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Practice
Boon M., Levine G., The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2018. 240 pp. Type: Book (978-0-262535-39-7)
Date Reviewed: Jan 27 2020

In his book Outliers [1], Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly makes the claim that 10,000 hours of practice is necessary to achieve mastery of a skill, that is, 40 hours per week for five years (the minimal time and effort to complete a master’s degree and PhD). This is the kind of practice most people envision when they hear the term “practice” in the context of learning an academic discipline or learning a musical instrument. The word “practice” is also commonly used to describe the professional activities of a physician, dentist, or lawyer. This book looks at a more expansive definition of practice, that is, in the context of contemporary art.

This volume consists of 87 essays from 91 contributors, ranging from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Yoko Ono, divided into four sections: “Thinking, Making, Doing,” “Collective Action,” “Forms of Repetition,” and “Discipline(s).” The average essay is approximately two to three pages long.

The traditional concepts of practice are more prominent in the first section, “Thinking, Making, Doing.” However, many contemporary artists have more expansive ideas about what practice means, as part of or having been replaced by a project. A “project” is a personal endeavor that may or may not result in a tangible work of art. Rather, it is an artist’s personal journey of process in the arts. Whether anything concrete results may be a peripheral matter. Some of the more thought-provoking contributions in this section are Adrian Piper’s essay on what it means to “do art,” Louis Althuser and Giorgio Agamben’s essay on the classical philosophical definitions of praxis and poiesis, Lygia Clark’s essay on her personal journey from artist to psychotherapist, Boris Groys’ essay on the place of documentation of the artist’s practice versus the art produced, and Winnie Won Ying Wong’s essay on the artist community of Dafen, China.

The second section, “Collective Action,” emphasizes the artist’s role in producing tangible art and the desire to work with other artists to support and promote their work. The artist as the self-absorbed individual is absent in this section. The philosophy is fundamentally revolutionary in a cultural and, perhaps, political sense in repressive regimes like that of the Argentine dictatorship. Several standout essays include Pablo Suarez on artistic activity in Argentina during the dictatorship; Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro on the rehabilitation of an old mansion by a group of women artists; Okwui Enwezor on village artwork in Senegal; Alain Badiou’s critique of Leninism; and Rashid Araeen with a broad perspective of art that includes the physical landscape and even desalination.

Next, “Forms of Repetition,” overlaps with the material in the two previous sections, but with a somewhat different emphasis on the details of specific artistic endeavors. The most noteworthy essays in this section illustrate the overlap. Julia Bryan-Wilson’s essay is on discovering how difficult it is to learn and perform a choreographed dance. Fiona Tan describes her project in which she filmed an almost undocumented event at a Japanese temple. Peter Sloterdijk distinguishes between practice and mere repetition. Jennifer Biddle describes the Tjanpi Desert Weavers of Australia.

The last section, “Discipline(s),” is perhaps the most uneven. The most interesting essays are a century-old piece by Mahatma Gandhi describing the beginning of his work in nonviolent action when he was in South Africa, and Kathy Acker’s analysis of the language of body building. Others range, in my opinion, from the bizarre and irrelevant to the offensive (is self-mutilation or repeated self-induced abortion art?). Productive practice involves discipline. It was disappointing not to read more about the discipline required in a discipline.

I believe that this book is relevant to the computing community. We do not merely produce hardware devices or software systems that work. There is an artistic component to what we do. We intuitively appreciate well-designed and robust devices and software systems (for example, many of the Apple products), and grumble about hardware devices that are poorly designed (for example, black buttons with black labels on black cases) or software systems that interfere with work.

It is always useful to step outside the confines of the disciplines in which we work to see ourselves and the contexts in which we spend many of our waking hours. If a library copy is available, take a few minutes to read some of the essays. Pablo Picasso succinctly stated the value of practice (in art or anything else) when he said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Reviewer:  Anthony J. Duben Review #: CR146855 (2006-0127)
1) Gladwell, M. Outliers: the story of success. Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 2008.
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