Practice

The practice is the activation of the research, the moment the research is put out into the world, allowed to breath and breed with what surrounds it. The research only comes to life in the practice, demanding nour-ishment, nurture, and attention in order to thrive and transform. Every practice produces an offspring in the form of consequences, traces, that in their turn demand attention to transform into new practices or mutations of the old ones. The research can only be kept alive by experiencing its presence in the present, in the do-ing. Through repetition its potential appears, until it grows legs and starts to move away from you, walking right out of its case into the world. The power of the practice is measured by its capacity to survive this move from its in-vitro setting into other environments. For example, by being adopted by other researchers, entering into the public domain, or inspiring cross-breedings, monster ideas or breaking long-encrusted
habits. A practice is always moving, even if standing still. A researcher's: relation to the practice is often a dysfunctional one. In other words, if the practice doesn't talk back, it is probably time to try another one. The concreteness of the practice is what constitutes its unexpected twists and turns. Its resistance and inflexibility to adapt to the ideas or intuitions that produced them is exactly what excites the friction needed to bring out the unthought thought.