Threeing is a practice developed by the American artist Paul Ryan.
2 April 2025
Paul Ryan’s practice of “Threeing” is a relational, performative protocol for three people that offers an alternative to binary or adversarial dynamics. Threeing is a structured interaction where three participants alternate roles — initiator, responder, and mediator — in a cooperative rather than competitive process. It is a “relational circuit”, in which three people take turns playing three fundamental roles. These roles are based on three categories of doing: firstness, secondness and thirdness.
1. Firstness: impulse. YELLOW.
2. Secondness: response. RED.
3. Thirdness: mediation. BLUE.
Introduction
Paul Louis Ryan (1943–2013) was an American video artist and communications theorist. His video art encompassed water studies and demonstrations of what Ryan called “a yoga of relationships” or Threeing.1 We had wanted to experiment w/ threeing because of our interest in the (role of) in-between. We came across this exercise through Erik Hagoort, a co-tutor with my wife at Master Institute for Visual Cultures.
We executed this workform on march 23, with two of my co-students. We each took all three roles for about 2mins (Ryan suggests 5 but we didn't have that much time.
Looking back
° 1stness: We ran, almost as if to escape, not to be caught? Rushed as if initiative implies constant motion.
° 2ndness: most emphatic role. Caring.
° 3rdness: most exhausting role. Intens. Mediating is hard work.
Follow up
° invite girls feedback/insights
° itterate in Denice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan_(video_artist) ↩
