In a conversation with dOCUMENTA (13) Agents Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, New York-based video artist Paul Ryan talks about the theoretical and biographical background to his work, about formative experiences while being an assistant to Marshall McLuhan, and about his role within the video group Raindance and their magazine Radical Software-and about how all these influences shaped his desire to connect his artistic practice with revolutionary social action. Ryan's idea of Threeing lies at the center. Based on Charles Sanders Peirce's phenomenological categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness, Threeing is a voluntary practice of relating, in which three people take turns playing three roles. The conversation is complemented by a detailed appendix with illustrated texts on Threeing and on Ryan's concept of the Relational Circuit.