Commoniversity: Making Politics with Knowledge Barcelona, 25th-26th November, 2010 Self-education shouldn’t be understood as a system which is marginal to the regulated circuits of university education, but as an organizational practice as well as a form of institutional creation. The book published by the EduFactory network, Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge and Exodus from the Education Factory (autonomedia, 2009), shortly to be translated into Spanish language by Universidad Nomada and Traficantes de Suenos, provides a cartography of forms of new institutionality emerging in and from critical struggles against the privatization of the university. These different experiences, at a global level, have contributed to the constitution of a new mode of organisation which, in its various guises, is characterised by a common concern: self-education. Commoniversity has two principle objectives. Firstly, to bring different international self-education projects to a student public interested in getting to know them and/or participate in their development. Secondly, but just as importantly, to make available various cartographies of the global university which allow us to make an analytical ‘radiography’ of the discourses being produced in the experiences linked to the EduFactory network. Commoniversity doesn’t end at seminars, however. In parallel to the seminars, Counter Cartographies Collective will do a cartography workshop, setting out the theoretical and methodological bases for a map, to be developed in 2011, of the relations between university and metropolis in Barcelona.

The Self-Destructing Art Show Flux Factory Opening Saturday, November 6 at 11am, performances at 6pm through Tuesday, November 23 This year marks the 50th anniversary of “Homage to New York,” Jean Tinguely’s seminal self-destructing sculpture.* After fifty years, “Homage to New York” remains one of the most radical pieces in the history of modern art. In an art scene dominated by the commodification of art objects, Tinguely’s gesture is a crucial reminder that not all art can be possessed. Flux Factory will pay tribute to the work by asking artists to respond to “Homage to New York.” We will explore the potential of destruction as a creative force and the fleeting beauty of decay. Some pieces will go with a highly performative bang during the opening, and others will slowly dwindle and decay throughout the show. Nothing will survive!

Consensus, Conflict, and Catnip: Oral Histories of Christiania A audiovisual presentation by anthropologist Amy Starecheski and artist Brindalyn Webster, recent participants in Christiania's Researcher in Residence Program. ABC No Rio November 18, 2010 - 7pm 156 Rivington Street (between Clinton & Suffolk) Christiania is a squatted neighborhood of one thousand people in Copenhagen, Denmark. The residents have now occupied 85 acres of downtown land for almost forty years: raising children, creating art, running businesses, building homes and making all of their decisions by consensus. Since the election of a conservative government in 2001, they have been under increasing pressure to legalize and “normalize” their community. Almost every Christianite has a story to tell about the recent legalization process. One would expect them to describe the battles with police, the symbolic violence of being forced to number their homes and name their streets, or the ongoing courtroom conflict, and they do. But many of the most vivid stories center around the more private dramas of the internal decision-making process through which Christiania has developed responses to the various proposals of the Danish government. How has their use of consensus shaped their response to pressure from the state? Can consensus be strategic, or is it just an idealistic, prefigurative holdover from Christiania’s hippie past? Amy Starecheski will engage these questions by sharing excerpts from her oral histories with Christianites.