The Meaning of Maximalism

In Defense of Cluttercore

This week, we discuss a couple famous minimalists who claimed recently that cluttercore is a mental illness. We don’t think it is, and we’ll explain all the reasons why, plus we’ll share a bit of what we’ve learned about the cluttercore aesthetic from its practitioners. If you’d like to see us and the things we’re talking about, head over to The Spiral Lab Youtube channel to watch the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL58h47_QIU].  Get full access to The Spiral Lab at thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe [https://thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Can Cluttercore Suite Your Neurodivergent Sensory Style?

This episode was livestreamed on our YouTube channel on 2/16/2023. You can listen to it as a podcast or watch the recording here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PhHUnpyYX4]. Maximalism and cluttercore [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/cluttercore] have come under fire recently as "pathological," but here at The Spiral Lab we reject the pathology paradigm--even for design styles! Minimalism is often offered up as the ultimate "life hack" for ADHDers, and as an almost neurologically predetermined preference for Autistics, but in this livestream, we mean to debunk those myths! Marta sat down with Paint and John, two friends from the DDS online community, to talk about how and why maximalism really works to create pleasure and function in our lives and homes. Paint is a queer disabled artist and poet, in the never ending process of healing PTSD and discovering new ways to create and live authentically. They have an educational background in disability studies and he currently lives fun-employed as a full-time disabled person unmasking and rediscovering safety in life. Check out Paint's merch [https://painthyrarya.threadless.com/] and their website here [https://paint.gay/index.html]. John is a writer, rhetor, teacher, street photographer, and antipoverty activist, born in NYC and living now in Denver, CO. He recently survived a stroke, which took with it a not insignificant chunk of his sense of proprioception. More recently, he was diagnosed with ADHD, which has occasioned a sometimes overwhelming, sometimes exhilarating, almost always exhausting process of re-understanding why and how he is who he is. Read John’s piece about his antipoverty activism [https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/shelter-stories-homelessness-human-rights-and-community-writing-centers/] and check out some of his street photography and found poetry [https://tiedemann.exposure.co/lost-found]. Get full access to The Spiral Lab at thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe [https://thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Meaning of Maximalism

Maximalism! It’s an interior design style trending across the internet right now, but it’s often misunderstood, and sometimes unfairly maligned. Marta and Gray have completely different styles, but both consider themselves maximalists, for reasons that go beyond aesthetic. If you’d like to see the art styles and trends we’re talking about, check out the video of this conversation on our Youtube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMprWdeEWmE] FURTHER READING: * The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture], The New Yorker * Why the West is Afraid of Color [https://www.thejuggernaut.com/why-the-west-is-afraid-of-color/], The Juggernaut * Why Everything Is So Ugly [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq_uh1r_gXs] by Mina Le * Alidad’s Maximalist Home [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5gLsvUAMchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5gLsvUAMc] * The Perils of Diagnosing Modernists [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/what-s-the-point-in-trying-to-diagnose-le-corbusier-and-gropius], Bloomberg * Waste Not, Want Not: An Inquiry Into What Women Saved and Assembled [https://artcritical.com/2015/06/24/femmage-by-miriam-schapiro-and-melissa-meyer/], Art Critical Get full access to The Spiral Lab at thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe [https://thespirallab.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]