Precarious living and working conditions are constantly being normalized at a social and political level and have thus become a fundamental instrument of governing societies. More significantly, these conditions reset the value and the production of art in a neoliberal capitalist future. This lecture will address how contemporary practices of art and life attempt to counter and question such an accelerated onslaught. How is permission granted for artists to resist, to withdraw, and re-claim their rights to the autonomous field of nothingness?

Dr. Stephen Wilson is a writer, practitioner and theorist who programmes, curates and lectures in contemporary art and is currently postgraduate theory coordinator and senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts, London. He is editing three new volumes: Memories of the Future – On Countervision, The Persistence of Taste: Art, Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu and Where Theory Belongs, based on a series of lectures and conversations held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. He recently completed a sabbatical in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York.

Image: Lee Lozano, Ream (1964), Oil on Canvas: 78 x 96 inches.