Blogs

During the last 15 years the contemporary art world has grown extensively. The term globalisation is often used to describe this process, especially when the explosion of mega events such as biennales and art fairs are discussed. But globalisation is also about competition between regions, nations and continents.

On a higher educational level, this is very well reflected in the so-called Bologna process: a political attempt to make Europe and its surroundings a more attractive milieu and competitive force, economically speaking.

The Copenhagen Free University ceased its activities by the end of   2007 and in connection with the abolition of the institution we have   written the following statement:

New York Union Semester is an innovative program, providing the opportunity to learn about organized labor in a challenging environment both inside and outside the classroom. As interns, students learn the inner workings of organized labor while they make a contribution to the important work unions do. In the classroom, students analyze the experience they are gaining in the field, by studying the U.S. Labor Movement past and present.

Too many conferences organized presently by art academies draw attention to the recent developments of PhD trajectories in art. Yet, an even more important issue today pertains to the specificity of Ma programs of art academies.

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth are backing a scheme to make publicly funded education materials freely available on the internet.

The backers of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, announced on Tuesday, said the initiative is designed to echo the disruptive effect that open source had on the proprietary software world by opening up the development and distribution of educational materials.

For seven weeks, a massive movement has been growing within the French University system, uniting professors, students and staff in a struggle against Sarkozy's new university reform law, the law concerning the "Liberties and Responsabilities of the Universities" (LRU).

The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis, with the support of University administration and personnel, has been on "active strike", offering alternative classes and workshops open to all. Today the movement is at a turning point, revealing the depth of the crisis.
http://universiteparis8engreveactive.org/

Das HAU/Hebbel-am-Ufer Berlin veranstaltet im Rahmen des thematischen Wochenendes "RE-EDUCATION einen Online- Videowettbewerb. Aus der Ankündigung:

The mailinglist "edu-factory" http://www.edu-factory.org has opened a second round of discussions which will last from now till the end of february. The initiators of the debate on the educational factory and the world of the university have summed up the experiences of the first round as follows:

The present system of artistic education and research is striving to become connected to the political dynamics of the hyper-dramatization of the rhetoric pertaining to the contemporary art scenes. The transition atmosphere characteristic to the academic spaces reflects the experiencing of a transition from the use of one type of knowledge to the inventing of a new one. The status of the teachers and students is questioned according to the redefining of art [and its functioning], of the artists [and their positioning], and of the public [and its involvement].

"Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they were put off by restrictions these companies wanted to place on the new digital collections." Heiko Recktenwald forwarded this article to the nettime-l mailinglist.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/19/business/19library.php

On the mailinglist nettime i came across a message that introduces a new strategy to increase the efficiency of anti-piracy advertisement which is apparently ignored by teenagers. The proposal is to introduce a copyright education curriculum to elementary school children...

The contribution “Media arts education summit - what is to be done? will be soon online again. summit. non aligned initiatives in education culture, Berlin 24-28 May 07, will be soon online again.

Daniela Reimann
http://www.daniela-reimann.de
Media Arts Education Blog: http://daniela-reimann.de/media-arts-education

Muthanna
In Wehr's Arabic German Dictionary I looked up Muthanna, the term Munir Fasheh introduced during his talk.
Below I will provide the links to his article on his mother's math as well as his reaction to the Summit.
>> PDF Muthanna (Arabic - German)

Reflections on what happened sunday evening
by Munir Fasheh
http://summit.kein.org/node/894

Article about my illiterate mother's mathematics,

I would like to suggest that the summit was a successful failure in that it failed to produce a final declaration, but did so for the purpose to create maximal learning output. A learning (instead of educating, lamenting, or politicising) communication could first of all take place thanks to the social organisation in the form of garbage can structure. This is what Cohen and March describe as organisational anarchy, where solutions are generated for yet unknown problems, and therefore assembled like garbage in a can for their time being useless.

Ein Vertreter der “Radical Pedagogy” Roger I. Simon spricht von der Erziehung als einem “Projekt der Möglichkeit”: “Eine Aktivität, die beiden Bedingungen angehört, den realen der Gegenwart und denen, die noch im Entstehen sind.” Ein Merkmal emanzipatorischer Erziehung könnte in diesem Sinne darin bestehen, dass sie nicht Selbstzweck ist, das sie sich nicht mit der Gegenwart und dem Bestehenden begnügt. Sie versteht sich in diesem Sinne als eine Praxis der Arbeit an einer anderen Möglichkeit. Diese Praxis ist jedoch weder utopistisch idealistisch noch messianisch abwartend.

[our contribution to Networked Politics, Rosa Luxemburg Fundation,
Berlin, 3-5 June, 2007]

Ten Theses on Non-Democratic Electronics: Organized Networks Updated

By Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter

I was so inept in putting a picture into the first version of this blog that I lost it altogether, so this is a hasty rewrite of an already hasty posting. I was letting off steam,and I forgot for a rare moment about how one of my best ways to do this is not to write an angry posting, but to think about some art.

a propos BOLOGNA:
I just received this link via the rekombinant list - it's a humorous and intelligent reaction on the current circumstances in the european university systems, in that case - occasionally? - Bologna...
follow the link! - i am sorry for the non italian speaking people -
http://www.unibologna.eu/www.unibo.it/Portale/videofreecredits.html
best regards!
Ba

This presentation took place in a discussion group where reflexions and narratives of certain actions and mobilizations in other contexts were exchanged.
The forms of action of which we spoke are varied : ground action, mediatization and relay of information, documentary work, public sensibilization.
The exchanges were in french with a german translation.
Working group Sunday, May 27 1630-1800 HAU 1 foyer 1st tier

- Self-organization, self-education in the collective and the spaces of exchange

(*) Cf the last talk of the last plenary session starting by "I want to talk a little bit further about Brecht" and which could never go further.

Brecht is a keyword - A post in progress

- Bologne
http://www.education.gouv.fr/realisations/education/superieur/bologne.ht...
http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Docs/France/990719_Bologna_Declaration-...
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processus_de_Bologne
http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/HigherEducation/EHEA2010/BolognaPedestrians_fr....

India
electricity is open source>

public declaration:
used politicallly
claiming streets
lighting people
subtle communication betw
people who control the power
what you take permission for and what you end up
doing.

Large lighting piece.
They proposed a declaration to the city.
they said they would light up some building.
then they cahnged the delcaration and made it
more interesting.

but it started by getting contact and access
to the post office. to decorate it, then they
evoloved it to decarate the buildings next to it.
and etc.

Second History Lesson:
Re-education
Nora Sternfeld + Peter Grabher

What a history lesson could be for a perspective of the present.

They will present a period after the nazi breakdown.

Peter: historian
colelctive for screnning and discusion
politial cinema
he is at paris where he does phd in middle eaast
conflict in essay films.

showing 3 re-education films:
guided by questions and nazi education in this
context.

VHS tapes. apologize for bad quality.

context: two phases after may 1945
of re-education;
ph. 1: allied in their

Poetry Hacklab and the project Ackademeia. The clip presented, by the title of "Poetry - a fast introduction to hack culture from a southern perspective" is available for download here(23 Mb. .mp4) . You can right click and "save as". Use VLC to view.

and the audio of the presentation of the Akademeia project and of the network will be soon available.

May 25, 2007
Anarchitektur, aristide antonas, sandi hilal, nikolaus hirsch, john palmesino, alsessandro petti, srdjan jovanovic weiss, eyal weizman

which architecture
learning from is learning fromsomething else.

architecutre without architects.
in order to break bonds of modernist.

learning "from"
transformation of information fo ideas into tools.
dedicated research
geopolitical, urban ___situations.
still haunted by that promise that a better building
or better practive will emerge.

arch is no longer observing and speculating outside of itself,

we put up the quad with surveillance views with feedback to both beamers and tvs.

One congress less (a summit instead)

There is a sentence by Brian Massumi I like and which fits quit well into this context:

„An individual live is a serialized, capitalistic mini-crisis, a desaster that bears your name.“

I would like to thank all of you for coming along this evening. And to thank Nora, Florian, Nicolas and Irit for their presentations. Afterwards, I will pass onto Susanne Lang who has been responsible for ensuring this project reaches this moment.

Tonight, I will restrict myself to elaborate upon two of the core ideas to which my colleagues have already drawn attention.

The first is the idea of authorisation. Florian has talked about this in terms of self–authorisation. Irit talked in terms of self-empowerment, in terms of people gathered around curiousity

Ladies and Gentlemen,
dear SUMMIT delegates and SUMMIT contributers,

it is my utmost and sincerest pleasure to welcome you to the first SUMMIT non aligned initiatives in education culture.

I am supposed to deliver a speech since a summit is usually opened by a speech. But of course such a speech would be un-speechable. Who am I that I could possibly take the chance to claim the right to open such a thing as a summit? For whom could I speak -- hardly for what is supposed to be myself? Whom should I represent? Why should you believe such a performance is relevant at all?

I want to welcome all of you to this summit of non-aligned initiatives in education culture. What all of us will be trying to invent during the next four days is a particular form of gathering: a summmit. A summit is not simply a conference where people arrive and then depart without anything happening in-between. A summit in our sense is not a counter-summit either, for it is not intended to be simply reactive.

Sorry for publishing this under themes instead in section on "practical issues",
but I am looking to get a lift to ... AMSTERDAM!

preffered arrival time to AMsterdam is Sunday May27th evening or Monday May28th noon - latest!