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? MARK
[Alex Eisenberg and Rachel Lois Clapham have spent the weekend
seeing performances and asking the audience for their questions
about the work. These questions are due to be used in a response.]

A: Go on…
RL: Well, thinking about questions about the work. There’s
your list of questions – I thought it might be nice to talk
about that.
A: The why, how, when, where, which. Is, are, can, have, did,
does, if, was, were…who…?
RL: Yeah and the ideas of questions in general…thinking
about the notion of questions in relation to performance, the
idea that live work itself is a form of critique or questioning,
it’s a dialogue, a process. You’re not ending up with a block
of marble – like a final answer - at the end of it.
A: …maybe questions are always looking for some…I
dunno…there’s a sense of an inherent want for an answer, if
you ask a question. Do you know what I mean? But there is a
whole other category of questions, which I am interested in,
things like - what shape is yellow? or when was there no
green? Questions formulated by words being put together
but to which there is no clearly apparent answer. It's the
notion of the impossible question. This is my thing, I think
that with these questions they are almost easier to answer
than – how did the piece make you feel? because in their
impossibility they maybe transcend their meaning – and then
the options are more open.
RL: A question does solicit, pre-empt or demand a certain
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interaction. I mean it's collaborative, it's pointing you into

action. And as a proposition, your refusal, or inability to
answer is still figured into the question. It's quite pervasive.
A: Yeah – it can be challenging… and we’ve not been
demanding answers from people, we been demanding
questions.
RL: It is quite direct isn’t it – have you got a question? It’s not
like, what do you think about X? It puts you under a
different kind of pressure.
A: It places you in a much more vulnerable state – having to
generate a question. You lay yourself exposed for a short
moment. You put yourself on the line a little bit, whereas in
some ways when you are doing an answer it's always in
relation to a question. So it's like you are completing. Maybe
you’re automatically asking questions whilst you are
watching a performance but in some way for me that’s not
the best place to be asking questions. Like why are they
doing that? Or you know… for me it's better to try and sit
there and just sort of soak it up.
RL: Do you think it's the same with the plastic arts, with
static work? I’m thinking about the absorptive elements of
performance, the embodied or live aspect of it hinders you
from actually asking questions in the moment.
A: Maybe it's something to do with that in a performance the
ethics are raised, you are complicit in making that
performance happen. I happen to really like work that does
makes you feel your role as an audience and therefore you
feel a responsibility. Whereas with object-based work the
encounter doesn’t always operate in that way.
RL: Which isn’t to say that objects don’t ask questions, but
you’re not looking into a face.
A: And you can’t change that object in the same way as you
can affect a performance.

RL: Thinking about the punctuation of a question, the

question mark is an intriguing punctuation grapheme or
graphic. And exclamation marks are a little bit shallow
maybe? It indicates something entirely different...
A: [DRAWING] The shape of a question mark – it’s half an
exclamation mark but it has this area of holding space.
Whereas the exclamation mark is a stop.
RL: That bit, it’s almost like a hook to hook you in, whereas
the exclamation mark. If that was thrown at you, you
couldn’t hold on... it’s slippery somehow.
A: Yes, it’s very much an ending. Whereas that has a little bit
of room about it. That’s kind of the nice thing about
questions is this roominess.
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A: There’s also something crude about the exclamation mark.

Question marks are very genteel. It’s a question, you know?
And it’s putting something out there. But that there, that’s a
bit like ‘nerr nerr nerr nerr’ [LAUGHS]. I mean that.
RL: They’re characters, for sure - graphic but also characters
in a little play.
A: Yeah, they are kinda’ cute
RL: Do you think they’re male and female?
A: There’s something like that...
RL: I’m definitely thinking that now I’ve said it. Look here.
A: So he’s male?
RL: Yes, look at him, he’s totally phallic
A: ...there’s something assertive, masculine about it, and
here, this has the womb.
RL: Yes, there’s an opening
A: In other languages they draw them upside down.
[ALEX DRAWING] That’s Spanish. You do a question in
Spanish it’s ¿una pregunta? I always thought it sounded like
pregnant...
RL: When you put the two of them together like that top to
toe....
A: It’s kind of nice. And fascinating that they make that
shape.
RL: Yes, two female characters together, woman on woman.
There’s something really nice about that. A perfect fit.

A: It’s hard to be able to ask a really good question. It's a real

skill.
RL: Isn’t the difficulty in asking is that it involves thinking
forward to the answer? You speculate; you don’t have access
to the answer, because otherwise you would have answered
yourself. But in a way you have thought beyond the question
to the answer – before you have even asked the question.
A: There are plenty of people who just ask questions to make
a point. That’s a tricky territory. We have all done that, it’s
difficult not to do that. But a genuine question doesn’t come
from that place.
RL: Is there such a thing as a genuine question? If you are
presupposing or looking forward to the sort of thing you are
asking, it becomes a grey area as to what extent your
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question is a question, or simply a statement.

A: It’s vague isn’t it.
RL: I’m wondering how to map these questions and tie them
to the work.
A: Like this…[ALEX DRAWING] if we are talking
diagrammatically…that being the event, and then out of it
there being all these questions – it's like a spider
diagram…and then this one might have…like…these are the
different pieces of work and these might have different
things. And it's possible that those two link there and it's
possible that that one also links to there.
R: And that there could be different areas here like
masochism or domesticity or...
A: And then that comes out like that and like that, that that
links to that and then that links to that and it's this whole
complex sort of linkage.

A: We are doing that conversational thing where we do a bit

there, we go down to here, and come back up.
RL: I’m liking that.
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RL: I had an idea. What do you think about writing about

writing about the performances?
A: Quite a radical approach in that it doesn’t cover anything
directly about the work, but I think it is interesting in a weird
way.
RL: We’ll be leaving things very much open, or hanging...but
I think there’s something about the ephemeral nature of
performance that lends itself to not being written about
maybe…in the sense that it is speculative, open ended or
processual.
A: Yes, it’s an exciting idea, but not quite sure how we would
do it. We would need to tie it into how questions operate
similarly to performance. We need to be quite explicit about
that.
RL: About how performance is still this huge question mark
in relation to art history. And about performance being
inherently question-able? In the sense that it is quite porous
to intervention or has holes. I’m also thinking about the
potentially antagonistic aspect of that and how as an
adjective ‘questionable’ is loaded negatively, like if
something has holes it’s considered bad.
A: It’s a pejorative. Whereas we’re looking at questions as a
positive thing. We are reclaiming the question!

A: So will this text be in conversational format?

RL: Yes. We could keep it quite honest, and short too... what
we’ll be writing about is about writing a text.
A: Yeah - and asking questions to which we’re not going to
be giving answers.
RL: God no.
A: On some fundamental level it is quite a political idea. It
leads back to the collective voice; there are certain questions
out there, and we are going to put them out there, foster a
space for asking them. But we are not going to answer them,
we are just going to know that they are out there, around and
about. That’s quite an interesting place to be. It puts a
pressure on that thing we have – this urge for resolution,
classification, knowing. It’s is a big part of our culture and
not knowing is an unsettling place to be. The question is,
how do you learn not to know?
RL: And can you be on the page as not knowing? What is it
about writing that you ‘mean’ or ‘know’, even when that
knowing is in progress or about doubt?
A: I’m going for a cigarette now, is that OK?
[ALEX GOES FOR A CIGARETTE]
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A: [ALEX COMES BACK] Hi…