II. Minimalism in a Maximalist World
Look up #minimalism on Instagram.
This hashtag conjures up hundreds of thousands of posts featuring sleek flatlays, monochrome wardrobes, geometric empty architecture shots, or near-empty living rooms, studies and bedrooms. Online, minimalism is a hugely popular design aesthetic. It can be seen on lots of shopping websites, personal blogs, or online portfolios for services. Less is more is the new in thing. Nowadays, people don’t want clutter, they want simple.
Sans serif fonts,
plain backgrounds,
one graphic, serving as the focal point.
Reduce the excess noise,
so that the user knows what to zero in on.
It’s also popular in product design. One immediately thinks of Apple products. Sleek surfaces, simple to navigate, and easy to use.
Simple is cool.
In terms of lifestyle, one thinks of the massively popular Marie Kondo cult of personality, the KonMari method, or the popular Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. People allow the tiny Marie into their homes stuffed to the brim with stuff, and she advises them on how to purge most of it and organize the rest. Blogs on minimalism stuff the internet like the items in the houses of the Kondo series. There’s Becoming Minimalist, by Joshua Becker, The Minimalists by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, Miss Minimalist by Francine Jay and many more. These blogs feature many poetic essays on the perks of living with less stuff, the joys of lack of clutter, and several how-to guides for freeing yourself of the trappings of material goods. On YouTube, there are Project 333 challenges, or the ‘item’ challenge, where people challenge themselves to use x number of items for a certain amount of time, and try to get rid of the rest. Minimalism (well, in its current modern manifestation) supposedly encourages buying less and consuming less, and living life needing fewer things.
In essence, the modern manifestation of minimalism, as so eloquently described by Renata Dopierala, is “characterized by an anti-consumerist approach combined with the demand for seeking meaning in life by means other than consumerism-oriented attitudes”. Its main principle – “less is more” – is explained as “owning less” in order to achieve more in non-material aspects of life.” I personally see this trend most apparently in the young millennial population. It could just be proximity bias, but the way it has been embraced by this group is intriguing. These are the people who are still relatively young but are part of the working economy, and the last of them are emerging into the workforce now. I count myself as at the tail end of the millennial generation, and I am about to graduate college - into an absolutely abysmal global economy decimated by the novel coronavirus.
Why is minimalism having such a moment? In societies that are historically heavily capitalist and crazy consumerist, it’s about buy, consume, throw away, repeat. Why did it flip? It is funny to think that minimalism has become mainstream and trendy, when it was originally a form of counterculture.
Yes, minimalism wasn’t always about the lifestyle and aesthetic. Minimalism started as an art movement in the 60s-70s, reacting against abstract expressionism. It became a paradoxical philosophy in art and design, prioritizing simplicity and space as the main feature. Minimalism was not mainstream. It was designed as antithetical to the idea of maximalist, expressionist creative output.
Perhaps the appeal lies in the social circumstances of these times. Minimalism as a trend may be but a mere reflection of the state of society and the global economy that we occupy.
Firstly, mass digitization and the ubiquity of online streaming services has allowed everything from photographs, music, books, movies to be moved to digital, virtual libraries. Who needs CD towers, photo albums and huge bookshelves when you have Spotify, Google Photos, Netflix or Kindle Unlimited? It is easy to minimize your physical items when you can get most texts in PDF form, and you don’t have to buy physical albums anymore to listen to music, or have a huge DVD collection to make for good movie nights. Technology has also improved to such an extent that it is easy for almost anyone to access these resources, provided they have the appropriate smart devices, of course.
Secondly, let’s be real, minimalism as a concept is trendy amongst millennials because many of them don’t have the luxury to choose otherwise. The 2008 economic recession, the student debt crisis, soaring housing prices, high costs of living often result in us having to settle for smaller living spaces, and since we have less purchasing power, we often can’t buy too much stuff - luxury kitchenware, lots of fancy furniture etc. - to fill these small living spaces anyway. The last of the millennials are now graduating college in 2020, and about to enter another devastated economy, this time as a result of COVID-19. Forced austerity makes the simple life appealing. When you save money on material goods, you can channel your funds into other things: experiences like travel, skills, and hobbies. Material objects like houses, cars and possessions no longer provide the same stability and insurance that they did pre-2000. But you know what is really ironic? Wealth in the 21st century, in fact, is often pretty invisible. Many things associated with the minimalist aesthetic don’t come cheap. Think Apple devices, Google Home, Beats, luxury car brands. Appealing in concept, problematic in reality.
Third, and related to reason #2, the modern minimalism movement might have risen as a reaction to the hyper-consumption present in capitalist society. Minimalism might thus be a reflection of anti-consumerist sentiment, as people recognize the toxicity of excessive consumption, and people become more aware of global issues like environmental degradation and economic inequality that result from the overtaxed supply chain feeding hyper-capitalist societies.
Fourth, the trend spreads easily in the age of the Internet. Minimalist influencers thrive on social media platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, and blogs are easily accessible by anyone with an internet connection. Resources, how-tos, and appealing snapshots of beautifully curated minimalist apartments flood the internet and our feeds. Minimalism also fuels itself with challenge and spectacle, with the Tiny House trend, Marie Kondo movement, among other things. Minimalism, in some circles, can even be distilled into a numbers game, where people count their possessions and try to reduce that number.
When I first learned about minimalism as a concept, it wasn’t in the context of all that I just mentioned above. I started listening to the music of Phillip Glass when I was in high school music classes in Singapore. I found the underlying philosophy of making less, more, so profound, paradoxical and intriguing. Something about how by making the music incredibly repetitive and ‘simple’, it turns music into an unfolding of process, rather than showing a final refined product. You hear the same four note pattern for what seems like 20 measures before one note shifts. It’s just a single note shift, and then you hear that new pattern for another 20 measures. But the first 20 measures have attuned you to that tiny shift, and you contemplate it, what it means, and then the next shift comes, and two notes have changed in the pattern. An unfolding of process. In art and design, pioneers like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin focused on the spaces between the main elements people tend to focus on. It was created in reaction to abstract expressionism and as a way to dial it back, focus on the spaces and the negatives.
But minimalism today - that's a whole different story. As I entered college, I encountered minimalism in the form of Instagram influencers, YouTube challenges, or as a side-thread from the sustainability movement I got interested in in junior year, where sustainability influencers promote minimalism as a way to reduce environmental impact. Here’s something you need to know about me - I’m by no means an anarchist or super counter-cultural myself but I’m generally skeptical and slightly suspicious of anything super trendy and mainstream. I didn’t understand how minimalism went from counter cultural philosophy to cool. To me, lots of these trends, below the shiny surface, peeled back, actually reek of capitalist poison. So, I’ve always been a little wary of seemingly shallow, fleeting fads like yoga, barre, crossfit, meditation, influencers and now minimalism too.
I’m a relatively cluttered person. It’s not something I am proud of, but I fully admit and own it as one of my bad habits. I’m disorganized and not good at handling clutter. I see my lifestyle as somewhat eclectic, and I enjoy a lot of creative pursuits, like music-making, doodling, handicrafts, and sport. I’m also a really sentimental person and treasure things like hand-written notes, cards, small tokens, and physical photo printouts. These occupy spaces like my cork boards and bedroom walls, and they bring me emotional comfort. The small gifts I collect do contribute to my surface clutter, but I could never give them up. These tokens help transport me to memories and moments that are away from the here and now. Being able to relate to different realities is so important to me, as I often struggle with feeling out of place living in a foreign country, and some of these tokens remind me of home, that there is another reality beyond my current college life. Or, sometimes when I struggle with in-the-moment battles with hopelessness, tokens of happiness are tangible reminders of other possibilities. I’m pretty suspicious of the benefits minimalists tout, because minimalism doesn’t seem to serve me. How can you expect me to give up my sentimental objects?
I also worry that it does not take into account a diversity of lifestyles. I occupy so many different social spaces that require different things: I’m a college student, which requires all the student paraphernalia. I am studying education, so I am constantly in the field, which requires professional teacher wear (smart casual blouses, slacks, skirts of decent length) and teaching tools - I teach music, which has so many logistical items like instruments (my baton, my camera tripod, at least 3 musical instruments) and other random indispensable material items. Teaching young ones does not lend itself well to digitization - many pedagogical tools are best in physical form. I am also an athlete, I participate in collegiate recreational sports at a competitive level, and I have all my workout equipment (resistance bands, athletic wear, injury prevention gear like sports tape, joint braces, taekwondo sparring gear). I just didn’t understand the appeal or feasibility of minimalism, or if it could ever apply to my life. I wondered how and why modern minimalism was so popular, especially considering how far it was from its roots. So I decided to trace the journey of minimalism, and see what I learned.