TALK with Tyler Coburn: A reading of Richard Roe

Richard Roe is the fictional memoir of a legal person, published by Sternberg Press and designed by Luke Gould. The name is one of the oldest used in English law when the real name of someone is withheld, or when a corpse can’t be identified. Richard Roe is a known unknown, a one-size-fits-all, a potentially everyone and actually no one.

Divided into seven fragmentary sections, this memoir gives voice to the legal fictions that creep around the margins of selfhood—and that increasingly dictate the terms of politics and economics. On the occasion of this event, Coburn will read excerpts from the book exploring concepts of personhood from legal, psychological, and metaphysical realms.

Richard Roe is a multi-part project commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and curated by Cory Scozzari. As part of this project, Coburn has legally named an orchid hybrid Aranda Richard Roe.