CFU says "we have won!"

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:

In the spring of 2001 we demanded: All Power to the Copenhagen Free   University. We had just opened a free university in our home in the   Norrebro district of Copenhagen. This impossible demand was put   forward in the form of a manifesto intended to provoke and unsettle   the collective imaginary and open new potential paths of action. We   wanted to take power.

The manifesto was written in a very specific socio-political context   preceding September 11th 2001. It was written in a mood of   confidence. With the Copenhagen Free University we wanted to reclaim   power and help undermine the so-called 'knowledge economy' - a term   used to describe the new economy that was consolidating around the   turn of the millennium. The unrolling of the knowledge economy was a   part of the neoliberal campaign for control orchestrated by the   financial and political elites and the term made clear what kind of   ambition was at the core of this campaign: the financialisation of   our brains, our nervous systems, our subjectivity, our desires, our   selves.

In the midst of the unrolling of this economy, we intended to push   the limits and develop new means to stem the invasion of our life by   the abstract calculations of capitalist valorisation. It was our   intention to picket the social factory, preventing an imminent and   clearly hostile take over. We opened our flat as a space for social   research and exploration within a context shaped by the hard material   facts, fluctuating passions and affective instabilities that   characterized our daily life. We wanted to turn the tide. We took   power by using the available means: a mattress became a residency,   the bedroom a cinema, the living room a meeting space, the workroom   an archive, our flat became a university. Opening our private space   turned it into a public institution. The Copenhagen Free University   was a real collective phantom, hovering.

At the same time, many art workers in their hunt for a new function   in society and new sources of income were getting involved in the   corridors and boardrooms of the companies and corporations of the   neoliberal economy. The artists acted as consultants and legitimators   in branding and business activities relating to new ethical and   social responsibility schemes and human resource management. The   anger and hopes of the revolutionary avant garde had been deemed   naive and artists were adapting to a new landscape of immaterial   production. This told a sad story about society's lost ability to dream.

When turning to the education sector we saw that universities across   the globe were increasingly restructuring and adapting to corporate   practices. Ideas of autonomy and independence in research were   quickly falling out of fashion. Not only was the usability of the   knowledge produced in universities becoming a contested area, the   distribution of intellectual property was becoming a key lever in the   new economy. The Copenhagen Free University made it clear that   universities do not necessarily have to reflect the hegemonic   structures of society; universities could be organised and based in   and around the everyday knowledge and material struggles structuring   people's lives. Universities could in fact counter the hegemonic   structures. We tried to open a new front at least.

By reclaiming one of society's central means of knowledge production,   the machinery of the university, it was actually possible to create   spaces that were not based on capitalist valorisation. For us 'free'   mean gratis and liberated. Everybody can open their own university,   it is a simple action. By self-organising universities people can, in   a very practical way, counter the free market restructuring of the   official universities by re-appropriating the concept of the   university as a place for the sharing of knowledge among students (as   the first universities were defined). With the Copenhagen Free   University we wanted to break into the university as one of the   imaginary institutions of neoliberal society and create a new image,   and a new potential path of the possible.

Six months after we opened the CFU, 9-11 happened and the War on   Terror pushed the anti-capitalist movement onto the defensive, having   to react to all the emerging wars unfolding in the following years.   The global civil war was invading our lives and imaginations. This   broke the back of the anti-capitalist movement right after the   victories of London, Seattle, Gothenburg and Genoa and turned it into   the much more vague so-called Social Movement whose objectives became   reformist and unclear. Despite this, arrays of de-centralised and   self-organised initiatives were still developing and proliferating at   grassroots level. Swarms of projects engaging in developing   alternative ways of life, building on friendship, extending networks,   and with clear cultural, social and political aims, were still coming   into being. These community based initiatives were usually resisting   formalisation and avoiding the spectacularisation of politics through   the useless and pacifying academic seminars, art exhibitions and   publications that have increasingly characterized the mediation of   critical culture in recent years. We also checked into this circuit   occasionally and got a taste of the forces that are producing   schizophrenia and resignation in us.

During our life at the CFU we have encountered the way in which the   authority of the word 'university' works on many levels. On a very   practical level, people from across the globe started to write to us,   applying as students and lecturers; people were using the CFU as a   means of getting into increasingly privatized archives, people were   using the CFU to obtain job references, people were using the CFU as   a means to get into the fortified first world . . . These and other   incidents make plain how embedded the authority of institutions is in   the global imaginary. But it also tells us how fragile ruling power   is when you play with its language and its basic definitions. The   drive to self-determination despite the neoliberal knowledge economy   was also demonstrated by all our sister self-organised universities   that have mushroomed everywhere in parallel to our own development.   It has never been about joining the CFU, or any other university, but   about opening your own university.

One thing is the fact that a self-instituted university is messing   around with the institutional power relations. But on a structural   level the question is what conceptions of knowledge are actually   pervading the self-institution? Knowledge for us has always been   something that is evaporating, slipping between our fingers. It is   not something that we treat as a truth or a possession but something   living, a relation between people. Truth is always the truth of the   masters, the proprietary knowledge is always the knowledge that   separates people into those who posses and those who don't. Knowledge   for us is always situated and interwoved with desire. The kitchen,   the bed, the living room made up our anything-but-sterile   laboratories. Dreams, unhappiness, rage were all over the   architecture. Knowledge is at the same time about empowerment, making   people able to understand and act closer to existence and despite the   distortion of the spectacle. The research projects we initiated   worked as invitations to share rather than drives to accumulate.   There have been no singular end products; of importance were all the   various experiences and conclusions that people carried into their   own lives and networks after taking part in the activities at the   CFU. This is why we haven't published papers or dissertations to wrap   up the research projects that we have worked with. We found that the   research and the knowledge spun at the CFU did not need a closure.   But the institution did.

The Copenhagen Free University has never wanted to become a fixed   identity and as a part of the concept of self-institutionalisation we   have always found it important to take power and play with power but   also to abolish power. This is why the Copenhagen Free University   closed down at the end of 2007. Looking back at the six years of   existence of the CFU we end our activities with a clear conviction   and declare: We Have Won!

The CFU Abolition Committee of 2007 / Henriette Heise & Jakob Jakobsen

Please note our last publications, e.g. Poster and Propaganda from   the Copenhagen Free University and TVD's with television programs   from FreeUtv you can watch instead of mainstream crabby television:    http://copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/pubuk.html. And the CFU website   has been updated with new texts, video streams etc.

The Copenhagen Free University, L?ss?esgade 3, 4. sal, 2200 Copenhagen N http://copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk