How We Practice

Beloved artist and collagist Carmen Winant takes on the issue of "practice" as it relates to art and athletics

The acclaimed American visual artist and writer Carmen Winant (born 1983) is best known for her multimedia works that center found imagery to explore representations of women. Her newest book, How We Practice, is part critical writing and part experimental essay, while also a self-portrait of Winant's life in long-distance competitive running. The book asks a single, knotty question: What is "practice"? Winant attempts to answer this by posing others, such as: What is the difference between going to a practice and having one? Are practice and theory dialectical? Does practice ever end? This project works to define the often contradictory term as it functions across contemporary art discourse, in the process offering new ways to read it. The book examines "practice" in relation to legitimacy in the newfound role of artist-as-professional and the influence of MFA programs in promoting creative work as white-collar labor. It imports influences from outside the field of art production-most notably, by looking to the world of athletics-to approach the implications, strategies and potentialities of practice vis-a-vis labor and exhaustion, repetition and pleasure, gender and rehearsal.