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/ Super Normal

Almost exactly thirty years before the first Super Normal exhibition in the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, Das gewöhnliche Design (Ordinary Design) exhibition took place at the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, a center of German Jugendstil. At that time Friedrich Friedl and Gerd Ohlhauser presented bicycle tires, dowels, pocket tissues, bottle openers, file folders, and clothespins in the rooms of that city’s Fachhochschule für Design. West German household wares of the seventies were declared to be objects of study. In his talk at the opening of the exhibition, Bazon Brock, Professor for Aesthetics in Wuppertal, said, “We must analyze and understand our contemporary everyday world as if it were the everyday world of a historical society. For example, the everyday world of Pompeii at the time of 79 B.C., when Vesuvius buried the city once and for all, thus preserving it for us.” Explicitly selected to counteract the dominant role and overly solemn approach to Jugendstil in Darmstadt at the time, the 110 objects seem, at first glance, to prefigure the Super Normal project. However, closer observation reveals a different focus, namely, on the banality of the object world. There was hardly a single product in the collection that cost more than three to five Deutschmarks: with considerable wit and finesse, bathtub stoppers, paper plates, pencils, and beer bottles in display cases were set against the florally ornamentalized, precious Jugendstil furniture and lamps with their flowing forms and exalted gestures. Hence, location and date—Darmstadt, 1976—played a decisive role in the exhibition, while the presentation of Super Normal by Fukasawa and Morrison carries the same message and force of expression in any country of the Western world by highlighting a subject matter that is as long-lasting as many of the selected products.

So why is the visualization of Super Normal necessary just now? To answer this, it is enough to visit a couple of department stores, supermarkets, trade fairs, and websites or to take a quick glance at lifestyle magazines and coffee table books. Everything that is superficially spectacular and pseudo-modern has long since become normality in product design: superfluous features, ellipses, dynamic curvatures, perforations, and pearlescent paint dominate today’s styling. This applies equally to most cars (inside and out) as well as sports articles, stereos, clocks, and furniture—not to mention packaging design. In contrast, a few years ago Fukasawa designed a fluorescent yellow, upright container for banana juice with slightly browned edges reminiscent of the banana itself, but without imitating its typical bend. Its spout is even opened with the same hand movement used to peel a banana. Wouldn’t it be super if such design one day became normal?

Gerrit Terstiege

Gerrit Terstiege is editor-in-chief of the design magazine form and a member of the board of the German Society for Design Theory and Research since 2003. He has written for Handelsblatt and served as a lecturer at the design academies in Karlsruhe, Basel and Zurich and a substitute professor for design and media history at Fachhochschule Mainz.

This text was originally published in 2007 in the book Super Normal – Sensations of the Ordinary from Lars Müller Publishers. ISBN 978-3-03778-106-7
www.lars-mueller-publishers.com