Art Practice as Ecosystem Questionnaire
This questionnaire is designed to provide a sense-based guide for identifying your current art practice – it is meant to document a specific time. It can be answered repeatedly in order to notice changes in how you use your senses and changes in how you relate to your environment. These changes, in combination with your attention to your current situation can act as a guide for creating (and evolving) an art practice that precisely embodies your interests.
When I ask about senses I mean any kind of sense, including sense of justice, proportion, humor, smell, vision, taste, history, hearing, language, kinesthesia, proprioception or any other thing you thing you have a sense for. Having a sense for something means that you perceive it, either subtly or intensely.
By “by-products” I mean the things that happen because of work, but are not your first intention. For example: travel is a by-product for me. I only travel because of work. If it weren’t for work I would stay home.
Some guidelines:
Answer the questionnaire in relation to your immediate situation.
Answer subjectively and precisely.
If you don’t understand a question, answer what you think it means.
1. What senses do you use the most?
2. Which senses guide you the most reliably towards your actual interests?
3. What senses are unreliable or guide you into unsustainable activities?
4. How do you refine or develop your senses?
5. What are the by-products of your work?
6. What by-products do you think are garbage, or toxic, or wasted?
7. How does your work environment relate to the environment you live in? Does it depend on, challenge, survive despite, steal from, or symbiotically support the political, social, and/or physical environment you live in?
8. Describe the environment your senses create.
9. Describe the form your body would take if your senses were to determine your form
10. What senses would you like to develop?