SALT Galata will host Paris-based writer and art theorist Stephen Wright for a talk titled "Usership: Tales of Life Onboard" on March 10.

The past several decades have witnessed a usological turn in which users have come to play key roles as producers of information, meaning and value. In this talk, 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 discuss the means through which it enables an escape from institutional, ideological and ontological captures. He will illustrate how art practitioners are seeking "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 open to all.

Wright is a Paris-based writer and co-director of "Document & Contemporary Art," a post-graduate artistic research program at Ecole Europeenne Superieure de l'Image. He is the author of "Toward a Lexicon of Usership" (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum) published in 2013.