20 Questions
May 10, 2018
Text by Lenka Clayton
19 Questions I ask of my work:
- Is this the right time to ask questions?
- Where is my instinct in this process?
- How does it feel when I am working on this?
- What are the rules/logic/frame of this work? Why?
- How will the audience know about the rules/frame – is it necessary?
- What is happening? How to capture, frame, condense it?
- What are the limitations – can they be materials?
- What are the stupid questions?
- Can I describe what I’m doing in a sentence?
- What is this? (medium)
- How can this be simpler? What is the least I can do to realize this idea?(editing)
- Who do I need to work with, where are they, how do I reach them?
- Who is it for? Where are they? How will they see it?
- Is this the right scale?
- Am I open or closed? Do I need to be open or closed at this moment?
- Who will see this? How will I tell the story of what happened?(documentation)
- How would I tell my grandma about this?
- What is the space between myself (or us) as the artists and the audience orparticipants? Is this the right space?
- Is it done? What else? What next?
7 Questions I do not ask of my work
- Who has done this before?
- Why am I doing this?*
- What does this mean?*
- How does this help?
- What kind of work is this?
- Who cares?
- What will this change?
* these are ongoing processes of observation and reflection, rather than questions I’d use to interrogate an idea, or work at an early stage
For more info on Lenka’s work, click here.
Lenka Clayton is a British-American conceptual artist and educator based in Pittsburgh. Her work contemplates, exaggerates and defamiliarizes accepted rules and practices of everyday life, extending the ordinary to the poetic and absurd.
