Contemporary inspiration

Top (contemporary) artist reveals how to find creative inspiration

• Be cruel to animals. The skittish ones. High finance types.
• Sit in the centre of the town square and repeat the word "love" metronomically. Do this for three days without food or water. Then repeat the word "hate" for six days while eating deep fried food and drinking coke.
• Commit arson in public toilets. Without warning or fire.
• Flirt with your avatar clone. Undress it with your eyes. Then erase its legs and mouth.
  
• Go to a public library and shoot people with cliches. Fill a water pistol with milk and honey and say "for your family" (bang), "your country" (boom), "your god" (blam).
• Recall all the things you wish never to remember. Call people. Ask them to help you forget.
• Reach into a mall shopper's bag and place whatever you find in your mouth. Hold up a sign saying, "I'm taking it hostage; there's nothing you can say or do to get it back".
  
• Perform a simulated sex act with a frozen tuna fish. Whoop it up among bewildered men in gumboots.
  
• Go to the steps of parliament and jump off a 1:5000 model of the Golden Gate bridge.
• Order "a life-affirming experience" at KFC and then laugh maniacally while you clumsily put on a cockroach costume.
• Justify your goodwill to people who loathe you and will not listen. Ask whether this justifies their loathing. When it is clear they are not listening, give them smiles laced with strychnine.
• Recreate the last voyage of the Hindenburg using a plastic bag and ewok figures. Do this on the alter of an important church (e.g. The Morning Show).
  
• Walk around the city with a blank sandwich board. Ask people to promote themselves.
• Sprinkle purified water on the tombstones of violent criminals. Anoint their troubled souls. Say things such as "I love you as a monkey" and "we were all amoeba once".