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"It is not a question of which is better, aikijujutsu or aikido,” Lau said. “They both have their..."

“It is not a question of which is better, aikijujutsu or aikido,” Lau said. “They both have their merits. It is more a question of which system will better serve the needs of the individual: self-protection or self-perfection. The theory of no enemy is fine, but try explaining that to the lumberjack who’s trying to relocate your nose.”

There are times to be nice, but there are also times when you must turn into an animal. Violence is evil, but sometimes it is your only recourse.”

Soup might be a good replacement for tumblr...

Soup might be a good replacement for tumblr…:

Check how Minimal might look if I move the blog there. Some good stuff posted.

"Call me a minimalist, call me boring and practical, whatever, but sometimes the best way to say..."

“Call me a minimalist, call me boring and practical, whatever, but sometimes the best way to say something is with a word.”

- Justin French

Inside Minimalism: Adrian Clement

Minimalissimo asks well-known and not-so-well-known designers, architects and artists about their personal views on minimalism. As a result, we should be able to compare views – and you can form your own.

Today: Adrian Clement.

Introducing

Adrian Clement is an artist based in Sydney, Australia. He collaborates with James Gatt as Pineapple Park.

What do you do?

Lately, I’ve been working with James Gatt in a collaboration called Pineapple Park, which has been active since February, 2010.

Prior to working together, James was working with yellow string and tape installations in a non-objective style, and I was working with sound, photography and video. James called his installations “conversations with space”.

The use of yellow carried over to our collaborative work, and we are, in fact, named after a color of yellow; Ironlak “Pineapple Park” spray paint, which was used for our first project together called Imperceptible Conditions.

Do you identify as a minimal artist?

I do, but I prefer the term reductive art to describe what I do.

What is reductive art, and how does it relate to minimalism?

Reductive art is a term used to describe work, often of a minimalist aesthetic, that is about or is involved in a process of reduction and simplification, and thus it embodies a minimalist philosophy as well.

The term is common in France, whereas in Australia the term “non-objective art” is used more frequently.

Non-objective art simply refers to work that is non-representational, and so doesn’t always conform to a single aesthetic: It can be complex like Constructivist paintings, or it can be minimal like the sculptural work of Donald Judd or Richard Serra.

In Sydney, the two most prominent spaces for reductive art, non-objective art and minimalism are Sydney Non Objective and Factory 49.

How do you deal with the concept of reduction and simplification in your work?

As John Pawson once said:

The minimum could be defined as the perfection that an artefact achieves when it is no longer possible to improve it by subtraction.

This is an attitude we employ when we’re making work, but simplification and reduction are also concepts we are trying to explore in our work itself.

Recently, we did a performance in Sydney called The Gift, for which we handed out 100 yellow flowers to the general public. Whilst the point of giving out the flowers was the act of giving itself, the flowers symbolised and embodied impermanence, and giving away stuff until we reached nothingness is essentially taking reduction an extreme.

Our latest work, Take, is conceptually similar. It consists of a square of yellow jelly beans presented on a square of black Perspex on the floor. People are invited to take the jelly beans and we hope that at the end of the exhibition it is in at the moment there will be none left.

As a side note, one of my favorite responses to the work was Mark Wotherspoon from ESP Gallery, who told me that he thought it was simply an innovative way to serve food. Recently, we have discovered that there is an interest in our practice to combine the disciplines of art and design; to cross between installation, performance art, curation and things like fashion and object design.

What have you produced that you would call ‘design’?

Earlier this year we built an Acoustic Listening Device, modelled on devices developed for the Dutch army as part of air defence system research in World War One. Made using two Perspex cubes with a simple head-strap for support, the device changes the way you perceive ordinary sound. It is an attempt to frame sound as music, without actually creating any.

Much like our early installation work, which was about reconfiguring existing space, this is about reconfiguring existing sound. We are currently in the process of finding a manufacturer for the device.

Do you think performance art is inherently minimal?

In some capacity, yes.

Whilst performance art can be intricately involved and over the top, I do believe it has the most potential to be minimalist because it can discard with the physical altogether and have little impact on the world itself, and this is speaking more to minimalism as a philosophy as opposed to an aesthetic or artistic movement.

We have ventured into performance art recently as if the medium is following our philosophy.

Please comment!

What do you think about the words of Adrian Clement? We’d love to hear!

"Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees."

“Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees.”

- Willard Marriott

Minimal | Feature bloat and the art of keeping things simple

Minimal | Feature bloat and the art of keeping things simple:

Take Firefox for example. Firefox started as a response to the Mozilla Suite. Mozilla was big, slow and wanted to be an all in one internet suite. For people wanting to browse the web this was an overkill. Firefox, then called Phoenix, was lighting fast with very few features; because of this small number of things the program allowed people to reach the main purpose of the program right away: to browse the web.

Great reminder of Firefox’s humble origin and the problem it was created to solve. Just remember folks, for every feature you add you also take something away.

Pro Tip: If you start reading this piece in Safari right after you launch the current version of Firefox, it will be almost ready to use by the time you are done reading.

Bounce, bounce, bounce…

designeriphone: “If you are going to have less things they have...

designeriphone:

“If you are going to have less things they have to be great things.”