Questioning the very notion of usership, Silvio Lorusso's research project tries to intersect multiple levels of user agency: from the minimal agency afforded by gestural interactivity (click, scroll, swipe), to the high-level agency which requires the invisibility of the system employed. Going beyond the reductive model of data production and exchange, ‘The User Condition’ is centred on the question: What are the online realities today of the user-as-laborer, the user-as-artisan and the user-as-politician?
The interests of Silvio Lorusso combine technology, design, education, publishing, entrepreneurship and precarity. He deals with them by means of writing and making. In 2018, he published the book ENTREPRECARIAT: Siamo tutti imprenditori. Nessuno è al sicuro (Krisis). Silvio is an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures of Amsterdam and a researcher at Willem De Kooning Academy. He’s also a member of varia, a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology, and part of the editorial board of Italian graphic design magazine Progetto Grafico. He holds a Ph.D. in Design Sciences from the School of Doctorate Studies – Iuav University of Venice. Since 2013, he manages the Post-Digital Publishing Archive. He lives in Rotterdam and lectures internationally.