Warning: this piece used many overused buzzwords, although it does attempt to redefine and inject some authenticity in them. With varying degrees of success. You've been warned.

What is lifestyle experience art?

What empori does in a nutshell is make lifestyle experience art.

We make experience art with and on everyday life.

But what does that even mean?

I think that's a common (and very valid) question to have when you see those words.

It sounds like some editor of a lifestyle magazine trying to appeal the creative hipster crowd.

At least that's what it sounds like to me. And I'm the one who came up with it.

So where should I start...

The legitimacy of everyday life as art

Maybe let's start with inner voice that vehemently disputes the legitimacy of everyday life as art.

Because I don't know about you, but for me, I've always had the impression that art had to be a "thing". Paintings, and sculptures, dance and theatre...even when performance art and interactive installation art came into my awareness, it always felt like there had to be some kind of "artsyness" for something to be art.

For this very same reason, I struggled to call myself an artist for the longest time.

So maybe a good starting point is sharing, at least for me, what is art.

What is art to me

At the core of it, I think art is expression. Art is about expressing something. An emotion, a story, a message, a statement...

It's what differentiates art from design for me (make a post).

So from this perspective, anything created with the intention to express something can be art.

Whether or not is this GOOD art...well that's subjective and contextual, and a can of worms I'm neither keen nor qualified to open.

But this is how I justify, to myself above everyone else, that what I do, is art.

Because of this, experiences can be art.

Back to lifestyle experience art

Right, so back to lifestyle experience art. What is that exactly?

Lifestyle is a highly overused word. But it's overused for a good reason, it's...useful. It is encompassing, and covers the infinite breadth of all that has to do with life. Particularly, everyday life.

And after dabbling with a variety of experiences, I've come to realize that everyday life is what really speaks to me.

You know those videos on youtube? Of people sharing their beautifully filmed morning routine brewing coffee and making eggs? Or poetic Instagram posts of a leaf on the floor. Or even that friend of yours who remembers to take a moment to appreciate the sunset when they go for a jog?

I'm not one of those people.

If left unchecked, I'm the kind of person who can drink from a plastic bottle and run from deadline to deadline, never connecting with people or life around me.

It was how I was raised. I grew up in a workaholic household, with a workaholic mom.

Life was work and work was life.

I don't really know any other way to be.

So probably to absolutely nobody's surprise, I've got the checklist of modern mental health ailments pretty well ticked off.

Depression, check. Anxiety, check. PTSD, check.

And did i mention I'm an HSP?

So life for me has pretty much me trying to find solace and take a break from myself.

And where I've found such solace has been in the little things in life.

Because I've become so good at being a productivity machine that I forgot how to be human.

Learning how to do laundry well was "my sense of achievement" chart topper in 2013.

Maybe these are things you take for granted.

The smell of rain after a thunderstorm? An ant carrying a particularly large grain of leftover cracker? Fluffy pancakes with a nice cup of tea?

To me these are moments that remind me of the beauty and awe of life, of being human.

But I'm a workaholic.

These things don't come naturally to me.

And the only way I know how to be human, to practice living life, is to turn it into work.

It just so happens that work for me is now making experience art.

So we make experience art with and on everyday life.

Or to abbreviate that: lifestyle experience art.

Bottom line

It is me practicing to be human through sharing the process of unearthing, (re) discovering and appreciating the beauty and art in everyday life and things.

So yes, it is absolutely me taking every day life too seriously, so you don't have to. (Unless you want to)

If that sounds up your alley, well, you've come to the right place.