The University as a Work of Art Working and living amidst the daily disasters of the neoliberal university, it is tempting to look at the history of artist-led university projects as emancipatory escape routes to the “edu-factory” of academic capitalism. From Joseph Beuys’ iconic Free International University in the 1970s to more recent cases such as Copenhagen Free University (2001-07) or The Silent University (2011-), artists have long experimented with constructing institutional infrastructures for free, collective, and creative education and research. This has been particularly manifest since contemporary art’s so-called “educational turn”. In this talk, I will revisit the history and present of alter-university projects. Why has the university remained a pivotal point of attraction for socially engaged artists? What does the university have that artists and activists want? Rather than simple utopian “solutions” or a kind of aesthetic Ersatzpolitik, I will discuss how some of the recent cases can be understood as contradictory “formal” refusals of the “prison house of knowledge” symptomatizing the fundamental crisis of the historical semantics of 1968.
Tobias Dias is a writer, researcher, and critic. He is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher at Art History, Aarhus University where he is working on the project A Nameless Science: Art, Expertise, and Infrastructure, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. His writings (single- and co-authored) have appeared in journals and magazines like e-flux journal, Art-Agenda, Texte zur Kunst, Periskop, ARKEN Bulletin, Passepartout, and kritische berichte. He is also a co-editor of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics and a member of the extradisciplinary collective Organ of the Autonomous Sciences. https://tobiasdias.com/articles/