A
year ago now, in the beginning, I began on my progression into a minimalist
lifestyle. I looked around my
apartment at all the things I had collected, all the things that I had made and
accumulated over the years, and felt oppressed and unhappy. As many minimalist share documentation
of how few objects they possess, I thought a way to portray the breadth of my
ownership would be to make a record, a count, a catalogue of sorts, of all of
my possession with the intention of decreasing the final number of objects by,
at the least, fifty percent. The
process of cataloging helped me determine which objects I used, which objects I
hung on to for sentimental or irrational reasons, and which objects were
entirely obsolete (though some time had for the fun of it).
After three months of photographing and
cataloging and not having made it outside of my 10 x 2 foot closet, I realized
the full scope of what I had set out to do and how much I really owned. Too much time, I thought, was being
spent on an idea that was meant to decrease my commitment to material objects,
not increase it. Even after my
thesis show, in which I exhibited the accomplished state of The Catalogue, and
after I moved from my previous residence into a much smaller flat (not having gotten rid of anything in the
move), I had the notion of continuing.
To save on time, I thought, I would forgo the process of photographing
each object and instead make the record of what the object is and its
usefulness. Even still, this took
some time and the longer I spent with the objects I had, the less I was getting
rid of, having determined to not proceed into the second phase of the project
(the elimination of objects) until I had finished the first (the inventory of
objects).
I came to realize that
the process I had set up previously still worked, and that I was able to
evaluate the objects I owned, but that I could instead now do so independently
of the elongated task of recording every single thing. And thus, I abandoned the notion of The
Catalogue being a public document; and though this aspect of the project has
been dissolved, the fundamental intention is very much alive and continuing.