Minimalism: Part 3

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching​

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.​

-​Henry David Thoreau, Walden

ironically, around the time I launched the Other White Cube Project, I unplugged my refrigerator. I had no use for it; it had become a place to forget about food I once intended to eat. It seemed I cleaned out rotten food just as fast I replaced it with new produce, and I resented myself for it. Everybody plays the fool when they have to check the expiration date before eating something.   

When things go out of sight -  food in refrigerators, stuff in closets, trash to the landfill - memory of them recedes, and consumption continues without ethical reflection. Without confrontation, without immediacy, without the invasion of personal space - change remains a thing to be done tomorrow. I eat my food while it's fresh now because watching a plant wilt, soften, and die is neither fun nor appetizing.

I started researching and exploring refrigerator displays nearly five years ago, and it got me thinking about "stuff" - the literal clutter that fills our lives. I had just made my first major move on my own, from Columbia, SC to Cincinnati, OH, for graduate school. The move brought all of my possessions into light, and I went through the torturous process of purging. "Is this important to me anymore? Will I ever use this? Why do I even have this? What kind of person still uses soap in the age of body wash?"  

It was a period of intense self-criticism and self-reflection, but the experience engendered an ethical review of my lifestyle. I realized that I didn't want things; I wanted freedom, space, and clarity. To me, physical clutter, at some point, always contributed to emotional messes. Memories and experiences were enough for me. Henceforth, I have - year by year, choice by choice - aimed for a humble but happy lifestyle. Slowly, things and my desire for them have faded away. I got rid of my car, later my television, then my furniture and bed. I stopped buying clothes, gadgets, gizmos, and other non-essentials. Eventually, I even quit drinking alcohol - something that shocked my friends and family (you would be too if you knew me in high school and college). For such a seemingly big change, it affected my life very minimally - I retain the same friends, go to the same places, meet the same people, and feel the same love. The same is true for the other things I have replaced, discarded, or decided not to buy. However, there is one remarkable result - without things to focus on, I concentrate more on my values, behavior, and significance in this world. Without things and objects to falsely and distractingly love, I have the time, space, and clarity to cultivate self-love and achieve self-affirmation.  

​Honestly, I have yet to reach a high level of either of those things, and my life, like many others', still remains debilitated by self-doubt and an over-analytical ego. But I'm learning to let go - of objects, emotions, regrets, and demands. I'm learning to live, and it all began with my refrigerator. 

Not everyone will or should come to the same conclusions I have. We chart our own courses, make our own choices, and respond as best we can to the pressures in our lives. But it is important for everyone to take an ethical approach to life - "Is this important to me anymore? Will I ever use this? Why do I even have this? Really, soap?"

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For the rest of May, I am ​returning home to be with my family - something I have neglected regretfully for an inexcusable amount of time. Before I can adequately and honestly start writing about the American home, I need to reconnect with mine - I miss the people, the landscape, and the pleasant quaintness of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. While I'm gone, ask yourself the ethical questions outlined above. "What ultimately matters to me?" As someone who has peeked into many kitchens lately, I can assure you of this - you care less about the objects, the souvenirs, and the photographs.  You care about the essentials - love, family, home, and happiness.   

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Minimalism: Part 2

[Minimalist] art is an object in a situation, one that, virtually by definition, includes the beholder. ​

-Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood"​

​There is something eerily active about refrigerators - the way they provide nourishment, let out electric coughs, playfully hide crumbs and coins, and speak back to us through our own messages.  Refrigerators have "presence" - an art term used by art historian Michael Fried to describe how art commands attention as something transcendent.  Similarly, we speak of someone having "great presence" when he or she effortlessly keeps our attention and cultivates our admiration.  Of all of the objects in the standard kitchen, the refrigerator is the most attention-getting, interactive, social appliance.  In other words, it has "great presence," and the deeper details of this "presence" are quite riveting.  

Embedded in the notion of "presence" is perspective.  Some ideas and things are better received or more effective in small packages, and for others, size really does matter - the bigger, the better.  But, like the tale of Goldilocks, some things are just right - neither hot nor cold, neither large nor small.  The average refrigerator height is 5 feet 7 inches - the same average height of an adult, and the average refrigerator width is equal to the average waistband - 33 inches.  The dimensions contribute to "presence."  Refrigerators are human-sized and some are even human-shaped with a head (freezer) and body (produce section).  As a result, refrigerators are easily anthropomorphized, the process of investing objects with human qualities.    

​Michael Fried would agree - human-sized objects encourage anthropomorphism.  Fried wrote about art, anthropomorphism, and objects in his seminal article, "Art and Objecthood" (1968, Artforum).   In the article, Fried took specific aim at the late 1960s art movement minimalism, and, If refrigerators were suited to an art classification, surely it was this one.  Led by sculptors Donald Judd and Richard Morris, the minimalists sought to reduce art to simple shapes and eliminate any reference to the world - known as formalism.  Minimalist art was meant to be self-referential - that is, referring only to itself: a box is simply a box; a shape is only a shape.  For example, Judd created industrial boxes as sculptural pieces.  The beholder is suppose to admire the craftsmanship, sleek texture, shape, and other literal qualities in the work.  Any reference to the shipping and packing industry or the observation of one's reflection in the surface are dismissible, non-essential outcomes. 

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When Fried reviewed minimalist art in  "Art and Objecthood," he criticized the movement for its ​anthropomorphic forms.  Standing before a Judd sculpture, it is easy to the perceive it as human-like.  For Fried, the minimalists' obsession with boxes also suggested anthropomorphism - the idea of having an unseeable inside hidden beneath an exterior skin.  Minimalist art was too bodily in size, shape, and suggestion.  Because of these anthropomorphic qualities, Fried deemed minimalist art as "relational" - allowing one to relate minimal art to the human experience.  Minimalist art "includes the beholder," thus disrupting its claim to self-referentiality.  

To Fried the staunch formalist, minimalism failed to sever the ties between art and life, but to others minimalism succeeded in fostering an appreciation for simple objects - with vastly complex philosophical underpinnings.  "A work only needs to be interesting," said Judd.  By taking away the frippery, minimalists provided surfaces and forms ready for our imaginations, opinions, and ideas about art, life, and everything in between.  Refrigerators provide the same - a blank slate on which to launch innumerable forms of expression and appreciation.  Since launching the Other White Cube Project at the beginning of the year, many participants have sent in blank refrigerators, and the sculptural quality of these unadorned pieces are remarkable.  Left alone, they retain a simple loveliness, and when decorated they reveal a plethora of personality.  No matter the curatorial choice - to be decorate or not to decorate - the refrigerator remains an anthropomorphic, relational form in the American household, and whatever form you give to your refrigerator - embrace it, admire it, think about it.  

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The Other White Cube Goes to Town

People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live. ​

-Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)​

Like Mr. Deeds going from a small town to ​the big city, the Other White Cube Project has transformed from a small rustic idea into a larger phenomenon.  The project - which has received nearly 2000 views online, more than 100 photographs from across the U.S., 75 followers on twitter @otherwhitecube, and an array of media coverage - has gotten the chance to reach a bigger audience and kickstart a case study in the cultural arts.  For the month of April, the Other White Cube Project will occupy the first-floor gallery of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library in downtown Tucson.  

The Pima County Public Library system sees 5.7 million visitors each year with the downtown location being one of its most popular and frequented libraries.  Visitors to the library will be greeted by familiar faces - not those at the front desk but those staring back at them in the form of family photographs on several installed refrigerators.

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Scattered among the photographs include magnets, postcards, children's drawings, business and birthday cards, maps, and, most importantly, explanatory text.  To defy the conventions that separate art from life, The Other White Cube exhibition has included wall text interspersed between the items that make up the art work.  Art, culture, and information exist in the same matrix of messy, makeshift expression.  

The exhibition's wall text contains snippets from poetry commenting on the beauty of looking closely at everyday events and objects, quotes from the field of art and museum education encouraging viewers to engage critically with life, simple explanations of the theory behind the project, and information related to the cultural history of the refrigerator.  In the example above, the inscription reads: "Add people to the artifacts and the attraction is irresistible" from R.C. Well in The Engaging Museum.​  The text helps to make the refrigerator-as-museum metaphor more palpable and explicit.  It also implicitly asserts that, just like text, the images and refrigerator displays can be read and interpreted.  

​The exhibition is both visually and textually rich, and collectively it leads viewers to a Deedsian idea - our refrigerators are filled with accessible meaning, yet, caught in the swift current of our lives, we forget how to find it, extract it, and cherish it.  The Other White Cube exhibition features 6 installed refrigerators, and each one aims to capture a certain living situation - early parenthood, a full family, a retired couple, etc.  Look at the gallery below and piece together the meaning, piece together a life lived on the refrigerator door.  

60 photographs of refrigerator displays also grace the gallery.  The photographs came from across the United States, including representative examples from Washington, D.C.; Portland, OR; Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Laguna, CA: Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; New York, NY; Tucson and Phoenix, AZ; Raleigh and Charlotte, NC; Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston, SC; Miami and Tampa Bay, FL; Bethesda and Baltimore, MD; Indianapolis, IN; Ames, IA; Wichita, KS; Austin, TX; Atlanta and Athens, GA; New Orleans, LA; Jackson, WY; Denver and Colorado Springs, CO; Nashville, TN; as well as Richmond, Arlington, Virginia Beach, Harrisonburg, and - my hometown - Elkton, VA.  Photographs were hung in a 3 x 4 arrangement and secured with sleek, white electrical tape, giving each photography display the shape, whiteness, and glean of a refrigerator. 

Thank you to everyone who sent in photographs.  Keep them coming and keep spreading the word!  The Other White Cube exhibition will remain on display at the Joel D. Valdez Main library until the end of April.  Be sure to visit the show and the website and participate!

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Roaming for Refrigerators

I can't look at refrigerators the same after browsing your website.  I keep judging people and wondering what their refrigerators say about them.

-Voicemail left on cellphone

​I took a 10-day hiatus from the Other White Cube blog in late March for spring break, but, as the epigraph suggests, it is quite hard to escape a new perspective, especially one involving a pervasive appliance like the refrigerator.  For my vacation, I traveled first to the coast of California and, then, to New Mexico for hiking and camping.  Along the way, I serendipitously ran into refrigerator culture.  

My uncle and I stayed in Pacific Grove, CA with the intent of touring Monterey's Cannery Row - where American author John Steinbeck lived and worked - and other towns along California's HIghway 1, including Carmel and Big Sur.  We played the Decemberist's "California One"  as each turn offered stunning views of coast-hugging golf courses, rocky beaches, tide pools, and verdant hills reminiscent of Ireland.  

Fog hung heavy each morning but never on our dispositions and, thankfully, never too long.  Sunny skies graced each day by noon, and it shined particularly bright on my fortune on Sunday, March 17 - our last day in California.    

​My uncle and I were out performing our morning routine - a quick walk around town, followed by breakfast, then back to the hotel to regroup for another adventure.  As is typical of the two of us, we pounded the pavement pretty hard the first two days, packing a week's worth of activities into several hours.  So, we meandered on Sunday a little more than usual, which led us to Jameson's Classic Motorcycle Museum, a few blocks off the main thoroughfare in Pacific Grove​.  A sign in the window reached out to me:

The advertisement for refrigerator magnets hooked me, and I yearned to see the magnetic walls inside.  Peering through the windows, we caught the attention of the owners, Neil and Marge Jameson, who were opening early to lead a Vespa ride down the coast.  They invited us in, but we felt intrusive as they worked diligently, setting things up for the ride.  We walked to the hotel and came back a little later. 

​When we resurfaced again, several Vespa collectors had parked their vintage scooters outside, offering flaneurs like us a street exhibition of the many shapes, colors, and designs of two-wheeled transportation.  After speaking with a few collectors, we finally entered the museum.  Leaning on their kickstands like sculptures on pedestals, two rows of pristine motorcycles encouraged visitors to take a wonderful stroll down the middle of the room - a grand prix promenade of sorts.  Indian, BSA, BMW, Harley-Davidson, and many other motorcycles filled the room and each one had its own style - different headlight shape, exhaust system, handlebar attitude, and decorative scheme.  Each example was stunning, but I was there for an ulterior motive - I wanted to see the walls.  

​In a clever twist, the Jamesons have lined the walls of the museum with sheet metal - blending the sleek aesthetics of an art gallery with the grunge of garages.  Entering the museum, the right wall is adorned with motorcycle ephemera - race calendars, business cards, maps, photos, race results, newspaper clippings, postcards, advertisements, and more.  The left wall - filled with close-up, semi-abstract watercolors of motorcycle parts - makes the connection more visible between museum and motorcycle mannerisms.  

Because of the smooth surface and collaged materials, the display looked charmingly similar to a refrigerator, and for good reasons.  The museum offered a peek into the lives of the Jamesons - avid collectors, lifelong motorcycle hobbyists, and nice people, to boot.  The museum is an expression of themselves - their knowledge, interests, experiences, and friends.  Refrigerators offer a similar vehicle (pun intended) for visual communication.  

How do you display your knowledge?  How do you display your interests?  

Thank you Neil and Marge for the great visit, and best wishes to the Jameson's Classic Motorcycle Museum.  

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Einstein and an Everyday Object: Part 3

The most famous physicist of the twentieth century wasn't a prolific inventor a la Thomas Edison.  The fridge would prove to be one of Einstein's few forays into the world of commonplace engineering.​

-Randy Alfred, Mad Science​ (2012)​​

In the early twentieth century, Einstein teamed up with fellow nuclear scientist Leo Szilard in an effort to use science to advance humankind in the industrializing world.  In political history, the two are remembered for penning a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in 1939.  Known as the "Einstein-Szilard letter," the correspondence urged FDR to initiate research into nuclear weapons, fearing the Nazis would discover atomic bombs first.  The letter resulted in the Manhattan Project.  

The entanglement in the development of nuclear weapons fits the profile of Szilard, who conceived of nuclear chain reaction in 1933 and patented a nuclear reactor a year later.  Szilard also actively participated in the Manhattan Project, but Einstein had reservations.  He questioned the ethical use of nuclear fission as a weapon - evidenced in 1955 by the "Russell-Einstein Manifesto" - a letter written by British philosopher Bertrand Russell that denounced the nuclear arms race and called for international peace.  Einstein signed the document just days before his death.  Although Einstein is remembered for his theoretical mastery, the man left a more practical legacy in the science of appliances.    

​For the last decades of his life, Einstein sought unity, a concept he explored abstractly in his "unified field theory."  More practically, Einstein applied his knowledge to simple machines meant to advance the state of the world.  As a physicist, Einstein was keenly aware of energy exchanges and, for humankind, energy usage.  Even in the early industrial era, when machines seemed unstoppable, Einstein understood the value of  self-sustainable energy - the balance between use and renewal.  In 1930, Einstein with his colleague Szilard developed a refrigerator that required no electricity.  The refrigerator used only a simple heat source and the chemical reactions of ammonia, butane, and water.  Randy Alfred has explained the process:

​Ammonia gas is released into a chamber with liquid butane in it.  This reduces the boiling point of the butane, causing it to evaporate and draw in energy from the environment, cooling the area outside the evaporator.  The mix of gases passes through a condenser filled with water.  The ammonia dissolves into the water, and the butane condenses into liquid, which sits atop the water-ammonia mixture.  The butane runs back into the evaporator, a heat source is used to drive the ammonia back into gas, and the ammonia heads to the evaporator to begin the cycle again. ​(Mad Science​, p. 317).

​The Einstein-Szillard refrigerator was innovative because it used neither electricity nor Freon, making it an appealing alternative for poor, rural areas.  But, compared to modern refrigerators, it did not cool items as efficiently.  According to Alfred, "At last report, however, Oxford researchers were working to quadruple the cooling output."  The Swedish appliance company Electrolux has licensed some of the patent, and the Einstein-Szilard refrigeration cycle has been used to build small coolers.  

​Although Einstein only pursued two American patents in his lifetime (the other for a self-adjusting camera), he introduced energy efficiency to the refrigeration industry - an initiation that will surely grow in importance as the marketplace moves toward sustainability.

​You see, there is genius behind every refrigerator, and genius on every refrigerator.  How do you show your intelligence (academic, social, or emotional) on your refrigerator?

1,000 Viewers! Need 1,000 Photos

Just a reminder, if you submit a photo before the end of March, you may be selected to be featured in The Other White Cube exhibition at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library in Tucson, AZ.  

​Please visit the submit page on the website (theotherwhitecube.com) and upload your photographs.

​If the submit page does not load properly, please email photos to theotherwhitecube@gmail.com

​Thank you all for your support.  The Other White Cube Project reached a wonderful milestone recently - over 1,000 views.  Now it just needs 1,000 photographs!!

Thanks for reading the blog, sharing your stories, and seeing the world differently. ​

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Einstein and an Everyday Object: Part 2

Some people want to know how a refrigerator works.  Others want to know the fate of the universe... [T]he answer to the two questions are related.

-Opening lines from The Refrigerator and the Universe ​(1993)

The answer to the passage above is thermodynamics - the transmission of energy from one body to another.  Energy exchanges happen in the universe, and they happen in your kitchen - especially in the complex compression used to cool the inside of your refrigerator.  In their book The Refrigerator and the Universe ​(1993), Martin and Inge Goldstein explain the three laws of thermodynamics through simple, everyday machines - refrigerators and watches (more specifically a spring-driven wristwatch).  For a quick review, the three laws of the thermodynamics are the following:

1. First Law (the law of the conservation of energy) - energy can be transfered into other forms but is indestructible and uncreatable.  Colloquially, it is remembered as "energy is neither created nor destroyed."  The total energy of the universe will remain the same for all time.*

2. Second Law (​the law of entropy) - Heat flows from hot bodies to cold ones.  As hot bodies interact with cold ones, the efficiency of any energy transfer is always less than 100%, so disorder in the universe always increases.  "Ordered systems tend to disorder while disordered systems tends to stay that way" (Goldstein & Goldstein, pg. 8).   

3. Third Law (absolute zero) - energy (molecular movement) stops at absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -273 C or -460 F).  

*Einstein's theory of relativity has modified the Newtonian laws of thermodynamics.  The theory noted that the universe must either be expanding or contracting - at this moment, it is expanding.  The universe will continue to expand forever or will at some point begin to collapse.  Because energy is not conserved as the universe expands, the total amount of energy decreases.  If the universe were to contract, the total amount of energy would increase (someone explain this concept to the Federal Reserve).  

Back to the refrigerator.  The Goldsteins explained the importance of "idealization" in science - the imagining of a flawless state to simplify the complexity of phenomena.  In 1609, Galileo Galilei saw the craters of the moon, indicating crashes with other objects.  In order to understand how moving bodies never stop, he envisioned a frictionless world, where moving bodies never collide.  It was first important to understand motion before analyzing friction.  Galileo's imagining led to his heliocentric theory - that the sun was the center of our galaxy, not the earth (geocentric theory).  In the Enlightenment, philosopher-scientists imagined airless spaces - known as vacuums.  The thought led to the creation of the air pump, which sucked air out of a glass container.  English painter Joseph Wright of Derby captured the use the device in An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump​ (1768).  Women and children recoil in horror as a bird gasps for air while others discuss the event in wonder.  

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Some decades later, French physicist Nicolas Carnot was contemplating the development of heat engines -devices that convert thermal energy to mechanical work, like a steam engine or gas motor.  As the Goldstein's point out, one form of scientific "idealization" is known as the "reversible process" - imagining a system functioning backwards.  Carnot imagined heat engines working in reverse - removing heat from a cold region and discarding it elsewhere.  He called his mental creation "refrigerators."  

Carnot published his ideas in his only work, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire​ (1824).  Ten years later, American inventor and physicist Jacob Perkins brought Carnot's "refrigerators" to life.  Perkins patented a vapor-compression machine in 1834.  The device compresses a liquid refrigerant (ether at first; then ammonia; now freon), causing the temperature to rise.  The liquid eventually becomes gas and evaporates, carrying off heat and producing a cooling effect.  The vapor then goes into the condenser, where it is returned to a liquid state, and the process continues.  Refrigeration functions on the First and Second laws of thermodynamics.  Energy transfers between the varying states of the coolant, and the temperature of these states pulls hot air out of the refrigerator, keeping it cool.  Refrigeration only reaches the Third Law if you turn the internal setting up to 11 (that's a Spinal Tap joke).    

​Vapor compression is the most widely used method for refrigeration and air conditioning.  For the first hundred years, vapor-compression refrigeration was a matter of the market and not a domestic appliance.  Refrigeration made an impact most promptly on the meat industry.  In 1874, French inventor Ferdinand Carre built a large refrigerator for the Paraguay, a ship that transported meat from Argentina to France.  Three years later, in 1877, Frenchman Charles Tellier equipped the Frigorifique for the same purpose - to transport meat from Argentina to France.  As the gap between farmer and consumer widened in the Industrial Revolution, refrigerators filled an increasingly important role in the marketplace.  So important, in fact, that refrigerators became a personal necessity, not just a commercial one.  

Up until the mid-twentieth century, most households used "ice boxes" - insulated compartments for food kept cool by a block of ice.  Modern refrigerators emerged between 1913 and 1927.  Early models were made of wood, which was replaced by metal in the 1920s.  In Chicago, Domelre manufctured its first domestic refrigerator in 1913, followed by the Kelvinator in 1918.  Frigidaire released its first refrigerators in 1919, and General Electric (GE) entered the market in 1926.  GE became a leading refrigerator company in 1939 when it released the first dual-temperature fridge - the common refrigerator model today with a freezer and a produce section.  ​

Despite a competitive atmosphere, refrigerators reached very few households in the 1920s.  Only 1-2% of Americans owned a refrigerator in 1925, but that number exponentially grew as the appliance became more affordable.  Nearly a decade later, in 1934, the percentage of Americans with a refrigerator jumped to 17%.  By the time the United States entered the second World War, the number had skyrocketed to 45%, despite a depression and a scarcity of metal.  Today, the percentage of Americans owning a refrigerator has more than doubled - resting at 99.5% of the population.  The refrigerator is the most widely owned appliance, and, according to the Goldsteins, it is the most widely available explanation of thermodynamics.  

According to the Other White Cube Project, the refrigerator is also the most widely accessible explanation for museums practices - how humans collect, select, organize, and arrange objects into a display.  

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Refrigerator Book Review: Alice Kuipers, Life on the Refrigerator

Dearest Mom,​

I went to the support group today and Mary suggested I write to you even though you won't be able to read it.  She said it might make me feel closer to you and there might be things I wished I could say to you [...]

Do you remember how pretty fall was, how we looked out your bedroom window as you got sicker and watched the yellows and reds brighten the sky?  You tried so hard to fight it, Mom.  I hate that it was so hard for you [...]

I think I'll leave this letter for you here.  In this empty kitchen.  So you'll know if you come home that I love you and I miss you.  Please don't worry about me.​

Your daughter, Claire. 

-Refrigerator note from Alice Kuipers' Life on the Refrigerator​

In her book Life on the Refrigerator (2007), Alice Kuipers explored the emotional versatility of a family's refrigerator surface - a place overlaid with quotidian details and deep love.  The book is nothing more than a series of notes exchanged between a single mother and her teenaged daughter.  Both have succumbed to the whirl of life - mom is busy working nights at the hospital and Claire worries about school and boys.  They exist in separate worlds - each one nearly unaware of the other - but the refrigerator acts as a wormhole between their alternate universes.  As a place of communication and expression, the refrigerator keeps the relationship together, even if only on the surface.    

In the first quarter of the book, Kuipers documented the mundanity of family routines - feed the pets, get groceries, do the laundry.  Expectedly, as the routine rolls on, the notes lose their endearing sign-offs.  "Love and hugs" disappears and doesn't return until a dreadful discovery derails the routine.  Mom has cancer.  The news causes the family to rethink its values and emotional honesty.  Kuipers cleverly showed the painful realignment in two successive notes.  The first note is inexpressive and impersonal, but, in the second, tenderness returns.  

I've got the doctor's appointment today.  Hopefully it'll be the all-clear:​

Love, Mom.​

-The dishwasher needs emptying.​

​Followed by:

We had a sad day at work today, Claire.  Do you remember the preemie born in January? Maybe you don't, you probably don't, well, I'd been keeping an eye on that one, i suppose she was my little ray of hope through all this.  She died this afternoon. She was so tiny.​

Feeling a bit low.  I'm going for a walk by the river.  It wasn't good news yesterday.  There seems to be some sort of complication.​

Mom

Upon hearing the news, "Love and hugs" returns to the refrigerator conversation, and each family member takes a noticeable interest in the day-to-day experiences of the other.  Claire and her mother both become more reflective as well - observing and retelling the simple moments of their lives.  The rest of the book oscillates between meditations on the grace of life and the stark reality of being sick.  After a series of exchanges about Claire's love interest Michael, this somber note appears:

I start radiation therapy today so I've gone for that.  I'll be going in the mornings from now on.

Mom

​In the latter half of the book, Kuipers elegantly developed the painful tension between a young daughter, who frolics in the timelessness of youth, and a dying mother whose life is bound by time.  The refrigerator notes become a powerful collection of regrets, well-wishes, sincere expressions of love, and the strain to return to normalcy - something we all desire in times of pain.  Towards the end, as Mom weakens, the notes take on an introspective voice closer to a personal diary.  Claire continues to write refrigerator notes - even as Mom stops - in order to see and hear her own thoughts, like soft shaky whispers into a mirror.  On the refrigerator, Claire articulates her emotional journey - the journey of shedding the innocence of adolescence and growing into the skin of womanhood; of learning the gravity of death; and of finding a role-model and becoming one at the same time. 

​Hey Mom,

You looked so brave in the hospital.  I wondered what it felt like to be you, what it felt like to have that stuff going into your body.  I know it felt strange for me.  I mean, you're the one who's the grown-up yet I was trying to look after you [...]​

Love and hugs, Claire

It is interesting to witness the departure of one life as it somehow leaves a residual imprint on the life of another.  Perhaps this is the ethereal immortality that we all desire - not to be remembered or to live forever, but to be transformative.

​In this story, the refrigerator was the invisible messenger who kept and conveyed the words that consummated a loving, boundless relationship between a mom and her daughter.  Refrigerators are at the center of our household universes, and Alice Kuipers' earnest book, Life on the Refrigerator, confirms their significance as places of communication.  In your universe, what does your shining star emit - is it poetic or prosaic?  

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Fears of Refrigerators during the Cold War

VOICE: A "DOVE" refrigerator, Housewives of America, is love!                                                                                 (jingle: it's a love,                                                                                                                                                    it's a love...)​ 

VOICE: Housewives of America - you are more fortunate because you have a "DOVE"!​

But, you, sick people of America,                                                                                                                 You are more fortunate because                                                                                                                   you can have a "DOVE"!                                                                                                                                    "DOVE"​ keeps even your heart fresh,                                                                                                            sick people of America,

"DOVE" is living                                                                                                                                         "DOVE" is thrilling                                                                                                                                               It's a thrilling "DOVE"!                   ​

-Voice of TV commercials from Michael Fratti's play "The Refrigerators" (1969)​

In 1964, future U.S. President Richard Nixon said, "the Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat" (Reader's Digest).  Postwar politics desperately needed some cooling off, and the American government perhaps took that too literally - sending refrigerators and other appliances around world.  Just five years earlier, in 1959, the federal government curated the American National Exhibition, which showed at the Moscow Trade Fair.  The exhibition featured "home appliances, fashions, television, and hi-fi sets, a model house priced to sell [to] an 'average' family, farm equipment, 1959 automobiles, boats, sporting equipment and a children's playground" (Evening Post).  Of all the aspects of modern convenience, kitchen appliances received the most attention - partly because of new innovations, also because of a famous happening known as the "Kitchen Debate."  

Then Vice President Nixon attended the fair as the prominent American delegate, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev accompanied him around - an interaction the press dubbed "Nik and Dik."  The two debated at every turn, talking about technology here and missile ammunitions there.  The conversation reached a pinnacle at the model kitchen installation as cameras snapped photos of the two delegates inspecting and pointing at appliances.  Dik saw wholesomeness in the sleek white counter, cupboard, washer, and refrigerator.  Nik saw wastefulness.

It is interesting that the two talked politics in an imagined American home - a place, according to propaganda, that was vulnerable to moral corruption by the Soviet Union.  During the Cold War, propaganda fueled erratic fears that manifested culturally in absurd and hyperbolic forms.  One particularly weird example is Michael Fratti's play, "The Refrigerators," from 1969 - a decade after the "Kitchen Debate."  In the play, a mad scientist named Willy, who works for the famous appliance company Dove, keeps a former lover, a friend, and the family pet orangutan in three separate refrigerators.  The refrigerators keep the individuals in a state of "artificial hibernation" or "suspended animation."  They are still alive, but they have no free will.  Of course, Willy obtained his idea from a breaking news story from - where else but - Russia, where they defrosted and revived a lizard, leading presumably to an irrational refrigeration race between countries.  If the Soviets could not invade by military force, they would do so by compression - vapor-compression that is - turning Americans into enslaved, slumbering produce.  

Using modified refrigerators, Willy can create "an automaton, a passive doll in my hands," representing the misuse and abuse of innovations.  The illogical premise illustrates the derangement and obsessive irrationality of the Cold War period, which was dangerously wrapped up in technology. By exposing and exploiting this, "The Refrigerators" is just as clever and spot on as Stanley Kubrick's film "Dr. Strangelove" (1964).  Society must be mad if something as simple as the refrigerator can become sinister.  

​

Refrigerator Poetry

Sunday,                                                                                                                                                             she listened to the church choir                                                                                                                      hold their long whole notes.  Everything                                                                                                                had a knack for hanging on.                                                                                                                   Even the old refrigerator                                                                                                                                by the kitchen table, though it                                                                                                                      shook with noise like a train,                                                                                                                          wasn’t going anywhere. 

-Elaine Terranova, "The Choice"

In the 1990s, it became popular to construct poetic snippets on refrigerators using magnetic words.  Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Haas described the phenomenon as, "one-man Scrabble and the prize is insight."   In response to the popular movement, the Magnetic Poetry Company (magneticpoetry.com) released "an anthology of magnetic poems from the refrigerator doors of America," which came with a kit of magnetic words.  A reviewer for the Atlantic Monthly remarked, "Not everyone can be a poet, but let's give out the magnetic words and cover the hard steely surfaces of the world with messages, charms, and barbaric yawps."  

The Other White Cube Project is an extension of the magnetic poetry movement.  In fact, I developed the project in dialogue with a concept called "poetic substance."  Theorized by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, "poetic substance" concerns the way the imagination augments reality, creating multiple layers of meaning - poets are pros at this.  In his seminal book the Poetics of Space (1958), Bachelard wrote, "To give an unreality [or poetic substance] to an image attached to a strong reality is in the spirit of poetry."  Turning the refrigerator into a museum or a journal is in the spirit of poetry, and, as Bachelard explained, poetic ideas "will help us to discover within us such joy in looking that sometimes, even in the presence of perfectly familiar objects, we experience an extension of our intimate space."  We begin to see ourselves in the attributes of artifacts.  We begin to see ourselves in the reflective surface of the refrigerator.  

Not everyone can be a museum curator, but let's give out the knowledge and cover the hard white surfaces of the world with photos, artworks, and visual ephemera.  

​

Minimalism: Mo' Magnets, Mo' Problems

The secret to happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

-Socrates

Since launching the blog in January, several people have contacted me and claimed that they are ineligible to participate in the project.  They explained that their refrigerators do not display many things and are, thus, devoid of meaning.  Au contraire, mon frere ("on the contrary, my brother").  Absence is just as telling as presence.

Over the holiday, I was around many family members, who inquired about the state of my life.  I informed them of the Other White Cube Project, which sparked many stories.  For example, my father told me that, growing up, his mother (my grandmother) insisted on keeping things off the refrigerator.  She preferred the sleek, pristine surface of the refrigerator, which, to her, symbolized wholesomeness and cleanliness.  For my grandmother and many others, white has represented purity.  Culturally, the symbolism is observable in wedding ceremonies, religious iconography, and other moral imagery.  But, there is more to white than purity.  White is also about privacy.  

My grandmother raised her two sons (my dad and uncle) in the 1950s, during the Cold War.  The period is remembered as one of liturgical convention and conservative mores, and I believe my grandmother's refrigerator refinement reflected cultural attitudes regarding privacy and proper manners.  Even today, my grandmother has only revealed snippets of her life.  Only as of last summer did she share with me her memories of childhood, college, and courtship with my grandfather.  My grandmother is not callous or hard-bitten; it takes tenderness to teach kindergarten for 28 years.  She has a reserved personality, which I now see as perceptible in her choice to leave her refrigerator surfaces empty.  In the same way that a simple dress complements a woman's modesty, my grandmother's refrigerator demonstrated her sense of privacy.  

My grandmother's reticent refrigerator passed on to my uncle, who was the first to ask, "what if I don't put anything on my refrigerator?"  Whereas my grandmother left items off her refrigerator for privacy, my uncle does it as a result of his modest lifestyle.  My uncle has enjoyed his life outdoors and in the streets.  He has a house but it is not his habitat.  As a result, he has little clutter and only a few things on his refrigerator.  Once again, absence is just as telling as presence.   

I am a third-generation refrigerator purist.  I have nothing on my refrigerator.  Since graduating from high school, I have moved many times, holding an address for no longer than a year - approximately 13 apartments in 6 cities.  To adapt to my itinerant life, I found myself keeping and buying fewer and fewer things.  Gradually, I discovered and became involved in the minimalist movement - a philosophy of life around owning only the essentials.  For me, clutter is an impediment, and, for this reason, I do not place anything on my refrigerator.  Leaving my refrigerator blank is an expression of the way I live.  I do not judge or think unfairly of others who have fully decorated refrigerators, but, for me and my lifestyle, mo' magnets, mo' problems.  

Magnets and Messes

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify!

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Each year, the National Association of Professional Organizers receives 10,000 calls from cluster victims - people who feel shackled by their stuff.  According to a new study released by the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), professional organizers may have a new tool for identifying cluster victims - a quick glance at their refrigerators.  From 2001 to 2005, a team of researchers from UCLA's Center on the Everyday Lives of Families measured the stress levels of 32 families in the Los Angeles area.  What surfaced from the study was the presence and influence of clutter.  Stress hormone levels in women spiked when confronted with family clutter, indicating that surplus engenders strain.  The impact of clutter reshaped the study's focus and other, very interesting conclusions emerged.  For example, the study found a direct relationship between the number of things on a refrigerator and the amount of stuff in a household.  Magnets revealed messes.  

For the 32 families in the study, the average number of refrigerator objects was 55.  How do you compare?  Do your magnets misrepresent you?  If so, simplify, simplify, simplify! Curate, curate, curate!

Einstein and an Everyday Object

I knew a poem that yelled, "Refrigerator"!                                                                                                         and my brain suddenly had room                                                                                                                     for a refrigerator[...]

My brain was so full of refrigerator -                                                                                                                 my mind full of that poem's world -                                                                                                                  my whole head suddenly hard on the outside                                                                                                  and suddenly cool on the inside.

-B.J. Ward, "A Poem About a Refrigerator" from Gravedigger's Birthday

American astrophysicist and intellectual celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson has repeated - in Congress and in countless conferences - that NASA inspires imagination.  The more space we explore in the universe, the greater our capacity to dream.  Tyson's cosmic perspective shrinks down to an earthly size in B.J. Ward's "A Poem About a Refrigerator."  In his work, Ward revealed that objects affect our thinking patterns, individually or culturally.  With 99.5% of Americans owning at least one, refrigerators fill a visible space in our daily lives and in our collective conscience, but the particulars of their impact remain unheralded.  How refrigerators have shaped and can shape our ways of thinking is an untold story - investigated exclusively in the Other White Cube Project.  The root of the refrigerator's cultural prominence begins, interestingly, with the father of modern physics, Albert Einstein.  

In 1921, Einstein visited the United States and lectured at Princeton University on his newly developed General Theory of Relativity.  Einstein's theory overturned the notion of impersonal time - that time is the same everywhere for every thing.  Einstein argued that time depended on speed and was, therefore, relative - or different at different speeds.  As a result of his work, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, launching him into fame and popularizing his theories.  

During the same years, companies developed and marketed the first household refrigerators, and, just as fast as Einstein's theory reshaped physics, the refrigerator reconfigured the modern lifestyle.  Although world's apart, Einstein's theory and the refrigerator share an interesting feature - the idea of slowing time.  Einstein's theory claimed that as objects approached the speed of light, the flow of time slowed down.  Likewise, refrigerators offered consumers longer periods of freshness by slowing the rate of decay.

Remarkably, others at the time must have seen similarities between the two developments.  At the core of Einstein's theory was a concept that became known popularly as the "temporal refrigerator."  Like slowing the decay of food, when one travels near the speed of the light, he or she ages slower.  The comparison is both apt and educational.  When faced with novel ideas, it is common to create a metaphor - relating a new concept and to a familiar one - in an attempt to understand.  Einstein's explanation of slowed time became comprehensible through the refrigerator, attesting to appliance's "universal" significance.  

Because of the refrigerator, my brain (and so many others') suddenly had room for Einstein's theory.  

Welcome to Another (Curatorial) Dimension

While it is commonplace to think of the television as the electronic hearth, it is surely the refrigerator that serves as the family's comfort and control center.

-Akiko Busch, The Uncommon LIfe of Common Objects

Welcome to the Other White Cube Project - a museum-based educational study on one of the most popular display spaces, the common refrigerator.  I created the Other White Cube Project in an effort to build stronger relationships between cultural institutions and the general public.  Although museums attract millions of visitors per year, several studies have shown that visitors remain uncomfortable in museums. Most commonly, visitors expressed feelings of intimidation and inadequacy - that they didn't feel smart enough to enjoy themselves.  Museums have responded by adding educational stations, programs, and more informational text to their exhibitions, but I believe the problem lies not in the comprehension of content but rather in the understanding of context.  Visitors are left in the dark when it comes to how museums function - how they collect objects, organize them, and ultimately display them.  Unless one finds the time to nab an internship or take a museum studies course, the opportunities to learn about the functions of museums are slim, and, as a result, museums continue to be perceived as elitist and esoteric institutions.  In reality, I think they're simply misunderstood, but it's their problem, not the public's. Throughout museum history, content has been the major focus, but content is only half of the equation. Where and how something is shown - the context - equally contributes to the conception of art, and visitors must have an awareness of both halves to be truly informed.  By giving due emphasis to context, museums would bring attention to their architectural features - windows, lighting, wall color, space - and other added aspects such as frames, pedestals, and display cases.  The richness of these details and their affect on the perception of art are tremendous.  Context enhances the viewing of art and deserves a prominent place as a topic in museum education.          

The Other White Cube Project offers an educational crash course on how museums create meaning and construct knowledge.  Foremost, they "curate" - the process of selecting, organizing, and arranging objects into a display.  Curators make meaning by arranging objects into thematic patterns or groups.  For art museums, common arrangements include time (19th century), place (France), media (painting), and subject matter (landscape).  Other categories include gender (women) and identity (African-American).  At home, our themes are not as grand but we nevertheless make similar choices.  We arrange things by type (socks, shoes), color (red, blue), least to most favorite, and so on.  We are all, therefore, curators of some kind, and the Other White Cube Project explores the refrigerator as one surface on which we curate our things.  Join the emerging conversation on the importance of context and submit photos of your refrigerator displays.