Minimalism

I want to keep this response handy.

One may think that the essay form does not suit minimalism, and really you needed just to send a postcard. Something short. But the short descriptive, meaningful and useful thing is no easy task. Adorno here might have been critical of Benjamin for fetishising, and mystifying the aura, of reducing the complexity of capitalism into something that resolved itself into a singular image – the angel of destruction, the frozen moment in a glass snowdome. Maybe Benjamin was onto something, that I also call trinketization. My preference is for Adorno’s critique though – every small trinket has become a monetary cipher, and the profound cultures of tradition and meaning, and belonging cannot be reclaimed from the market – they just become exotica, a broken nostalgia that cannot be put back. Innocent no more. We are forced to face the naked truth at the end of every fork as consumers crunch down on every every thing.