Factings colocates the aspirations and limitations of empirical psychology and aesthetic minimalism(s), where both use strategies of flattening and essentializing to construct facts or truths. In psychology studies, race, for instance, is typically imbued with naturalness, concreteness and stability, and studies with infants attempt to isolate “signal” from erratic/”noisy” behavior. Printed CVs wrapped around the lower cube frame indicate “facts” are scaffolded by career aims/agendas.

Minimalist art—which emerged contemporaneously with the “cognitive revolution” in psychology—presented its own self-evident “facts,” yet required access to certain kinds of culture to make, encounter and decode. In putting minimalism and psychology in conversation, my aim is not to condemn, but to ultimately bring in measured (like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s) appreciation of science and the consciousness-expanding, embodying potential of the minimalist impulse. 

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