The practice of everyday For a while now, every Saturday night at ten o’clock, I have been watching the television show,
Circus Action,” religiously. Formed in 2004 by four 20 year old college students, the Kuso group, Circus, gained popularity with their video clip of a boy streaking on YouTube. Thereafter, Channel V signed them on to host the show,
Circus Action,” which features pranks and dares performed by the hosts. Within the well received show, wild games with similar rules to
Monopoly” are featured. The only difference in this game is that, for every block, a dare must be undertaken. Such dares or, rather, punishments, include flinging light bulbs, drinking incense ash water, and smashing television sets. On the other side of the television, I
rock” along with these idiotic and feverish youngsters as they conduct these ridiculous acts, even as I believe them unworthy for such attention. In normal student guises, the members of Circus actively conduct daring and imaginative
actions” in daily life. To a certain extent, their inspirational energy stems from the urge to experience life in a different way and to explore alternative ways of
doing things,” rather than simply imagining how life could be different. In the modern world, boundaries are blurry, and ordinary things coincide and become magnified. As always, artists try to record ordinary, daily things in their works. For instance, Surrealism was formed by painters who initially painted ordinary alleys and streets to capture the wonders of daily scenery. French sociologist, Michel de Certeau, stated that the ability to make daily subject matters strange is similar to that of Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of
making strange.” This technique of making objects
strange” introduces a new perspective, letting people regain interest in an ordinary object. This allows the viewer to take on a new perspective to view objects in a new and poetic way. This exhibition, called
The practice of everyday,” features seven groups of young artists who, without the burdens of a set artistic framework, experience life to create objects of beauty from daily items. Using their creative talents to rearrange and choreograph, they nurture something that might stimulate the aesthetic practice. Because of these young artists’ abilities to spot details that others don’t, they transform insignificant things into important objects. One can argue they drown themselves in trivial details and nonsense; however, it is hard not to be touched by their fervor. Because youth is power, age and generational issues are not an obstacle for these youth. They have the ability to
make strange” anything from their generation. As they learn about daily life, they encounter the destructiveness and disturbances that come with the unfamiliar and the uncertain. The shock of something new impacts the very core of their daily life. With their creative approach, they transform mundane daily experiences into poetry about life to provided us with new perspectives and fresh imagination. Just as Moriyama Daido once said,
Art’s purpose is to find cracks in the fabric of daily life and to peek through them to discover an alien world.”