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press: "rirkrit tiravanija, cooking pad thai with his students"

I don’t really think of what I do as an artistic practice. There’re no boundaries or limits. All the ways I fill a day — even if I’m doing nothing at all — are one and the same. I don’t have a studio. I don’t wake up and go to a place where I sit down and make things. I just do what I need or want to do, and throughout that process, I think about various possible works. Everything informs everything else.

For the past six years or so, I’ve taught a class at Columbia University called Making Without Objects. Technically, it’s an advanced undergraduate sculpture course, but we don’t really produce anything. I’m always looking at what’s going on in the world at large and trying to imagine how a young artist might experience that. The students have made films for YouTube. We’ve done projects on Instagram. Once, I rented a plot of land in the virtual reality game Second Life and had everyone build a sculpture there. I encourage the students to think conceptually and create things in their heads more than in any material sense. Really, the name of the class should’ve been How Not to Do Anything, but the university said it sounded counter to the idea of going to college.