Talk: Stephen Wright
Usership: Tales of Life Onboard

Salt Galata

March 10, 2018 14.00

Wodiczko Arteutil Krzysztof Wodiczko, <a href="http://www.arte-util.org/projects/homeless-vehicle/"target="_none"><i>Homeless Vehicle</i></a> (1987-1989)
The Arte Útil Archive
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Homeless Vehicle (1987-1989)
The Arte Útil Archive
Floor 1, Workshop IV

The past several decades have witnessed the “usological turn,” in which users have come to play a key role as producers of information, meaning, and value. In this talk, art theorist Stephen Wright will discuss the emergence of usership as an alternative political and aesthetic subjectivity in the context of contemporary challenges in cultural and artistic spheres.

Surveying a broad range of applications of usership in theory, language, and action, Wright will elaborate on the means through which it enables an escape from institutional, ideological and ontological captures. He will illustrate how art practitioners are seeking for “use value,” in ways that create an opportunity to question three conceptual edifices of the contemporary order: spectatorship, expert culture and ownership.

The talk will be held in English and is open to all.

Stephen Wright is a Paris-based writer, and co-director of “Document & Contemporary Art,” a post-graduate artistic research program at École Européenne Supérieure de l’Image (ÉESI). He is the author of Toward a Lexicon of Usership (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum), which was published in 2013.
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