Shed
Drop what the surroundings already do; point at where it went.
The caption dropped because the wall label carries it.
Seen in Michael Rakowitz, paraSITE, 1997–2011
Try it on your work
List what your piece of work does for itself: explains, frames, holds up, labels. For each item, find the thing around it that already does that job, remove the part, and write down what now does it. Stop when every part left does something nothing around it does.
Take a text that will be read in a known place: a caption, a message, a label. Cut every sentence the place already says, such as the heading, the logo or the sender line, and note beside each cut what now says it. Stop when every sentence left says something the place does not.
In a group, each person names one job they do that someone else in the group already covers, and stops doing it for a week, naming who carries it. At the end of the week, stop; anything nobody carried comes back.
How it has been used
Drop what the place already does for you: the caption the wall label makes redundant, the index the search box replaces, the legend the colour scheme no longer needs. The move forbids dropping anything the surroundings do not carry: every removal must point at the thing outside that now does the job, or it is STRIP by another name.
Where it leads
Grouped under Take something away