Below is an excerpt from Ms. Silvanna Annichiarico, Director of Triennale Design Museum Milan, that expounds upon Fukasawa's and Morrison's central thesis.
Absence: The Super Normal object can be defined by something that is not present. Or something it doesn't have. Style, identity, originality, remarkableness. Anything that can be seen as excellence, or as an unmistakably connotative brand, is incompatible with the status of the Super Normal object. Indeed, its pre-eminent quality consists in the capacity to conceal its features until they become virtually invisible. Ambivalence: however much we dwell on the category proposed by Fukasawa and Morrison, it is very hard to understand, fundamentally, whether Super Normal is an oxymoron (super versus normal) or an absolute superlative (the greatest degree of normality possible, "normality" in its ontological form, its quintessential perfection). The objects selected by Fukasawa and Morrison are, indeed, all oxymoronic and superlative: they push the norm to the boundaries of the possible and at the same time introject a sort of paradoxical coincidentia oppositorum. By making them so "normal" they aren't normal any more, they become both "normal" and "exceptional" at the same time. So exceptional they seem normal. In other words, they are not perceived or perceivable as exceptional. At least, that is, until they are noticed and co-opted by the auctoritas of Morrison and Fukasawa. It is only at this point that the Super Normal object reveals the paradox embedded in its genetic code: at the very instant it is perceived, catalogued, and exhibited as such, Super Normal transcends itself.
Annichiarico's insights into Super Normal are intriguing and poignant (if not superfluous). Expressed simply, the work and thought that has gone into the objects we treasure and utilize on a daily basis is quite extraordinary!
-Jessica for Mirth
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