My practice. Her practice. I’ve been practicing x. Theory and practice. See you at practice. Radical practice. Dance practice. Meditation practice. Sometimes a word seems to worm its way into every corner of life and thought, and so it is with the term “practice.” Once used philosophically to designate “doing,” in a triad with “thinking” and “making,” practice has soaked up other connotations: from political action (revolutionary praxis), to professional activity (the practice of law), to rehearsal or training (basketball practice). Contemporary aesthetic discourse tends to blend all of these meanings, with “practice” also standing in for the shift away from the artwork or medium, and toward open-ended actions, series, processes and projects. In art, politics, and everyday life, practice seems to promise a freedom from the strictures of finality and eventfulness: if it’s all just practice, then the pressure is off. Yet the turn to practice also reflects the neoliberal pressures to train oneself, to perform, and to rehearse a marketable set of skills. On this “planet of the practicing,” as Peter Sloterdijk calls it, there are winners and losers, and maybe those who fail should just have practiced a little harder.

The relevance, omnipresence, ambivalence, and obscurity of “practice” suggest that this non-concept needs to be rehearsed. This 30-minute mini-workshop will take the form of a collective exercise in semantic choreography. It will begin with a short talk, and then move into group writing exercises and responses that move across a series of vectors: practice/action, practice/tactics, practice/training, and practice/nonpractice.