An Essay On Quotidian By Vik Munniz

Quotidian. Oh boy, it's such a puffed up word for everyday. Mundane is much more blunt and to the point—drab, mind- and soul-numbing, shit-out-of-luck offer their own shades of meaning, depending on how angry you want to be. But quotidian is such a delicious word. It rolls around in the mouth, and has eye appeal; you have to look it up. When I was a student reading and writing film critiques I became deeply suspicious of the word. Quotidian in the first or second paragraph meant many more paragraphs congratulating the auteur’s and/or the reviewer’s ability to perceive, elucidate, and therefore, elevate, the existential angst of living in the everyday world.
The last two sentences of the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for Vik Muniz read:
Primarily working in series, Muniz incorporates the use of quotidian objects such as diamonds, sugar, thread, chocolate syrup and garbage
I don’t want to explain it. I rebel from the demand to put it in context. Yet, as an artist I have an atavistic understanding that art is all about context and by its very nature is transformative. An object never stands alone. At the very least, an object of art represents or documents an artist’s process, skill, growth, and, consciously or not, the artist’s interaction with and representation of the zeitgeist. Once a piece of art is released into the world, the viewer transforms the art by his or her own perception and attempts to find meaning. The art market transforms an object by assigning ever-changing values to an individual piece and the artist’s oeuvre.
While watching Waste Land I kept thinking about the current economic and political crisis is in Brazil, about the struggles people in the favelas face, their vulnerability and the force of their activism and resistance. What was first-world response the filmmakers hoped for in releasing the film? Global change is a long-term affair and I often feel powerless when confronted by