This chapter was initially given at 'Monica Ross: A Symposium', British Library, Nov 2014 (ticketed). My contribution both starts and ends with the assertion that encountering the work, words and pedagogy of Monica Ross was to meet a conviction that art is a vocation, a calling. With the commodification of art and the cultural industry ever more present, Monica Ross gives us this question and makes it urgent and necessary to address: What today is the vocation of art? Drawing upon the messianic thinking of Benjamin and St Paul, and via the work of Agamben and importantly in relation to the Ross’s recitals and performances (60 in total) of The Declaration of Human Rights, this essay brings this question into focus as it also foregrounds the question of a new use of art. It explores a non-utilitarian notion of use with which comes an inseparability between the object and subject of use.

NB: In 2000, Monica Ross contributed to seminar series at the Royal College of Art organised by myself and called Images of Thought. The series became published as two small volumes under the same title. For both the performance and published text, the debate centred upon the still photographic image and the ‘problem’ of documenting performance art.