Open call from the Communist Gallery

we have all been pretty busy with our own projects/jobs recently so there has been little free school activity.  however we are still doing stuff so if you are interested get in touch.  in the meantime here is a call-out from the communist gallery, that shares several members with the free school…

(view as a pdf)

A Communication from Rasputin’s Severed Penis

I recently received this document, entitled The Politics of Further Education, from an individual working in the FE sector who preferred to remain anonymous.  It gets pretty Kafkaesque in places and would probably be quite funny if it wasn’t true, enjoy!

extract from email conversation:

RSP – ‘I do NOT want this going out under my name as it could go down badly should my employers (current or future) google me. But you can publish it under my pseudonym Rasputin’s Severed Penis’

JT – [reads article] it really is the description of a police state; the laws are so excessive that everyone is compelled to break them continuously, in which case punishment is no longer for failure to obey the ostensible laws but for failing to make the correct gestures of obedience, the crime with which you are initially charged is entirely arbitrary and incidental.

RSP – Completely agree with your description of a police state. Everything seems to be getting more and more bizarre and the symbolic fictions seem to be increasingly detaching from any mooring in reality. As the pendulum of real power swings from West to East the West clings increasingly fervently to its ideological constructs, which are now completely, hopelessly fractured and inconcomitant… and up to now we’ve only had the good bit of capitalism. Oh Fuck.

Pippa Koszerek’s Article on Alternative Art Schools

Here is a link to Pippa Koszerek’s article for Artists Newsletter discussing alternative art school projects.

Message from The Copenhagen Free University

All power to the free universities of the future

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

by COPENHAGEN FREE UNIVERSITY

The Copenhagen Free University was an attempt to reinvigorate the emancipatory aspect of research and learning, in the midst of an ongoing economisation of all knowledge production in society. Seeing how education and research were being subsumed into an industry structured by a corporate way of thinking, we intended to bring the idea of the university back to life. By life, we mean the messy life people live within the contradictions of capitalism. We wanted to reconnect knowledge production, learning and skill sharing to the everyday within a self-organised institutional framework of a free university. Our intention was multi-layered and was of course partly utopian, but also practical and experimental. We turned our flat in Copenhagen into a university by the very simple act of declaring ‘this is a university’. By this transformative speech act the domestic setting of our flat became a university. It didn’t take any alterations to the architecture other than the small things needed in terms of having people in your home staying over, presenting thoughts, researching archival material, screening films, presenting documents and works of art. Our home became a public institution dedicated to the production process of communal knowledge and fluctuating desires.

Design a banner drop

If you are, like me, at work why not design a banner drop for the Really Free School – http://reallyfreeschool.org/?p=415

The Sound of the Police

A bit of an aside, but I just thought that this picture needed sharing…

Police join protests in Tunisia – Africa – Al Jazeera English

Whoop Whoop!