Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Our sense of self is informed by culturally defined experiences – that is, the people, objects, and circumstances we associate with particular events. Some are significant and enduring, and influence our current and future perceptions of life, in a positive and/or negative way. Other, more commonplace, interactions are easily forgotten. Over time and space, our appreciation of and fondness for these everyday circumstances inevitably wanes, and this diminishing curiosity for the unexceptional has implications for creative practitioners who are invested in constructing narratives that associate a sense of heterotopia and awe with the every-day. Achieving this writerly attribute is a common challenge for authors and an issue that transposes genre. Memoirists, for example, must recount distant events and significant objects with fresh eyes, while speculative writers are often required to refashion realistic plotlines and known ‘things’ through a heterotopic lens. Similarly, writers of YA fiction interpret and describe events through the eyes of teenagers who are transitioning from child to adult – an emotionally and physically demanding developmental stage. This paper examines the ways in which practitioners might reimagine everyday objects and their interaction with them by offering writing strategies and schemas that inform creative practice, foreground selected texts, and offer a newly imbued sense of wonder through the reinterpretation of ordinary ‘things’.