Mark What Went
Take it out; keep its place empty and marked; let nothing fill it.
A family portrait with one face scrubbed out.
Seen in Micha Ullman, The Empty Library (Bibliothek), Bebelplatz, Berlin, unveiled 20 May 1995
Try it on your work
Remove one element from a finished layout and draw a thin outline where it was. Stop there; nothing moves into the outline.
Delete a paragraph from a draft and leave a bracketed blank of the same length in its place. Stop there; do not close the gap.
A group retires one regular item from its meetings and keeps it on the agenda as a struck-through line, with no time given to it. Stop there.
How it has been used
Take something out and keep its place visibly empty, so that it cannot slip back unnoticed: the outline left on the wall where a picture hung, the struck-through line kept in the text, the empty chair at the table. The move forbids filling the gap, with the thing or with anything else.
Where it leads
Grouped under Take something away