Curious Practice is an open structure for play and creativity where a collective process is formed to challenge individual and competitive norms within the arts. As a long-term research project, it poses the question: How can we collectively spark creativity to support different individual practices and find alternatives for a rivalry-based economy?

In October 2025, the residency space of NICC opened up as a place for research, experimentation, and reflection through collective drawing games or protocols. Where Liselore Vandeput invited Johanne Morgat Shan, Shoshana Walfish, Eszter Némethi, Joris Hilfert, and Elias Driesen to bring a shared drawing protocol that would propose an invitation to a collaborative form of practice and play.

These first steps explored the different forms of working collaboratively as visual artists, from the anonymity of working in series with a dozen people on the same result, to the invitation of working on your own practices through proposed drawing exercises. As the different forms of collaboration unfolded, underlying emotions, insecurities, and pressures shifted from private experience to collective discussion. They were being recognised as something inherently connected to the artistic labor and seen as the burden that comes with the work.

During the residency, the different protocols were shown in the NICC vitrine, as part of their NICC vitrine take-over program.