Events
WCSCD 2025/2026 educational program lecture series
Lecture by Toby Upson
A practice of Artwriting
Time October 3d , 2025, 19:00
Venue: SKUP Novi Sad
Folding A.V. Marraccini's approach to criticism into Anne Carson’s notion of desire as well as Bruce Hainley’s practice, this lecture will explore 'commensal' approaches to writing. Rather than a mode of writing 'about' a thing, 'writing to' or 'with' a thing, this approach recognises the innate agency of a thing, asking a writer to enter into a relationship with it and to write that space. This is not about making the abstract residues of a dreamt-up relationship visible; it is about manifesting the affective spark that runs between bodies, thereby allowing others to enter into this relationship or at least to know why it has come to be. In this way, writers embracing a commensal approach work through an essayistic sensibility, giving this relational space enough of a body to withstand a trial. Whenever I mention the essay form, I am always reminded of the Goethe quote that opens Adorno's ‘The Essay as Form’: “Destined to see what is illuminated, not the light.” By dwelling in a space of desire, writers embracing a commensal approach do this illuminative work inside out.
Toby Upson is the mentor of the WCSCD educational program 2025/2026, and his lecture is organized as part of the educational program public encounters in collaboration with SKUP and Sok Cooperative.
Lecture will be in English
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Toby Üpson is a writer currently based in Glasgow (Scotland, UK). Stemming from an interest in how we/he experiences everyday life, Üpson's practices uses forms of artwriting and creative nonfiction to explore the interdependencies of being.
As an arts worker, Üpson's writing has appeared in international publications including Art Monthly, e-flux Education, émergent magazine, FAD_ and Garageland, he has also produced commissioned texts for artists, museums and galleries such as Belmacz, Camden Arts Center, Charleston, the Gerald Moore Gallery as well as Cooke Latham Gallery, amongst others. Alongside these more standard formats, Üpson’s creative writing has been published by La chaise jaune and Pilot Press as well as through galleries and museums such as The Warburg Institute.
Between 2023 and 2024 Üpson was a Faculty Member of the Metabolic Museum-University based at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, where he co-convened the debating chamber “BREATH — Figureheads and Emancipation”.