To celebrate the release of the book A User’s manual to Claire Fontaine, we kindly invite you to meet Claire Fontaine in conversation with Anita Chari moderated by Tom McDonough.

A User’s Manual to Claire Fontaine explores the work of the feminist conceptual artist collective Claire Fontaine through the lens of her theoretical and political innovations, both inside and outside the context of contemporary art. Theorizing the ways in which Claire Fontaine’s experimental approach can illuminate a more haptic, embodied approach to the practice of critical theory, this book delineates a series of theoretical techniques and procedures at the core of the art- ist’s practice, among them defunctionalization, Institutional Critique, human strike, tactile mimesis, desubjectivation, détournement, magic materialism, and feminist materialism.

Political theorist and somatic practitioner Anita Chari illuminates a larger field of practice for those working within the world of critical theory with this “user’s manual” that seeks to reinvest theory with use value, drawing on the resources of critical contemporary art to engage with critical theory in ways that can become embodied, sensate, and tactile, and thus inform contemporary political practices.

“Fluently traversing critical theory, political philosophy, and artistic discourse, this is a brilliant, engaging book on the art and writings of Claire Fontaine—‘readymade artist’ and conceptual provocateur—as well as a vital elucidation of paths toward a transformative mode of living in the present. Writing with and through rather than, as usual, ‘on’ her subject, Chari provides her readers with a ‘how-to’ manual to Claire Fontaine’s practice, finding in it a model for embodied resistance.”

Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century

Anita Chari is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. She is the author of A User’s Manual to Claire Fontaine (Lenz, 2024), which explores the implications of the artist Claire Fontaine’s work for critical theory and practice.

Tom McDonough is an art historian and critic who specializes in modern and contemporary art, critical theory and visual and cultural studies. He is currently professor of Art History at Binghamton University – SUNY and has also taught at numerous other institutions, including Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley.

McDonough is the author of several books on art and cultural theory, including “The Beautiful Language of My Century”: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968 (2007), which examines the relationship between language and politics in postwar French art and activism, and Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (2002). His research and writing focus on the intersections of art, politics, and social change, with a particular emphasis on the role of avant-garde art and artists in shaping contemporary culture.