On asking the question

A short note on the methodology, if you can call it that.

The question that names the label is genuine: how is this being made? It is the question we keep coming back to. It is the question we ask when we encounter a piece of work — a record, a garment, a building, a meal — that has been made well.

The interesting thing about the question is that asking it changes what you notice.

A record made by someone who knows what they are doing sounds different from a record made by someone reaching for a sound. The reach is audible. The knowing is also audible. Asking how each was made — what was deliberate, what was accidental, what was salvaged from a worse version — gives you a way to hear the work that you don't get from asking what the record is "about" or why the artist is good.

The same is true of an object you can hold. The seam is either confident or hesitant. The print is either properly prepared or rushed. The fabric is either chosen for a reason or chosen because it was available. You can feel all of these things if you know to look.

So the methodology, such as it is: ask the question. About everything. The work that survives the question is the work that interests us.

One implication for what HOW does:

We try not to release things we cannot defend in the conversation that the question opens up. If we cannot say where the cotton came from, we cannot put the T-shirt out. If we cannot describe how the record was made, we cannot put the record out.

This is not a moral position. It is a working constraint. Constraints make the work better.

More soon.