The Mundane

In Michel de Certeau's book, The Practice of Everyday Life, he states that "'stories' provide the decorative container of a narrativity for everyday practices. To be sure, they describe only fragments of these practices. They are no more than its metaphors" (71).

The premise of my short video responds to this statement, and relies on the mundane activities that I do each and every day. I tell my story in order to provide a narratively of my everyday practices. I take you through my day from start to finish in just a few minutes, emphasizing the things that I do without even thinking (i.e. swallowing, blinking, cracking my knuckles, clicking a pen, etc.) The film is cyclical in the sense where I start by waking up to my alarm clock, opening the blinds, getting ready for the day, etc. and I also end the film with setting my alarm and turning out the lights. However, by the middle of the short video it just becomes a repetition of various tedious and uninteresting things that I do throughout the day.

The viewer is meant to feel bored by the video. In order to accomplish this, I chose to give the clips a cool-toned, almost sickly filter thus sucking the life out of them. I also added a droning room sound that is played consistently throughout the short video. I repeated some clips too such as me itching myself, blinking, putting on mascara with the aim of the viewer becoming bored by watching clips that are not only monotonous but repetitive.

There are so many things that people do every day without thinking, and my video is meant to draw attention to those things. We often times neglect to remember bits and pieces of our day, but if we choose to be intentional about our actions and conscious of what we are doing, we might find that we not only remember most of our day but also live each day with more purpose.