One of the practices I've adopted is a form of instructional poetry, in the spirit of fluxus scripts. Sort of recipes or workflows for experiences of clearing and possibly unlearning some of the colonial-capitalistic cultural conditioning and innate self-centeredness we human-animals carry. I'm looking for instructions that point at things I feel are real, but might have become invisible. Side products of our lifestyle, unconscious thinking patterns that direct our behavior, forms of interwovenness in the natural world.

I write a lot of instructions for my self. I'm a little neurotic like that. It helps me stay on track in the everyday and my work. I do it to stay curious, to remember to direct my attention to things I find important and life-affirming. I'm too easily absorbed by petty things. A good set of instructions help me root into a bigger picture. A recipe works like a belief system. It lists things that are good and how the elements should interact for something yummy to manifest.

A good recipe is based on knowledge of the origins and the qualities of the raw materials. It includes local and seasonal knowledge. Some recipes are specific to a time of harvest. They demand the one following the instructions to be located in a space and a time, to pay attention to the environment and the natural cycles. I don't believe in universal recipes. There is no recipe for life. What works for somebody somewhere might not work for me. Nowadays there is an illusion of knowledge and practices that can be universally applied. As if life could be managed and enjoyed by the same standard means by everybody everywhere.

The risk of an instruction becoming a dogma is real. It can be blinding, make you dumb. Recipes are coincidental for big part anyways. They're examples of how things could be. Most of the time you can replace or do without the ingredients you don't have in your cupboard. (Unless you're cooking acid or building a space-shuttle maybe) Writing down an instruction is a little dangerous this way. It can become limiting, the only imaginable way to proceed. For this reason, I think it's good for instructions to contain something impossible. A stage of the process that requires supernatural powers or an ingredient that is really hard to get. Makes you think a little bit.

Instructions for Reverse Shoplifting came to me in a specific environment, in the setting of Reposaari. It's a site-specific recipe for an action that takes space in a parking lot, a supermarket, and a graveyard on the island. In global times it is possible to enjoy shoplifted and reverse shoplifted Costa Rican bananas in many countries. However, setting the action in Reposaari gives the culinary experience a specific flavor.