20 Postcards each with a question around libraries, books, and public space

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Commissioned by artist-run initiative ArcadeCampfa as part of one of their Library Residencies, 20 Questions was a work inspired by Robert Filliou's Ample Food for Stupid Thought, 1965.

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It took place in collaboration with Rhyl Library where each book borrower was handed one of the twenty postcards on which a question was posed. Whilst some questions came from a place of sincerity and curiosity, others bordered on the absurd and unanswerable. All of them grew from Nick's research and thought undertaken during the residency. The responses were collected and shared at an event in Rhyl Library at the end of Nick's residency.

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The 20 Questions were:

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• Is to read to fly?

• Who is a public library for?

• What use are old encyclopaedias?

• Will librarians exist on Mars?

• Whose legacy will serve humanity better: Andrew Carnegie or Elon Musk?

• Don’t we all censor?

• Is non-fiction superior to fiction?

• How will J K Rowling be remembered?

• Does reading make us happier?

• Tree or book, which is of more value?

• Does popular equal good?

• If everyone has a book in them, should we not just listen better and talk more?

• Reading uninterrupted in public: unsociable or the height of civic life?

• Why print more words?

• Ever thought how long this font took to make?

• Who are your peer reviewers?

• If a planted tree knew its destiny of becoming books, how would it feel?

• Why do we prefer stories about the apocalypse than we do about other possible futures?

• What is more beneficial: being book wise or street smart?

• Should library membership be assumed rather than applied for?