Is there anything as ephemeral, mundane, or difficult to capture as the everyday? For most, the everyday is not spectacular, provocative, or fiery. It may be easy to brush aside as unimportant or banal, especially as countless alerts of thrilling global events imply our own doings are mild and humble. For this iteration of LUNCH, volume 18, we made a choice to dwell in this everyday space, look around a bit more carefully, and find the spectacular hiding in plain sight.
The everyday contains the quiet fabric of our lives, our routines, and the familiar places where we work, live, and study. The reliable infrastructures that tether our world together melt into the background, while the norms and practices that give shape to our social ecosystems may pass by unquestioned. Days blur together and become forgotten; days are spent waiting for the spectacular to save us from boredom.
But everyday is fragile. Moments of excitement, trauma, and displacement punctuate the continuum. What comes afterward is different. The river narrows and quickens, deepens and slows. The landscape of the everyday floods, inundating familiar landmarks and overwriting the ground itself, creating a new topography on which we rebuild. We mark the highwater line and carry on.
We've organized LUNCH 18 into four sections: Artifacts, Ritual, Overlooked, and Questioning. These arose from inherent tensions between our contributions, highlighting the richness and complex?ity of the everyday. Ritual focuses on the act of returning, while Artifacts reexamines that which is left behind. Overlooked inspects visibility and commonness. Questioning seeks to reframe our relationships to both physical space and ideas. We hope this journal will provide you space for slowing down, shifting perspective, and finding beauty in the everyday.
