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This article discusses the compulsion to consider research as a symptom of the transformations taking place in the organization of society. From this point of view, this appears, ideologically speaking, to be akin to the discourse that is currently structuring society in the name of the “knowledge economy.” By blurring the distinction between institutions and activities, the conflation of research and innovation is devitalizing practice and disempowering communities, both academic and artistic. This is a danger that must be faced by inventing new collective forms of research, embodied in a novel laboratory concept that we outline in this article.