Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire Joy Williams

Ulrich Obrist

In this ongoing series, curator has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents are invited to make a selection from the larger questionnaire and to reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2023, we are honored to present the author .

Joy Williams

3. What is the role of titles?

A: Titles should be at the end of stories or concealed within them somehow. And prove to surprise or complicate the reader’s conclusions.

9. What keeps you coming back to the studio?

A: I still harbor the hope (possibly delusion) that I might be able to create something marvelous through effort, chance, or inspiration.

6. What is your unrealized project?

A: Writing hymns in the manner of the great Welsh hymnist William Williams.

15. How would you like to die?

A: Well, after reading sister Alicia’s research on the subject in Cormac McCarthy’s ”Stella Maris”, certainly not by drowning.

19. What have you forgotten?

A: How to tan. I was once an expert. A true natural. Much admired.

17. Has the computer changed the way you work?

A: I’ve never used a computer. I think it would take an immediate and intense dislike to me.

13. The future is . . . ?

A: That which was ever intended.

20. What ought to change?

A: Experimentation on animals must stop. The whole ghastly system—breeders—labs— vivisectors—should be shut down.

31. What music are you listening to?

A: Glenn Gould playing anything. Albert Schweitzer on the organ. The piano music of G. I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann. The symphonic works of John Luther Adams.