For Museum of Arte Útil, the Van Abbemuseum commissioned writer and theorist Stephen Wright to compile a lexicon of terms as a means to address the lexical crisis in contemporary culture. The book serves as a toolkit for naming a new form of both artistic and political subjectivity - that of usership. Divided into words that Wright feels ‘should be retired’ such as expert culture, ownership and the disinterested spectator alongside ‘emergent concepts’ like 1:1 scale, loopholes and museum 3.0, Wright introduces ‘modes of usership’ that are becoming ever more prevalent and pertinent today: hacking, gaming and the final term of the lexicon - usership, to name just three.

This copy is printed from a PDF, downloadable here

“Toward a Lexicon of Usership by Stephen Wright has emerged as the key text in the process of reclaiming of artistic competence for wider use and social effect.”
— Alistair Hudson