after us, after use

I called this blog "after use" because it is an anagram of features, the name of the Kunsthalle Vermittlung series. Now I see it serves another purpose too. Writing about these two exhibitions has shown me just how much we look at the world and its people, land and resources, images and objects and everything primarily as elements to be used, and how limiting, even damaging, this attitude is. Things in the world are useful, to us, or else we do not value them at all. Even art does not entirely escape this logic. But it is a space in which objects, experiences, images can appear without use-value being their only value.

In the west, we have of course begun to see that there is a problem with this attitude. The world and its resources are not just there for us, for our use. Now - bravo! we recognise that they should be used not just once, but re-used again. But using things twice is no answer: perhaps it is even twice as bad. The cultures of the future, those who survive and thrive, will have moved beyond this mindset. Perhaps they won't be thinking about use at all.

They will be post-use societies. After use.