Infra-Ordinary

It is fascinating how everyday places that through turmoil, have come to mean something else to those that frequent them.

In his book Species of Spaces and other Pieces, French writer Georges Perec coined the term infraordinary to describe the ordinary and habitual aspects of everyday life (Perec, 1997: 206).

Humans are always looking for signals standing out against noise. But as modern society developed techniques to generate progressively more data, this became particularly important.

So in principle, our frame can capture the infra-ordinary along with the exceptional. So does it?

Introducing the book, Perec writes:

"Many, if not most, of these things have been described, inventoried, photographed, written about or itemized. My intention in the following pages was to describe what remains; that which we generally don’t notice, which doesn’t call attention to itself, which is of no importance: what happens when nothing happens... See more

We can easily introduce new categories and subcategories – but we can’t describe what social media gives us with a single term. Often, it is more than unmediated everyday, but less than highly mediated news. Neither this nor that, but everything side-by-side. And it is this side-by-side which gives social media its uniqueness as genre of representa... See more

​Conclusion

The uncovering of these everyday infraordinary spatial engagements diverted the design process away from superficial form manipulation and the unnecessary burden of a concept driven beginning. By grounding the process of inquiry on the quotidian and the overlooked, familiarity is amplified, questioned, overturned, re-formulated and trans... See more

In view of these characteristics of social media, what does our frame captures? Some of it is the exceptional as news define it – but that’s only a one part. The rest is something else, but it is not Perec’s infra-ordinary. People often carefully construct their “ordinary” for Instagram. And they also do share what is exceptional to them: birthday ... See more

Instead of the headline news of daily papers that recounted the sensational and the fantastic, he was fascinated with minute situations, gestures, moments and habits that we overlooked or missed. Thus the word infra- referring to what is underneath, or even inferior. Perec’s endeavor was to devise ways which the infraordinary could be revealed, and... See more