Category: Creative Project

When atoms come together they become a molecule.

Notes on two meetings in LCC, between students to discuss a potential for student actions on campus, that protest the commodification of our education.

So far we have gathered twice under an undefined consensus for student action. I organised the first meeting in response to student’s frustrations during the UCU strike at the beginning of this term, to imagine that we can gather with our frustrations, build solidarity and reclaim a sense of agency and power in the oppressive structures of our university.

I fascillitated both meetings in the way that I provoked questions, told people why I wanted to gather and asked different voices in the room to give their opinions and ideas. I took this role hoping that it can inspire a non-hierarchical organising and that it will move around the group in the future.

Most students are aware of the complexity of our current situation: the reason why tutors and cleaner’s working conditions are worsening is not because of an individual person or group necessarily, as the changes in our university system are entangled in larger changes in our society, goverments, economies and technologies. In the same thkning most students did not want to immediately act with anger in a disruptive protest. They also felt that for some students the campus may offer a sense of safety that they may not get elsewhere, and that we should be cautious to disrupt this safety. A common point that arose is that we need to gather more people to get a larger sense of how students would like to act collectively.

<I was surprised at my surprise at people’s abilities and remind myself to believe in the capacity of the human, and to submit to the potent capacity of a group rather than isolate myself in the priviledge and yet thinness of individual research.>

We discussed ideas of how to calmy express ourselves on the campus space and how to gather more people. During this process some students expressed a fear for being disciplined. Does this mean the techniques of surveillance coordinated by university management are affective in their psychological manipulation of our will and belief in our agency? Potential modes of discipline have varying effects on students since some students rely on a student visa to live in the UK.

Students were also feeling like they do not want to miss out on their education by focusing on politics. This is an interesting point. Can we promote the idea that a political approach to our time in university would be full of learning and expanding a sense of who we are? If our education has been “sold” by the enterprise of UAL, then isn’t poltical agency the only way to make use of our time in university?

I am unsure about the continuation of the meetings. The second meeting had three people. Many students are dealing with depression and cognitive stress: common psychopathologies of late capitalism. Many students are working multiple jobs, and these factors make political organising much more difficult. When we are made to rely more on digital technologies for communication, means being constantly absorbed into the excessive infosphere of the internet. Based on my observation of student experiences and what students brought up in the meeting, I feel that a student action should encourage sensuality, connection and a reclaiming of the university space. To use the campus for our own purposes (performance, discussions, activities outside of the curriculum) could give us a sense of self-ownership and control in our life, while learning the power of collectivity to continue elsewhere as we learn to live and resist through the intensities of our futures.

More notes on “Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces”.

Crack capitalism theory by John Holloway. Contradicts the idea of total domination present in common discourse around capitalism. Encourages action because action is always present in our doing. Anti-capitalist radicalism is present in the most micro events of sipping tea with friends at home, or reading on a park bench. In this spectral view of change, action seems less daunting and more attainable. The weight of a world is lifted. Capital may have globalising tendencies but it’s constant cracking/excess reveals local cultures and diversity.

The Wretched of the Network Society is a healthy postcolonial critique of Technological determinism.

Postcolonialism: a critical analysis of colonial processes throughout histories and how they form our present structures of power and inequality. Engages in the complex transformations in societies both colonised and colonising. Discusses how colonial legacies lead to hybridity in identities and cultures.

Hybridization theory helps us move beyond the exlusionary and binary theories of colonialism; it recognises the blending of different cultural spaces, knowledge systems and social structures. In this thinking we must remember hybridity is entangled with domination; some populations/identities benefit in resources and power from the emerging “postcolonial” structures.

Postcolonial? could be a misleading term since colonisation and domination are ongoing processes.

In regards to technology and colonialism, this essay recognises the values embedded in modern technologies that perpetuate colonial strategies. Technological determinism theories such as that of McLuhan (the medium is the message) highlight the effect of new technological mediums in our society, such as print media or the radio, without discussing the values loaded in these technologies that perpetuate power dynamics. Many modern technologies have been developed in wealthy western countries, which give those populations more semiotic power (language capacities, identification with symbols) in the internet and popular media. at the same time, many of these technologies are produced in “post”colonized countries. Technological development perpetuates colonial power. However, the essay makes it clear that these values and power dynamics entangled in our technologies do not fully determine their capacities! Such as in “Crack capitalism” theory, humans constantly subvert the implied values and suggested routeways in which we engage with our technologies. Tech has the capacity to host radical information and activity, but their implied values should also be recognised and challenged.

Notes on “Creating Transformative Anarchist Geographic Learning Spaces” by Farhang Rouhani

Neoliberalisation can be understood as the institutional erasure of place based identities. This kind of placelessness can be countered with a political pedagogy that encourages emplacement.

UAL functions as a neoliberal institution that interrupts the personal histories of a place through urban redevelopment. By encouraging the removal of Elephant and Castle’s old shopping centre to make way for a new university building, UAL participates in the destruction of local histories and also displaces its own students and workers by misaligning with place. It seems these managerial actions relate to the the “ivory tower syndrome” of higher education, where local knowledge is devalued in favour of empirical knowledge. If UAL was invested in local knowledge production, the managerial decisions would be different. More communication needs to happen between councils of authority and local communities in regards to urban planning. Also, the institutions that engage with gentrification on this scale need to be transformed by those who participate with the institution, such as students and workers. We must open lines of communication between us and community groups in Elephant and Castle to build a plan of action.

How can we subvert the mechanics of privatisation in UAL to regain our power? How can we use the facilities of our university as radical informal learning spaces for collective research?

• Collective research – with community, local and institutional.
• Across roles, students, teachers.
• As an Expedition: an invitation to a diverse publics to participate in learning about under represented communities.
• As an Institute: an active, collective site for the gathering of knowledge to be used to inform political action and policy.

3 steps for Anarchist pedagogy…

• Humility in approaching education process
• Anti-hierarchical, a mission to break down, challenge and discuss hierarchy wherever it appears
• Expand what and who is worthy of learning and teaching, enlarging the set of educaitional needs

A belief in human capabilities <3

How do we integrate theory into practice of political organising, without imposing directions on to the other? How to practice anarchist pedagogy in a soft, listening approach while being actively anti-hierarchical?

Research question idea: Can anarchist-pedagogical theories inform listening practices to encourage anti-hierarchical and anti-professional communication, collaboration and connection within a university place?

Practice-based research will be carried out by a student/worker council, or some kind of workshops.

To do

• Preliminary research in anarchist-pedagogical theories and political listening practices.
• Create a listening practice in collaboration with other students in preparation for a student/worker council.
• Organise student/worker council.
• Request feedback in the form of recordings.
• Analyse and form conclusions of research in the form of the audio-paper.

Back to anarchism. I was engaged in anarchist activism in Amsterdam back in 2019. It’s interesting to return to this way of thinking through the critique of our university…

Dominant culture offers a “pacification of fear” and a sense of order to chaos. By reducing our subjectivity and a sense of freedom with the world, structures of power are unquestioned by our intellectual and sensual capacties. Therefore we must sedate sensuality, and the longing waves of subconcious desires for freedom, to participate blindly with dominant culture. We depend on external definitions to cope. This is existential politics. A blissful ignorance of our own shadow that fuels production lines.

Ursula LeGuinn writes a similiar theory in her fantasy novels “Earthsea”, where wizards are chased by their own shadows, and some pursue immortality and imbalance the ecosystem. Earthsea as the manifesto for critical awakening.

Fear and agency. How responsible are we for our “fear of chaos”? Generational poverty is traumatic, along with slavery and other kinds of oppression. How do we understand the role of fear in structures of power in relation to inequality?

Final notes on “Mushroom at the End of the World” by Anna Tsing and meanderings on atomisation ~ privatisation in university.

“The edges of alientation is the latent commons.” Latent commons are not exclusively human homelands. They are mutualistic entanglements. Neither can they redeem us, they are the ‘here and now’. “The ruin glares… but luckily there is still companionship. We can still catch the scent of the latent commons…” Tsing again returns to the basics of ecology, those principles of interdependence and entanglement, with new language. She teaches unlearning of the popular ecology’s utopianism by making it clear that we live in the ‘here and now’, that the ruin is present. With this perspective we can also begin to notice the vibrancy of entangled life in its complexity. Nature is not a far away painting, but ever present.

Capitalism as translation: lifeworlds ~ lively production (local, cultural) ~ total commodification (alienation , disembedded from local connections) + centralized profit ~ commodity (connected to new lifeworlds, memories)

A commodity is only fully alienated for a temporary amount of time as it passes between lifeworlds.

Alienation is being “disembedded from local connections.” Tsing continues to discuss scholarship and it’s commodification, meaning we can bring this conceptual framework of alienation to our university experience.

The collaborative work is privatised: atomised. Scholarship transforms to an invididual process of personal timelines, projects, assessment critera and specialisation. Collective knowledge production (the latent commons) continues, being a primary goal of academia, but it’s process becomes slower and unceremonious. Lifeworlds are seperated and mediated by bureaucratic communication and administration. Connection is sparse as individuals less and less relate to one another’s practices and specialisations. Course work is independently lead. Humans scuttle off after class to return to a piling tower of virtual labour. As lifeworlds (humans) lose connection due to bureaucratic excess, unionising and solidarity become more difficult. Solidarity requires listening and understanding, qualities that vapourise in the age of uploading (virtualisation). Therefore bureaucratic excess and virtualisation become a tool of university management to build power.

The new radical act is connection and intimacy. A radical act in our university could look like collaboration outside of the curriculum. Physical interactions and communication can provide understanding across fire lines. Connection is radical because it arrives us to intimacy, which soothes the nervous system and slows down production. Connection does not mean we will necessarily transform the accelerating privatisation of our universities, but it means we could subvert this space of alienation for our own needs and benefit. Power dissipates when it loses our attention.