Usership

In June, as part of Critical Practice, I co-organised a one-day workshop to host political philosopher Stephen Wright. In preparation for the workshop we formed a Reading Group and collectively read and discussed Towards a Lexicon of Usership (pdf)

At the marathon seminar, we explored the transformative potential of Stephen's ideas of usership, escapology, gleaning, slackspace, spectatorship, working on a 1:1 scale and much else besides. We contributed to the 'retooling of the conceptual lexicon' for producing contemporary art and its institutions.

 #StephenWright brilliant, marathon semiar on #use #users and #usership with #CriticalPractice @CCWGradSchool pic.twitter.com/tJPsL2z5gt

— Neil Cummings (@neilarise) June 21, 2014

The workshop is part of Critical Practice's ongoing research into evaluation, there are overlaps with Reading Things: the alibi of use and the hacked Hackers Manifesto