PROCESS OVER PRODUCT
a method-manifesto
1 The elements
Practice is the activity of being in process.
Within practice, the process becomes itself the product, it becomes both the generative force that underlies the work, and the generated thing itself. Or, put differently, process is productive in itself, for itself.
The process appears as the way in which we create the world. It is the process that generates the world, changes it, impacts it, more than the product. The making, the production, instead of the made, the product.
When the work is committed to process, it does not matter that it does not know where it is going.
The process is always political: it always engages a way in which to be in the world.
Process is, in fact, all we have.
2 What to do
Seek to always be in process.
Engage with work that is about process.
Form/lessness and content, material and practice, are never separate. In what we take in and what we make, get interested in the visibility of process, in glimpses into the practice, the method itself.
Value work that exposes its own seams: meta-narrative or self-referential work privileges the existence of the process over that of the product, the means over the ends.
3 Why do it
Think of writing, filmmaking, and actively experimental forms of it, as an abolitionist practice: toward the abolition of genre, of the illusion of separateness.
When the content depicts the process of finding a form for itself, it feels like the revolution: it exposes the search for a shape of something we don’t yet know. The revolution is more about what happens in the search, than about arriving somewhere.
Being in process is about creating another world in the folds of this one, not waiting until “after,” not waiting for the change, but actively practicing the revolution, practicing the change within this world itself.
Making the revolution irresistible means: through writing and filmmaking, hosting the attractive expansiveness of the in-between, creating beyond the confines of this unsatisfying world by abolishing the limitations of illusory definition, of boundaries between forms, outgrowing statement to be in practice.
Process frees us as it makes us.
INSTRUCTIONS
To be a fertile person, welcome every sort of experience into your life. Do not shy away from discomfort, but be careful to not evade pleasure either. Take in the world with every sense you’ve got, don’t let any go hungry at any point — this is important. Make a habit of looking at the moon at least once a day, be attuned to whether its waxing or waning, so that your own oscillations don’t take you so much for granted.
To be a fertile person, you must let yourself be watered, seek it out then let it fill up every pore, every corner of your being with its constant and unformed shapeshifting. Surround yourself with ancestral knowledge and other fertile beings, mould yourself into the rhizomatic relations that undergird them, feed from each other’s hands, drink from each other’s sources.
To be a fertile person, laugh. Laugh at every chance you get, for laughter makes things grow (as music does), exposing their cracks and opening them up for the more unfiltered shards of light to seep out. Tell stories for the pleasure of telling stories, tell stories for meaning-making, tell stories for connection and to create something new with your self. Make things for the pleasure of making things. Do things for the process and not for the product, means over ends. Beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field, a fertile and imperfect field of selves. Harvest your own conclusions, and plant them again after allowing them to come to seed, to flower, to root system. Plant them again in a different spot, where the soil looks different and maybe smells different too. Don’t put all your trust in your eyes, they do not need to be given so much power.
To be a fertile person do all of this, and its opposite, then take a breath to watch it all grow out.