Derek Horton is an artist, writer and teacher. Following an early career in school and community-based arts education and social activism, he has exhibited, traveled and taught widely during the last thirty years. He works with language and manufacture, and is interested in art practices as morbid symptoms of their social, economic, political and ideological contexts of production and exchange, and in ephemeral, immaterial, nomadic and improvisatory approaches to cultural production. He worked as the Director of Research at Leeds Metropolitan University's School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design until December 2007. He co-founded /seconds with Peter Lewis in 2005 and, with him, was its executive editor for its first seven editions.