In an age of reality television, what is radical about turning our attention to the everyday? This paper proposes a framework for collecting and archiving everyday life, based on the insights offered by theorists both of everyday life and of the archive, as well as by artists who have incorporated everyday life and/or the process of archiving into their work. Everyday Life Studies offers tools for understanding everyday life as overlooked and structured by systems of power, while also holding within it spaces for alternative ways of being that go unnoticed. Recent archive theory has problematized the power of the archive to structure ways of thinking and to determine whose stories will be told. This paper benefits from these discussions and proposes attending to everyday life (even in the act of collecting and archiving) as a project of critique that reveals a lack and indicates the possibilities for change.
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