Writer, theoretician, filmmaker, poet and revolutionary Guy Debord  drew inspiration from a French philosopher who deserves more readership today, Henri Lefebvre, whose Critique de la vie quotidienne  II, Fondements d’une sociologie de la quotidienneté (Critique of  Everyday Life, volume II) defined the concept of “everyday revolution”, which almost instantaneously became a landmark aspect of the  Situationist International. Lefebvre’s idea was to observe everything that  could be changed in society not by addressing the macro, but by rethinking daily life, which anybody is capable of doing, and at little  expense. The question is still pertinent: Why does the everyday have so  little appeal? Why is it mainly boredom and numbness? Can that be  changed? 

The Minimalists, an American movement founded in 2010 by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, offers a very contemporary  response to this question: to create a more passionate everyday life,  one that’s creative, personal and more satisfying on every level, you  have to subtract. Get rid of the junk and fill up on real quality, reconnect  with something fundamental. In sum, the Minimalists work to clarify their  daily lives. They throw or give a lot away, avoid taking on useless  responsibilities, limit their consumption. 

It’s nothing new if you think back, for example, to how their theories  correlate, French thinker Henri Zisly and the naturists from nearly a  century ago, around 1900. 

Let’s examine what Millburn and Nicodemus have to say about the  Minimalists: “At first glance,” they write, “people might think the point  of minimalism is only to get rid of material possessions: Eliminating.  Jettisoning. Extracting. Detaching. Decluttering. Paring down. Letting  go. But that’s a mistake. True, removing the excess is an important part  of the recipe—but it’s just one ingredient. If we’re concerned solely with  the stuff, though, we’re missing the larger point. 

Minimalists don’t focus on having less, less, less. We focus on making  room for more: more time, more passion, more creativity, more  experiences, more contribution, more contentment, more freedom.  Clearing the clutter from life’s path helps make that room.”

The Minimalists address topics like retirement, career, fake friends, debt,  property, or romance.  

They take a methodical approach that can be criticized for often being too down-to-earth but also reject the notion of system. So it is  important here to understand that Minimalists aren’t about establishing  yet another repetitive system, based for instance on an anthropology of  daily life, rather they immediately act upon everything that clutters life,  point by point, detail by detail, without frowning at any trivial reality.  The two cohorts have so thoroughly integrated this attitude that they  can even be seen for several podcasted minutes on their website  discussing their choice of socks and underwear. 

Because, they tell us, “this is also something important.” The hypothesis is a bit risqué, but it is also relevant. 

Deep down, aren’t the Minimalists, from the standpoint of the minutiae, putting into action the very ambitious aforementioned Situationist  project of an “everyday revolution”? 

Let’s hear from Henri Lefebvre: 
“In this everyday life, which confronts the social and the individual through challenges and problems and contradictions that find more or  less resolution, the ‘human being’ becomes a ‘person’. What to say? For  us, it is a cloud of possibility slowly condensed by choices—by acts— until it is exhausted and depleted: until death sets in. It is a drama, one  of personalization in society, of individualization, and not some calm  script to follow toward a predetermined outcome. […] The critical study  of daily life reveals this conflict: maximum alienation and relative  disalienation.” 

Choosing underwear, dropping a fake friend, packing light—of course,  from the point of view of Big Art, this may all seem rudimentary. But  weren’t the geometric forms of American minimalism by artists like Robert Morris or Dan Flavin also atrociously rudimentary when they were  first shown in New York? And what about the extremely pared down happenings by American artist Allan Kaprow, whose works consisted of  crossing a street or brushing his teeth? 
Let’s conclude this chronicle with the following comment: Doesn’t the practice of art need a change of scale? Shouldn’t it relinquish even more emphasis, its separation from society, to “create  the space” that Minimalists speak of? And also opt for less? An illusion?   
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THIS WAS: Packing light in life as subtraction.  
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