The Weird, Eerie Everyday

In his 2016 book the Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher attempts to provide the theoretical and practical tools that help us pay attention to things that are not immediately perceivable, or might have been naturalised to such an extend that are no longer noticeable: the little anomalies of life, the things that are here but feel out of place, and the things that should be here but are not. In describing capital as an abstract, omnipresent, but very real entity, Fisher notes: 

“Since the eerie turns crucially on the problem of agency, it is about the forces that govern our lives and the world. It should be especially clear to those of us in a globally tele-connected capitalist world that those forces are not fully available to our sensory apprehension. A force like capital does not exist in any substantial sense, yet it is capable of producing practically any kind of effect”. 

This small collection of thoughts, photos, and sketches aims to create an estrangement from what seems mundane and overfamiliar, towards an “attunement to weird and the eery ways in we are all enframed by capital” (Nicholas Stock 2021), as well as capital’s own inconsistencies and cracks. 

This pedagogical method, or attitude, builds upon a previous attempt, The Work Aesthetics, as it was evolved during my PhD at the University of Bristol. I encourage everyone who would like to pick it up as a psychogeographic way of navigating their environments, for organising workshops, or just as a personal way of negating what seems eternal and impersonal towards utopian realities that are not yet here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher asks: What happens when the young are no longer capable of producing surprises? (Fisher 2022 p.3). 

Photo: The young queuing for accommodation outside the Student Union housing services. December 2022, two months after the beginning of the term.  

 

 

SAD sadness. Self-parody stretched to the point of reaching its logical conclusion as self-awareness (and vice versa). Photo from the Social Sciences Library. 

 

 

 

 

Reflection on making. We are all suffering in silence. The subjective experience of what is real and objective. What is experienced inside, but doesn’t come from there.