 1915 1995, New York: Rizzoli, p. 124

24

CHAPTER 3 �– the ritual

I�’m interested in the moments of transaction that occur every day, sometimes even unconsciously.

Working late and having coffee... Holding a wine glass just before taking the first sip... Lying down

after a long day�…

By blurring the border between the perceiver and the perceived these daily rituals create a

compression of time and a new kind of awareness. This is not an escape in time, rather a different

way of inhabiting it. During such moments of transaction the nature of the perceiving subject can be

joined to the nature of the object; creating a sense of harmony and unity. Objects may tone up or wear

down this potential for unity, depending on their characteristics. Their intrinsic qualities are perceived

intuitively through the senses and add to the distinctiveness of the ritual.

The Object/Subject Duality

In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel defines objectification as a process in which the act of creating

form creates consciousness or capacity like a skill. As a result both form and the self-consciousness

are transformed. Given that they result from the same process, there can be no fundamental division

between humanity and materiality. �“Dialectically we both produce and are the products of these

historical processes.�”39

Hence the dualism of subjects and objects seems to be resolved. As brilliant as this resolution

sounds, it relies on the abstract nature of philosophy. How could we make use of these

understandings in a shifting and diverse world of practice? 40

When we get down from the philosophical heights, we are faced with the singularity of each

individual existence. To grasp this reality we have to accept the subjectivity, the irregularity and the

multiplicity of perspective involved in the permanent and inextricable intertwining of things and people,

people and things.�”There is no continuity of being, whether in ourselves or in things�” wrote Montaigne.

38 Stokes, Sims and Rewald, Sabine, Still Life: The Object in American Art 1915 1995, New York: Rizzoli p. 12439 Miller, Daniel, �‘Materiality: An Introduction�’ in Materiality ed. Daniel Miller, Durham : Duke University Press,2005, pp. 8 940 Ibid. pp. 1 51

25

A cloud�’s shape and location is clear but its borders constantly change, rendering it permeable and

detachable. �“We need to imagine cloud-subjects, endowed with the usual characteristics, interacting

with cloud-subjects, endowed with different properties.�”41

Figure11

�“Degas makes the most familiar thing in the world -the human body- unfamiliar. The face is distanced through the odd point of view. The pose projects bothintimacy and hiddenness, self-containment and display.�”42

41 Droit, Roger-Pol, How are Things?, trans. Theo Cuffe, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005, pp. 69-7042 Nochlin, Linda Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye, Massachusetts, and London, England: HarvardUniversity Press, 2006

26

Interaction: senses, materiality, memory

It is commonly considered that the subject acts on the passive object, whose part in the transaction is

limited and based on the intention of the subject. Droit with the metaphor of interacting clouds assigns

equal roles to the object and the subject and draws attention to their ambiguous borders. Likewise

Serres defines the skin as the common border of the world and the body and underlines the role of the

senses, mostly touch, in their relations: �“In the skin, through the skin, the world and the body touch,

defining their common border. �…Things mingle among themselves and I am no exception to this, I

mingle with the world which mingles itself in me. The skin intervenes in the things of the world and

brings about their mingling.�”43 (Serres 1998: 97)

As we mingle with the world, we might forget about the object at hand. This occurs mostly when

there is corporal interaction, when the object supports us. It is easy to comprehend the bed as a

separate entity if we are standing next to it. Conversely while we are laying on it, almost asleep, it

ceases to exist on its own, becomes an extension of our body.44 This sensation of fusing with the thing

in use is felt intensely for clothes because they share our mobility. The clothing, as it joins, transforms

and supports the body cannot be separated from it. It becomes integral to the body�’s memory along

with associated gestures and sensations. The body has lived through a particular moment with a

particular garment, and it silently remembers the fact.45

This mingling between the body and things occurs as an involuntary disclosure of meaning through

the senses. The senses are meaning-generating apparatuses that operate beyond consciousness and

intention. The sensory is not only encapsulated within the body as an internal capacity, but is also

dispersed out there on the surface of things as the latter�’s autonomous characteristics, which then can

invade the body as perceptual experience. The interpretation through the senses becomes a recovery

of truth as collective, material experience. Performance is also a moment when the unconscious

levels and accumulated layers of personal experience become conscious through material networks,

43 Serres, 1998, quoted in Connor, Steven, �‘Michel Serres�’ Five Senses�’ in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. David Howes, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005. P. 322 (Serres 1998: 97)44 Droit, Roger-Pol, op.cit. pp. 97 12045 Droit, Roger Pol, op.cit. pp. 52 53

27

independent of the performer. In this moment the actor is also the audience of his/her involuntary

implication in a sensory horizon. 46

In his research about the use of wood in interior decoration for establishing domesticity in urban

Romania, Adam Drazin raises questions concerning care, senses and action. �“In what sense does a

person, or a family, experience caring, freedom or suppression? Is it possible to feel it on your skin or

under your fingers? Caring is participatory, and this renders the material qualities of a substance such

as wood important. Emotions of caring should neither be seen as arising inside and imposed on the

outside world, nor as external and outside of the person�’s control, but arising in the sensitivity of

interaction. Caring comprises both emotion and action, and it is this unity that makes it relevant to both

one person�’s experience and the historical change.�” 47

46 Seremetakis, C.Nadia, �‘The Memory of the Senses, Part 1: Marks of the Transitory�’ in The Senses Still Perception and Memory as Culture in Modernity, ed. C. Nadia Seremetakis, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 6-8, 1947 Drazin, Adam, �‘A Man Will Get Furnished: Wood and Domesticity in Urban Romania�’ in Home Possessions:Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. Daniel Miller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 173 201

28

Figure 12

Nelson has noted that all the details of this scene were observed from real life. The table�’s multiple functions are signaled by the teapot, the typewriter, the iron, and the hammer. The jacket evidences that still life elements can be used to portray the subject, who may be absent.48

48 Stokes, Sims and Rewald, Sabine, Still Life: The Object in American Art 1915 1995, New York: Rizzoli, p. 102

29

Figure 13

Escapism or a New Type of Awareness

Baudrillard, as he focuses on antiques and dynamics of collecting, develops a Freudian approach to

human interactions with objects. The environment of private objects and their possession is a

dimension of our life which is absolutely necessary. We cannot live in absolute singularity, in the

irreversibility signaled by the moment of birth, it is this irreversible movement from birth towards death

that objects help us to cope with. What man gets from objects is the possibility of continually

experiencing the unfolding of his experience in a controlled, cyclical mode, symbolically transcending

a real existence the irreversibility of whose progression he is powerless to affect.49 Mythological

objects are carriers of value in a closed circle and in a perfect time. They offer an escape from

everyday, back to the childhood- or even to pre-birth reality where the subject could merge with the

surroundings.50 Droit agrees that sometimes we escape from time, however unlike Baudrillard who

implies that this is a neurotic act; he sees this as humanity�’s access to eternity.

49 Baudrillard, Jean, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict, London & New York: Verso,1996, p. 9650 Ibid. p. 80

30

While he is riding a bike down a slope looking over the sea, he feels �“out of time�”. �“As a unit of time it

lasts but a few instants, nothing more than a lapse. But being outside of time is by definition

measureless. Without duration...�”51 This is what Barbara Adam calls �‘temporal time�’; a sense of time

as a becoming of what has not been before, it can be experienced rather than measured. Non-

temporal time is measured and repeatable but also quantifiable and hence may run out.52 Temporal

time is embodied and embedded in all our social practices and the materiality of the body and its

environment. (Adam 1995: 54, 44)

Correspondingly while she is describing the common practice of having midday coffee break in

Greece, Seremetakis talks about a perceptual compression of space and time that is encapsulated in

the small coffee cup. She gives this as an example to substances, spaces, and times that can trigger

stillness; �“a moment when the buried, the discarded and the forgotten escape to the social surface of

awareness.�” 53

This is how the everyday offers moments of awakening. Habit is intervened by involuntary memories

which have to be rearranged so that the totality of the past is recognized in the present. The

reconstruction of that constellation can begin through involuntary memory with the most everyday

object, like Proust�’s madeleine.54

Proust is well aware that our sensual apprehension of objects can result in a breakdown in

intelligibility to others. It is not just that the fetishist, obsessed with the magical power of

objects, wants to keep things to himself, but that involuntary dimension of intuition and the

carrying over of impressions into memory is something private to us; something that in fact

forms us through an arbitrary but over-determined contingency.55

51 Droit, Roger Pol. How are Things?, trans. Theo Cuffe, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005, pp. f22652 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, p. 4053 Seremetakis, C.Nadia, �‘The Memory of the Senses, Part 1: Marks of the Transitory�’ in The Senses StillPerception and Memory as Culture in Modernity, ed. C. Nadia Seremetakis, Chicago & London: The Universityof Chicago Press, 1996, p 1254 McCracken, Scott, �‘The Completion of Old Work: Walter Benjamin and the Everyday�’ in Cultural Critique, vol.52, 2002, pp. 157 15855 Stewart, Susan. �‘Remembering the Senses�’ in Empire of the Senses The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. DavidHowes, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005, p. 66

31

Habit; routine or inventive?

Why do we need habits? According to Baudrillard, just like objects, they help us to cope with the

irreversibility of time and inevitability of death. Thus the system of habits is analogous to the system of

objects. Habitual patterns break up the temporal continuum and ensure repetition so that we can

ignore the singularity of events, which otherwise cause us anxiety.56

�“The fact that small, domestic rituals can quiet the confusion of the human spirit has been recognized

and institutionalized through the ages.�” In her insightful inquiry into the home, Akiko Busch states that

when we are able to choose which chores to do and when to do them, they can give us profound

comfort.57 She records how her twin sons used to love setting the table and the meticulous care in the

way one carried a pile of napkins while his brother softly laid out the forks. These simple rituals would

remarkably calm their aggression.58

There is a thin line, as Freud most persuasively argued, between the neurotic act and religious ritual,

for both are equally �“obsessed�” by the potentiality for significance in the commonplace. 59 When one

morning, Jonathan is confronted by a pigeon outside his door, he is thrown out of his daily routine and

looses all his confidence and control. In this state two things help him to control his raging thoughts;

an informal, broken prayer and the act of cleaning the basin after he has had to piss in it. Attentive

thinking and routine, physical activities help him to calm down and move on with the rest of his

schedule.60

It is commonly accepted that rituals aim to compel the world through representation and

manipulation. On the contrary, they express the fact that the world cannot be compelled. The ritual

offers a version of life without contingency, variability and out accidentally. During the course of things

reflecting on the ritual provides a focusing lens on the ordinary everyday which allows its full

56 Baudrillard, Jean, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict, London & New York: Verso,1996, p. 9457 Busch, Akiko, Geography of home: Writings on Where We Live, New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1999. p. 4658 Ibid. pp. 54 5559 Smith, Z. Jonathan, �‘The Bare Facts of Ritual�’ in History of Religions, vol. 20, Aug Nov , 1980, The Universityof Chicago Press, pp. 112 12760 Süskind, Patrick, The Pigeon, trans. John E. Woods, Zurich: Penguin,1987, pp. 13 14

32

significance to be perceived, a significance which the ritual�’s rules express but are powerless to

effectuate. 61

Figure 14

61 Smith, Z.Jonathan, op.cit. pp. 112 127

33

London, End of September, packing to move

They sit on the bed, recently stripped of its clothing, and look around the room. Leaned against the

walls there are 2 big boxes and 5 small ones. Things are categorized in a different way while moving:

only their physical properties matter; their functions, for the time being, become irrelevant. Books are

heavy, dry and sturdy; kitchenware is heavy, dry but fragile; sheets are dry, light and protective. Thus

pillows and kitchenware might be a good mix.

The aunt asks �“ Shall we take a break?�“ �“We have some cake!!! Coffee or tea? �“she shouts, already

on her way to the kitchen. With the habit, she opens the cupboards where she always kept the coffee

cups, which are laying deep down in a box, rapped in layers of newspaper. Of course!! We have to

manage with the big mugs for today. How am I going to measure the water? She reaches into the bag-

off-stuff-that won�’t break, locates the coffee and the pot. After placing the pot in the limited space left

on the counter, she fills the mug up to 1/3rd of its height with tap water, pours it out into the pot. Once

again and the pot is almost full. She struggles with the plastic bag that covers the coffee, which

seems to have a weird knot. What�’s the point!!!No matter how many plastic bags I use, it doesn�’t stay

fresh for long. Impatiently she tears it open, pulling the coffee out with a brisk move. I have just wasted

a plastic bag, adding to the ever-growing junk of humanity. She locates the table spoon in the top

drawer. No luck with measuring today!! One spoon should be fine for both of us. When she empties

the spoon into the water, the coffee does not sink. Only with the consistent clockwise circular motion

of the spoon, it is spread evenly on the surface. Never stir when it�’s over the fire. Never change

direction of stir. Otherwise you won�’t have bubbles. She puts the spoon in the sink and the pot on the

stove; adjusting the fire to the lowest as possible. It takes longer but this is the way. They would

actually cook it on burnt charcoal. The surface of the liquid is tranquil, not showing any trace of

change. I might help my aunt for a few minutes before it starts rising. Throwing one last glance at the

pot, she runs to the bedroom where the aunt is busy stretching down to reach the bottom of a box.

She tapes it all around, twice. That should be good enough. The pots are sandwiched between the

huge pillows anyway. What else is in there? The clothes dryer, the box of cutlery�… the aunt arrives to

help and together they place it on the other three smaller but heavier boxes; each full of books,

magazines and things-that-should-not-be-broken. A hissing sound comes from the kitchen. Nooooo�…

The coffeeeeeeeeee!! Even before the coffee spilt all over the stove comes into view, she knows it�’s

too late. I have broken the golden ruler: Never leave the pot alone. Now I have to clean all this mess�…

34

Figure 15

Richter said that he looked for photographs that showed his present life and picked amateur family pictures, those banal objects and snapshots. As he put it �“Life communicates itself to us through convention and through parlor games and laws of social life�” 62

62 The Painting of Modern Life: 1960s To Now, London: Hayward Publishing, 2007, p. 59

35

CHAPTER 4 the settingThe total context of artifacts in the house act as a constant sign of familiarity, telling us who we are,

what we have done and plan to do, and so reduces the amount of information we have to pay

attention in order to act with ease. Therefore inhabitants can channel their energy more effectively

within it. How one learns to relate to things at home will have a decisive effect on the psychological

growth of the person.63

Furthermore the home is also, as Bachelard emphasized (1994), a poetic space, a space of the

imagination, a sight of sensory richness because everyone variously �‘constructs its image in memory

and imagination�’ (Chapman 2001)64 Thus rather than a physical place it is a mind set, a personal way

of doing things. It�’s where the individual sets the rules and feels confident. Any personal change,

voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious has to start there. Home always negotiates change

and constancy and thus is productive of both identity and agency. 65

Home as Materialization of Identity

The home facilitates the materialization of identity through two levels. To begin with home is the space

where personal belongings are arranged as an extension of bodily habits and as support for routines.

Additionally many of the things in the home, as well as the space itself, carry personal meaning as

retainers of personal narrative. 66

As Lefebvre puts it, space is neither natural nor abstract, it is consciously created, and in turn,

produces specific effects. Therefore as a social product, it encourages or discourages certain

practices and behaviors.67 Some people believe their homes have had significant influence on the

course of their lives. Demonstratively Nan sees the successive homes she has lived in as central to

the development of her own identity. Her biography is narrated as a sequence from the home of her

childhood which originally gave her continued identity as a working-class Scot, and ends in her

63 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, The Meaning of Things: domestic symbols and the self / Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiand Eugene Rochberg Halton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 180 18564 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, p. 6465 Ibid. p. 6566 Ibid. p. 6567 Blauvelt, Andrew.�’ Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life �‘ in Strangely Familiar: Design and EverydayLife, ed. Andrew Blauvelt, Minneapolis, Minn: Walker Art Center, 2003, p. 19

36

present house, which is almost as much a museum as the actual museum where she works as a

volunteer. 68

By recollecting and recounting her past, and in particular her childhood years, Nan manages to link

her past, present and future. This enables her to reflect upon her experiences, as well as resolve

certain conflicts and key events in her past. Her example showcases the intricate interaction between

narratives, materials and sensory manifestations. Furthermore it confirms that the perception,

preservation and presentation of personal histories and memories is by no means solely linguistic,

given that our experience of the world, especially in early childhood days, is primarily sensual. 69

It could be concluded that �“Home as materialization of identity does not fix identity, but anchors it in

physical being that makes continuity between past and present. Without such anchoring of ourselves

in things, we are, literally lost�” (Young 1997: 149-151)70

Home as a Set of Practices

Places are �‘contexts for human experience, constructed in movement, memory, encounter and

association�’ (Tilley 1994: 15). Paraphrasing Mary Douglas, home is rather �‘a kind of place�’, which

acquires its meaning through practice; and as such it forms part of the everyday process of the

creation of the self. The concept of home can be realized in sets of practices, styles of dress and

address, in memories and myths, in words and jokes. (1984 Berger)

Elia Petridou, goes a step further and conceptualizes home away from the physicality of the house.

She focuses on the material world of the home and argues that the process of self-creation of the

subject through the interaction with objects associated with home does not need to be geographically

bounded. She studies home as practice and combination of processes through which its inhabitants

acquire a sense of history and identity.71

68 Miller, Daniel, �‘Behind Closed Doors�’ in Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. DanielMiller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, p. 1169 Hecht, Anat, �‘Home Sweet Home: Tangible Memories of an Uprooted Childhood�’ in Home Possessions:Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. Daniel Miller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 123 14970 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, p. 6571 Petridou, Elia. �‘The Taste of Home�’ in Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. DanielMiller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 87 107

37

Figure 16

The needlework on the floor, floral patterns of the carpet, the crochet, the warm light of the table lamp suggest that this is a comfortable and nourishing domestic environment.

Petridou�’s research focuses on the Greek students living in Great Britain and notes that the very

mobility of food, its transferability from one country to another, makes it suitable for a means to

stabilize the students�’ sense of home. Food is associated with the �‘taste�’ of homeland and it becomes

the basis of a process including social relations of preparing food, cooking and eating, which turns the

superficial quality of taste into something that is sufficiently profound. So in this case a taste of home

that has itself become fully mobile can in turn be mobilized in the defensive constitution of identity.

By showing that the home and its attendant material culture can be central to the practices that make

people mobile and able to re construct their relationships and indeed themselves in tandem with the

changes that take place in the contexts within which they live, she reinforces the nature of home as a

process rather than just a place.72

72 Miller, Daniel, �‘Behind Closed Doors�’ in Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. DanielMiller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 8 9

38

Moving House: Mobile Possessions and Selective Memory

Another example that highlights the important role of mobile possessions in securing memory in

motion is Benjamin�’s talk about book collecting, as he unpacks his library after moving to Berlin:

�“The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom or order, I cannot march

up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of

that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air

saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes

that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me

a bit of the mood�…which these books arouse in a genuine collector. For such a man is speaking to

you, an on closer scrutiny he proves to be speaking only about himself.�” (Benjamin 1999; 61) 73

In the case of refugees, the things they take with them help to reobjectify in a new environment. We

could say that the things people take with them help preserve a certain consistency and continuity.

Even further, memory maybe created in motion through the displacement of objects. A given thing is

not only kept because it bears some value, be it economic or sentimental. It acquires value through

the sorting process.

Therefore the confrontation between people and their possessions could be seen as an opportunity

to reconfigure both the repair and rewriting of the narratives of their own personal biography and also

the way their relationship to others has formed part of this biography. Since the objects of the home

are mementoes and reminders of the past, the decision to discard some and retain others when

moving house becomes the active management of one owns externalized memory.74

73 Marcoux, Jean Sebastien, �‘The Refurbishment of Memory�’ in Home Possessions: Material Culture BehindClosed Doors, ed. Daniel Miller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 69 8774 Marcoux, Jean Sebastien, �‘The Refurbishment of Memory�’ in Home Possessions: Material Culture BehindClosed Doors, ed. Daniel Miller, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 69 73 84

39

Figure 17

40

Domestic Practices

Given that interaction with the objects of the home adds up to the everyday process of the creation of

the self, we have to take a closer look at these domestic practices. Perec had called for a fresh

investigation of the common things that surround us; Highmore suggests a re-evaluation of our daily

interactions with them. He asks: �“Can domestic routines become precious moments snatched from

more thoroughly exhaustive work practices? How would we call attention to such �“non-event�” without

betraying them, without disloyalty to the particularity of their experience, without turning them into

events? �“(Highmore 2002: 207)

Figure 18

41

London, October, late at night

First a cupful of water, then a full spoon of coffee, she gives it a few stirs before placing over the stove.

It�’s not going to keep fresh; I should have told them to wrap it in two bags. But then they were in such

a hurry to keep up with the queue. I wish the house smelled like that street; fresh ground coffee... She

won�’t leave the pot alone, leaning over it from time to time, stands; waiting. I can�’t tell if it takes a

minute or ten. Time feels different when you�’re just an observer. Does the anticipation make the coffee

taste better? The surface is filled with bubbles, clinging to each other they rise gradually and make a

hissing sound. Abruptly she picks the pot and pours the coffee into the cup. Is it the red cherries that

give it an air of optimism? Grandma used to serve afternoon tea with this cup. We would be coming

back from the beach .Then it would sit in the corner cabinet until another round of visitors. She leaves

the kitchen with cup in one hand, looking straight ahead so she won�’t spill.

42

CHAPTER 5 the everydayWe do not pay much attention to our daily domestic rituals because of their regular and non-eventful

nature. Surprisingly these are the exact reasons for their power and potential. In order to answer

Highmore�’s question concerning their generative potential, we have to enter the realm of the

everyday.

The Critical Potential of the Everyday

Lefebvre strived to both diagnose the modern everyday life and reclaim its critical potential. To him

critique is not solely an analytic perspective for assessing contemporary everyday life. It must also

contain the recovery of critical practice to be found within everyday life itself. 75

Similarly, Arvatov believed that reconstruction of the everyday would be the way to form a proletarian

society. �“Everyday life (byt) consists of the fixed, skeletal forms of existence (bytie). The

transformation of everyday-life-creation, in which changes in byt will move organic, constant, and

flexible step with changes in bytie, will lead, in effect, to the liquidation of the everyday as specific

sphere of social life- so long as the process of dissolving class barriers continues. In proletarian

society, where production will directly inform all aspects of human activity, the static everyday life of

consumption will become impossible.�” 76

Debord observed that modern capitalism, in need to increase consumption, also plays on the

structure of the everyday, manufacturing a daily passivity. Advertising, propaganda and all the forms

of the dominant spectacle frankly admit that wasted time is the time spent at work, which is only

justified by passive pas-times such as rest, consumption, entertainments.77

75 Lefebvre, Henri, �‘Work and Leisure in Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore,London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 224 236

76 Arvatov, Boris & Kiaer, Christian, �‘Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing ( Toward the Formulation of theQuestion )�’ in October, vol. 81, summer 97, MIT Press, p. 12177 Debord, Guy, �‘Perspectives for Conscious Alterations in Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. BenHighmore, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 237 245

43

However in the last decade or so design history has turned from a strong focus on production to

consumption, concentrating on the stage at which a product is distributed, sold and appropriated.78 �“It

is obvious that forms of social consumption are not primary- that they are defined by production �– but

without studying them it is impossible to grasp culturally the style of a society as a whole. They

immediately influence both the society�’s world-outlook and more importantly, its world-feeling. The

relation of the individual and the collective to the Thing is the most fundamental and important, the

most defining of social relations. This thesis flows directly from the theory of historical materialism.�”79

Active Consumption

Bringing a fresh perspective to this discussion De Certeau argued that consumption is a way of

production. �“The �‘making�’ in question is a production, a poesis �– but a hidden one, because it is

scattered over areas defined and occupied by systems of �‘production�’ (television, urban development,

commerce, etc.) and because the steadily increasing expansion of these systems no longer leaves

�‘consumers�’ any place in which they can indicate what they make or do with the products of these

systems.�” 80

Aiming to bring to light how the common people manipulate and utilize the culture imposed by the

dominant economic order, De Certeau analyzed reader�’s practices, practices related to urban spaces,

utilization of everyday rituals. His analysis showed that each individual is a locus in which incoherent

and often contradictory social relations interact.81

Routine practices such as walking, talking, reading, dwelling and cooking contain an element of

creative resistance to the repressive aspects of modern society. While organizational power structures

deploy strategies to institute a set of relations for official proper ends, those who are dominated use

tactics. Tactics are defensive and opportunistic.82

�“A �‘tactic�’ because it does not have a place, depends on time �– it is always on the watch for

opportunities that must be seized on the wing. For instance reading seems to constitute the maximal

78 Attfield, Judy, Wild things : the Material Culture of Everyday Life, Oxford: Berg, 2000, p. 3679 Arvatov, Boris & Kiaer, Christian, op.cit. pp. 119 12880 De Certeau, Michel, �‘General Introduction to the Practice of Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday Life Reader, ed.Ben Highmore, London: Routledge, 2002. p. 6581 Ibid. pp. 64 6782 Blauvelt, Andrew. �‘Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life�’ in Strangely Familiar: Design and EverydayLife, ed. Andrew Blauvelt, Minneapolis, Mini: Walker Art Center, 2003. p. 20

44

development of the passivity assumed to characterize the costumer, who is conceived as a voyeur in

a �‘show biz society�’. In reality, the activity of reading has on the contrary all the characteristics of a

silent production, which is also an �‘invention�’ of the memory. The readable transforms itself into the

memorable: Barthes reads Proust in Stendhal�’s text: the viewer reads the landscape of his childhood

in the evening news. The thin film of writing becomes a movement of strata, a play of spaces. Different

world (the reader�’s) slips into the author�’s place. Reading thus introduces an �‘art�’ which is anything but

passive, a subtle art of �‘renters�’ who know how to insinuate their countless differences into the

dominant text.�” 83

New Consciousness in the Global Everyday

Kinser suggests that De Certeau should be read in order to learn what �“everyday practices could be

and what they may still in part be as a residue from one of our collective pasts.�” Although our

megacities are not the city De Certeau talked about, �“the temporal-spatial grids defining the pathways

of everyday life do not change by sweeping away the past but by fragmenting it, so that new forms of

the grids appear both beyond the old ones and in its cracks.�”

Furthermore, Kinser speaks of the formal structure of everyday practices. That structure has two

modes; physical and mental, and has two aspects, spatial and temporal. The paths of ordinary people

through the city, like those of the elite, are rooted in routine as well as artfulness. Ordinary people

maintain this store of mixed ways of behaving �– inventive and repetitious, subversive and cooperative-

semi-consciously.84

One of the responses to this radically uneven and heterogeneous production of space and time in

post-traditional societies is slow living. �“It embraces two assumptions about everyday life: that it has a

creative and ethical potential; and that it must be reflexively negotiated and managed by

contemporary subjects.�”85

83 De Certeau, Michel, �‘General Introduction to the Practice of Everyday Life�’ in The Everyday Life Reader, ed.Ben Highmore, London: Routledge, 2002. pp. 69 7284 Kinser, Samuel, �‘Everyday Ordinary�’ in Diacritics, vol. 22, No. 2, Summer, 1992, The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, pp. 70 8285 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, pp. 7 10

45

Figure 19

Some interpret these three figures to be Isabel at different times of the day, while others believe they are her id, ego and alter-ego. In both cases this is the individual experiencing the discontinuity and variability of time and space in the global everyday.

On the topic of paying attention to the present Alberto Melluci has claimed that it�’s influence reaches

beyond the individual subject to mobilize new forms of political investment and revivify everyday life.

�“The unity and continuity of individual experience must be based on an inner capacity to change form,

to redefine itself repeatedly in the present as a unique, unrepeatable experience within which I realize

myself. To live the discontinuity and variability of time and space we must find a way to unify

experience other than by our �‘rational�’ self. Fragmentation and discontinuity �… demand the wisdom of

more immediate perception, intuitive awareness and imagination. What this requires is learning a �‘new

consciousness practice�’ involving the body and emotions as well as perception and thought.�” 86 (1998:

185-186)

86 Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey, Slow Living, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006, pp. 7 10

46

CONCLUSIONAs I came close to finalizing this dissertation I finally grasped what Daniel Charney had meant at that

tutorial. I also saw where I had gone off the road. I had aimed for people to feel and question in a

certain way. Instead all I had to do was to design an object that embodied my questions and leave it to

the users to decode and answer them, each in their own way. After all meaning is not something I can

assign; it will arise in the interaction with each user.

The self is not to be found in a hidden place; fixed and perfect. Its constitution is progressive and

occurs as a result of the interactions between the body-mind and the environment. Senses which have

an important role in the formation of subjectivity are themselves socially constructed. During these

interactions the self might be immersed in a state of unity, which would be facilitated by activities

engaging the senses and care for the activity at hand.

As opposed to common understanding objects have an active role in these interactions. This is

because perception involves remembrance and objects entail themselves on our consciousness

through the senses. What renders things as powerful retainers of personal and social memory is not

just their assigned cultural meanings but their materiality. Materiality of objects as capable of

triggering remembrance and awareness without us being conscious of it is what gives them potential

for transforming people and societies.

The place where the interaction of objects and subjects occurs most intensely and continuously and

where its effects can be seen most clearly is the home. Home should be defined free from the

physicality of the house. It could be described as an imaginative place or as a set of practices and

activities related to certain objects associated with home. Therefore it forms a crucial part of the

everyday process of the creation of the self.

Everyday domestic rituals taking part in the global cities involve both active and passive elements.

The subject, by developing the ability to involve care and attentiveness in these routines, and learning

to inhabit temporal time, could increase their inventive and creative potential. However as discussed

before the object has an important role in determining the chemistry of the ritual.

47

During my interview I had mentioned that I was inspired by both the functional minimalist design of

Naoto Fukasawa and critical design of Dunne & Raby. However I had felt there was an inconsistency

in my thinking. Now I realize they having the same subject and only differ in their attitude. They are

both concerned with our daily, intimate interactions with objects. The former proposes a new

materiality, with a sense of idealism, the latter aims to question our relationship to everyday objects

with irony.

Now all I have to do is find my own attitude.

Figure 20

According to Hopper mundane life diverts people from considering the deeper reasons and causes behind their actions, but in private moments such awareness may suddenly surface. The unreal light that fills most of his interiors might be a reference to that moment of awareness.87

87 Kranzfelder, Ivo, Edward Hopper: Vision of Reality,Köln: Taschen, 1998, p. 43

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