Fahim Amir, Eva Egermann,Marion von Osten, and PeterSpillmann

What Shall WeDo…?

What follows is a multigenerational conversationbetween the philosopher Fahim Amir, the artistEva Egermann, and the artists and curators PeterSpillmann and Marion von Osten, about thevarieties of antagonism currently shaping theproduction of knowledge.

Scarcity and IntegrationMarion von Osten: I would like to begin ourconversation with a hypothesis: the productionof knowledge has entered a phase defined bycertain tensions, leading to a variety of conflictswe face in our work in the art academy as wellas, and more importantly, in our intellectual andcultural work. On the one had, we can observe arise in the significance of certified expertknowledge bearing academic institutions’ seal ofapproval – this process is evident in theEuropean debates over BAs/MAs/PhDs, Clustersof Excellence, and Collaborative ResearchCenters. This structure of training and research,with its increasingly hierarchic organization, is inpart being introduced in European art schools aswell. On the other hand, knowledge producedand passed on outside schools and institutionshas become more and more important over thepast fifty years, as have experts who are notacademics. The practices of everyday life andpopular culture have emerged with greaterprominence, as has the knowledge produced bysocial movements, and some of theirspokespeople have become part of the curricula.Among other consequences, has been anemergence of critical methodologies that reflecton Eurocentric epistemology, introduce amultiple-actor approach, conjure up the death ofthe author, embrace the vernacular, et cetera.What should also be mentioned in this context isthe attention paid within institutions to what iscalled “artistic research” and the call fortransdisciplinary work. Yet extra-institutionalknowledge is also an essential part ofcontemporary cultural and artistic production. đđđđđđđđđđPeter Spillmann: It is not so much we, asthe producers of knowledge or culture, who areat the center of the antagonisms you describe,but the educational institution. We can movefairly well in both extra-institutional andinstitutional contexts. For the university andother institutions of higher education, bycontrast, the rapidly rising importance of extra-institutional knowledge implies to my mind thattheir role as authorities over the legitimacy ofknowledge has become questionable. I think theongoing reforms and efforts to create newsystems of certification are also an institutional– as well as political – strategy to counteract theincreasing dissolution of the boundaries ofknowledge, to shore up the power to legitimateknowledge and define education; and

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Chair Strike installation at the Academy of fine Arts Vienna, PC-Lab, in the framework of Strike, she said, by GirlsOnHorses (Auer,Egermann, Straganz, Wieger).

certifications, as a technique of control anddiscipline, obviously play a central role in thisprocess.đđđđđđđđđđEva Egermann: The American situationalready illustrates the conflicts this creates forthe individual. Many universities have publiclyaccessible programs, which is to say, a widepublic audience is invited to attend seminars andlectures. But official enrollment at theseuniversities, which enables a student to receive adiploma, to become a university graduate: that issomething very few can afford. The recent tuitionhikes at American universities, most prominentlyin the University of California system, have led toprotests and occupations at UC Santa Cruz andseven other campuses in California.đđđđđđđđđđPS: I think we need to distinguish betweenpolitical or institutional strategies and theconsequences they have for those whom theyaffect. Creating scarcity is the central principleof the new institutional policy. This includesintensified efforts to condition and select,through for instance modularized curricula andmultiple-graded degrees, as well as the socialenforcement of certain minimum standardscandidates are expected to meet in order to get ajob. Economic interests play a role as well,aiming on the one hand to create a scarcity of

public education so that the remainder can beturned over to a lucrative educational market,and on the other hand to offload as muchresearch and development spending as possibleonto the public sector. This not only leads tofinancial shortages, it also narrows the marginsfor those whose interests have nothing to do withproduct development. That the publicinstitutions would quickly embrace this neweducational order was ultimately foreseeable.But why, given these increasingly tenuousconditions, the great majority of teachers andstudents would still place their faith in theuniversities and the degrees they confer, letalone redouble their faith in them – that, I think,is one central question.đđđđđđđđđđFahim Amir: University diplomas are meantto represent objective and standardizedcertificates of competence – and yet at this veryjuncture, we can observe that the exercise ofpower becomes increasingly personalized andinformal; this “neo-feudalist spirit” is manifestin the growing number of autocratic bodies thatare even less transparent and subject to evenless democratic control than in the past.đđđđđđđđđđEE: The staff and budget cuts that lead todiminishing access to universities as well as toreduced resources, possibilities, and space at

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Squatting Teacher banner at the Mass Demonstration for Free Education in Vienna, 28th Oct. 2009.

these institutions, also increasingly render thelives of all those who work there highlyprecarious. In spite of the distinction between“students,” “teachers,” and “staff,” most of thesepeople are affected by precarization to somedegree and urgently need new forms oforganization.đđđđđđđđđđFA: One far-reaching problem at theuniversities is that academics are mostlyoccupied with administrative work and teaching,when these are at the same time the leastprestigious academic functions and contributethe least to their careers. Another line of conflictconcerns the problems surrounding property in,and the accessibility of, knowledge; for example,a large part of publicly funded research takesplace outside the universities, where theproduction of knowledge can be organized inmore autonomous structures, yet the results willultimately be the property of the commissioningparty – the state or agency paying for theproject.đđđđđđđđđđPS: There are two different dynamicprocesses in play here: on the one hand, thereare the efforts undertaken to make a university“excellent.” This is where marketing or personnelpolitics comes in. The reinvention of theeducational institution in the world of business

has a lot to do with public relations, withpresenting a flawless image and constructing aperfect narrative of success, professionalism,and contemporary relevance. On the other hand,it takes familiarity with a field to recognizerelevant knowledge and context-specific currentpractices of the exchange of knowledge are. Thisinvolves competencies similar to those requiredin cultural production – and yet the “chiefexecutive officers” of educational institutionsgenerally do not possess these competenciesthemselves. Despite all the talk about innovationin the institutions, there is virtually no seriousdebate about what adequate conditions for acontemporary culture of knowledge would looklike.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: What can be observed, however, is achanged self-conception on the part of the state.Economistic discourse appears to be takingplace on the supranational level, too, in EUdirectives, for example. At the same time,neoliberal interpellations notwithstanding, thisis about an expansion and not a reduction of thebureaucratic apparatus in the educationalinstitutions – only this apparatus now operateswithin the requisite private-publicconstellations. I think it is perhaps betterunderstood as a different way of formalizing and

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It is not about the biscuits, it is about the whole bakery…, Action media spectacle. Occupied Academy of fine Arts Vienna, 1st Nov. 2009.

discursivizing the relationship between the stateand private enterprise.đđđđđđđđđđPS: That is a central point, I agree. To put itstrongly, we might even say that the field ofeducation has in recent years become thecentral stage on which a state that hasundergone neoliberal reforms can produce anespecially conspicuous mise-en-scène of itsnewly optimized functionality, a production thateven allows it to compensate for the loss ofauthority in other areas, such ascommunications or healthcare.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: We must understand all of this againstthe backdrop of a post-Fordist transformationthat encompasses all of society. Not only arequalifications certified by schools anduniversities considered marketable skills –framed as “competencies” – but qualificationsacquired outside the school system are alsoincreasingly considered according to the sameterms. Post-Fordism has raised therequirements by which knowledge is considerednecessary for productive performance on the job,and the knowledge I have acquired at aneducational institution, a university, or a school,is no longer enough. Social skills and the abilityto work in a team, for example, are necessaryqualifications I may bring to the job without

formal “training.” So the primary aim behind thenew gradation of degrees is to create theshortest and most efficient possible path for themajority through the curricula – an intentionalcontraction. The new reforms do not in fact makethe course of studies as such the central value:studies, like research, must first and foremost beapplied. Today’s internship, and the university ofapplied sciences too, illustrate this path towarda professional training more and more gearedtowards job requirements – but this training canonly partly satisfy the needs of an increasinglyflexible labor market, or the composition ofbiopolitical labor, as Negri and Hardt call it. Thatmakes it difficult for the humanities to legitimizethemselves, and the same goes for art schools.This process is key to the central conflicts, butalso to possible alternative outcomes, becauseone could begin to derive potentials at this pointas well.đđđđđđđđđđEE: It might be interesting in this context tocome back to the distinction marked by theconcepts of “Herrschaftswissen” (knowledgethat serves the exercise of authority) and“herrschaftskritisches Wissen” (knowledge thatenables a critique of authority). The former wouldbe the sort of knowledge that serves toreproduce and consolidate hegemonic

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conditions. The latter, by contrast, would be aknowledge of the prevailing conditions and thepowers that control them, as well as anawareness of one’s own complicity with theseconditions and the social struggles against them:an emancipatory knowledge of resistantexperiences in history and in the present that isrooted in social struggles and movements. Today,we reencounter this extra-institutionalknowledge in postgraduate and master’sprograms such as gender, cultural, andpostcolonial studies.đđđđđđđđđđFA: To my mind, it is important and at thesame time difficult to shield my politics from theconceptual trends in academia; against the hypeforming in strange ways around authoritativesubjects that are then, for a certain period oftime, brought up at almost every paneldiscussion. The creation of such hype involves aninscrutable interplay between a whole number ofactors, and there are large asymmetriesregarding their charisma and their impact factor.In the Marxist tradition there is the phrase, the“revolutionary Party as the university of theworking class,” which once promised a differentinterrelation between theory and praxis, betweendemocracy and knowledge, between cognitivecapacity and ability in battle; an autonomousproduction of knowledge independent of theacademic construction of theory isindispensable, it seems to me, for any praxis thatenvisions a fundamental transformation of thesocial order – and “autonomous,” it is importantto note, means anything but cut-off or isolatedfrom the larger context. The fact that activists insubcultural, cultural-leftist, or autonomistcontexts pay so much attention to academictheory as a source of buzzwords always strikesme as a problem just as much as does thetiresome exegesis of the classics in Marxologicalcontexts.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: Creating a permanent place forfeminist or postcolonial knowledge in theinstitutions was an important struggle. Thebigger problem today is that this knowledgebecomes an additional qualification sold for afee or used in the education market as acompetitive advantage.đđđđđđđđđđPS: Ambitious universities’ marketingdepartments operate according a logic by whichthey can envision the creation of a highlypromising niche degree out of any socialdiscourse whatsoever, just as long as the nichehas a certain degree of intensity. But we mustconsider first and foremost how this knowledgecirculates in different social and interculturalconstellations, how it keeps growing and whichnew perspectives and emancipatory movementsit enables. Right now, that is certainly notsomething that is happening within the

framework of, say, postcolonial studies.đđđđđđđđđđFA: The most important factor enabling thedomestication in the university of radicalknowledge produced by social movements canbe found in the everyday function of theuniversity as a bureaucratic monster: the need toorganize classrooms, meetings of administrativebodies, power struggles within the university, theadministration of exams, et cetera. All thatexhausts people, and between these obligations,they often don’t even know anymore what theycame to the university to do, or they simply nolonger have the strength to do it. Criticalreflections on the institutionalization of thewomen’s movement noticed this effectimmediately after the first women’s studiesprograms were established. Tearing down theconnections between subjects participating in astruggle within the university and those outsideit is a step that further enables integration intothe “business as usual” at the university. But thelink between commercial value and anti-capitalism within capitalist socialization doesnot strike me as something fundamentally new –the exchange value, after all, is the primarydeciding factor in capitalism. Remember whatLenin said: the capitalists will sell even the ropeby which they will be hanged.đđđđđđđđđđPS: I don’t think that the university can everbecome “ours”! The idea of the university assuch, as an institution, with its humanist-bourgeois-liberal tradition – something thechoice of Bologna for the ominous meeting of theministers of education was patently aimed tobring into symbolic play – embodies theEurocentric culture of the institution. Attemptsto open the university to other actors or practicesof knowledge – Marion mentioned this at thevery beginning of our conversation – lead at bestto the formation of new critical theory or thegrowing differentiation of new disciplines andmethods. And what Fahim is talking about is thecore of the very conflict we get involved in – anultimately fruitless one – every time we try tochange the institutions.đđđđđđđđđđFA: During the battles at the universities innorthern Italy in the late 1970s, peopledeveloped the idea of the “counter-university” –which is to say, of fighting within the universityfor causes that are antagonistic to theconstitution of the university and of the socialorder tied to it. Another aim was to intervene inone’s own subjectivation and to turn theexploitative or symbiotic relationship betweenuniversity employees and the university in thedirection of an emancipatory parasitism.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: Around the same time, Ivan Illichpointed out that the desire for democratizationthrough education, which promises to freepeople of their class backgrounds, has the

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Simone Hain, Christiane Post, Karin Rebbert, Katja Reichard, Marion von Osten, Peter Spillmann, Axel John Wieder, Insert 3 6th WerkleitzBiennal, Volkspark Halle a.S., 2004. Replica of Vladimir Tatlin's stage set for the production of "Sangesi" by Velimir Chlebnikow, Petrograd1923. On the back of the stage slide projections various autonomous theater and agiprop groups : "Blue Collars", worker’s theater groupfrom Moscow, Russia; "Rote Schmiede", 1920s agitprop group from Halle a.S., Germany; "Neue Sachlichkeit" mask ball at the BurgGiebichenstein Halle a.S., Germany, 1925; "Brigade Feuerstein", 1980s popular GDR song theater group from Hoyerswerda, Germany, 1923.

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Simone Hain, Christiane Post, Karin Rebbert, Katja Reichard, Marion von Osten, Peter Spillmann, Axel John Wieder: Insert 16th Werkleitz Biennal, Volkspark Halle a.S., 2004. Reconstruction of Alexander Rodtschenko's interior design for a worker’sclub, originally realized for the Russian pavilion at the World Fair, Paris 1925. During the Biennial Insert 1 was displayed at the"Halle School of Common Property".

Simone Hain, Christiane Post, Karin Rebbert, Katja Reichard, Marion von Osten, Peter Spillmann, Axel John Wieder, Insert 2,6th Werkleitz Biennal, Volkspark Halle a.S., 2004. Unrealized model of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's Raum der Gegenwart which hedesigned 1930 for Alexander Dorner and the Provinzialmuseum Hannover. In the context of the 6th Werkleitz Biennal itfunctioned as a display for material about strategies of participatory knowledge production and distribution.

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paradoxical effect of introducing a new hierarchy.It means that social mobility is the de factoprivilege of those who submit to the sanctionedcertifications; all other necessary knowledgethat could be acquired in everyday life or at theworkplace remains without social recognition,leaving the division of labor and the classhierarchy unchallenged.đđđđđđđđđđPS: If you mean recognition in the academiccontext, then I agree. But there were and areinnumerable opportunities outside the universityto experience social advancement – the child ofthe contractor who makes millions in real estate,the guest worker who becomes a restaurantentrepreneur, et cetera. What is interesting isthat the greatest barriers are currently beingerected precisely against social advancementfrom the margins, against that which is self-made, is built on improvisation and situationalknowledge. Nowadays, a dishwasher will have ahard time becoming a millionaire without anMBA.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: We should note here that the academyof arts does still leave a certain amount ofleeway, leeway we need to defend. Nowhere elsecan people without academic degrees still beappointed professors. And if matters keepmoving in the direction they are, that will soon bea thing of the past.đđđđđđđđđđPS: Another reason I went to study at a freeart school instead of a university was that I neverquite understood how studying at a universityreally works. No one in my family had gone to auniversity, and so it wasn’t something I justpicked up along the way. I didn’t know whatmattered most, how I was supposed to find myway through a university’s offerings, what wouldbe the best thing to do. Knowing what would beimportant requires that you already have definedinterests – or have been introduced to a specificmilieu. Acquiring knowledge at a universityalready presupposes a great deal of knowledgeor habitualized experience.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: Or people didn’t manage to completetheir studies because they were tripped up bythe inscrutable syllabi, or, at the academy of art,by the professors’ self-mythologizing and theirsexism. There was a lack of“herrschaftskritisches Wissen.” Poststructuralisttheories were an incredibly important instrumentin helping to understand what all of this meantbeyond the personal level. But when I was astudent in the 1980s, this did not take placeeither at the university or at the academy of art –it wasn’t soft rock.đđđđđđđđđđEE: On the other hand, there are alsoopportunities and productive situations at theuniversities, situations in which people canexperience studying as a form that enablesindividual action, a space that enables them to

reflect on the social structures within which theystudy. Artistic strategies then in turn offer apossibility to intervene in these conflicts, tocreate spaces or counterpublics. During theoccupations of the universities in Austria and theinternational protest movement of the fall andwinter of 2009–10, we saw an intense realizationof this possibility: the university as a place ofcontentious debate, of rebellion andinsurrection. These occupations not onlysucceeded in unleashing a broad debate overeducational policies, but also enabled the re-politicization of many areas and uncontrolledspaces. This intensity and eruption createdabsurd situations of teaching and learning andalternative practices of knowledge; a communityof teachers and students, we might say, unitedby a defined goal: to subvert the structures of theuniversity. The participating groups – Salong(Munich), Academy of Refusal (Vienna), Interflugs(Berlin), and 10th Floor (London) – describe thiscollective learning process as occurring in themidst of an eruption, as something that was ableto shatter established structures of power.Squatting turned the rigid, cool, neoclassicalauditorium into a site of negotiations. Solidarityand collective euphoria created the energyrequired for an unforeseeable amount of workthat needed to be done.

Immanence or ExodusMvO: So intra-institutional and extra-institutional knowledge can not be conceived asbeing quite so distinct anymore. Theirrelationship is not dialectical but rather one ofimmanence. And yet it doesn’t seem easy todescribe the quality of difference in theknowledge production we engender in ourcollective work. Instead, we tend to exhaustourselves in contention with the institutions. Assomeone born in the early 1960s, I am a memberof a generation of autodidacts, the so-calledbrilliant dilettantes. Doing-it-yourself returnedto prominence in the 1990s, when people taughtthemselves software, graphic design, how tomake music, video, and texts, how to writereviews. Not that any of this is unusual in the artcontext. But what was really at stake was thatwe would not accept the traditional division oflabor in the art context any more than anywhereelse, and that we would take the relations ofproduction into our own hands. The possibility ofdoing that in a collective was a way to escape thecan, the eternal “stand and alone.”đđđđđđđđđđEE: A few years ago, I worked with otherswithin the framework of the Manoa FreeUniversity. Together we organized study circles,but also projects, publications, parties, andexhibitions. The MFU provided a sort of structurefor collaboration, a shared space for the political

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and artistic production of knowledge, and theability to reference a defined collective context.After the first round of neoliberal reformssubjecting Austria’s universities to an economiclogic – including GATS (the General Agreementon Trade in Services), the introduction of the lawon universities in 2002, and the abolition ofstudent codetermination, something Iexperienced in fairly drastic ways because I wasat the time an active member of the ÖH (AustrianStudents’ Association, the general organizationrepresenting students at Austrian universities) –it seemed more necessary than ever to createautonomous structures, or to form self-organized structures outside the university,instead of helping to implement the processes ofeconomization and being at the mercy of theprevailing conditions. And similar structureswere being founded everywhere at the time. Anautonomous, extra-institutional, or “different”praxis of knowledge of the sort you describe wasan important aspiration for us. By now, theperspectives within extra-institutional culturalcontexts have also shifted, I think, especiallywhen a project is not decidedly political. Notleast importantly, it has become clear that suchinitiatives are no less part of a system of artdefined by an economy of reputation. Forexample, a young artist recently told me that shewanted to found a self-organized “off-space”because, she said, curators appreciated whensomeone’s biography included “experience inself-organization.” So I guess it is not a given thata different knowledge-praxis of the sort we arediscussing would have to take place outside theuniversity; perhaps it is simply a matter offundamentally different criteria.đđđđđđđđđđFA: Exactly – and that, it is important tonote, is not the same: most off-spaces hardlystrike me as “extra-institutional”; they seem“small-scale institutional” instead. Most of themdo not at all break with the prevailing aesthetic,social, and organizational procedures – butproblematizing these procedures are anindispensable part of being such a space in thefirst place. So this is not about some sort ofradical purity on the part of subjects, but abouthow they interrelate. That is something we – halfa dozen very different people with backgroundsin art, culture, and theory – tried to implement inpartly experimental, partly directed ways whenwe founded the performance bar Schnapslochfour years ago. It was important to us that weoperate this space without the support offinancial backers (on whom we otherwisedepend), that we put the focus of aestheticproduction on the fashioning of specificsocialities, cultivating perspectives thatproblematized our relations to reception,participation, and curatorial work. We will close

the space down this summer because we don’twant to become subculture administrators: whenthere is no avenue of defense left, it still strikesme as better to do what people did with severalsocial centers in Italy – they smashed thewindows of their own social spaces rather thanallow them to be yuppified.đđđđđđđđđđPS: On the other hand, there is no form ofaction in the production or communication ofknowledge that is not embedded in socialstructures and shaped by relationships, betweenpeople who are friends, meet on neutral terms,or do not like one another at all. And this is trueof all contexts equally. Even in a highlyformalized academic context, all knowledge-communication processes are a permanentemotional roller-coaster ride; encouragement,support, preferential treatment, competition,interference, et cetera. The same holds for anyother independent and self-determined context.But there people can more radically thinkthrough – and sometimes live – the socialintensity tied to a shared cause and interest,whereas the institution tends to emphasizebureaucratic administration even of the socialaspect, and often fosters its use for strategicpurposes.đđđđđđđđđđFA: I agree – there is an atmosphere ofcompetition, envy, focus on status, and thinkingin hierarchies, in combination with the wish to bepart of a trend, that is characteristic of theacademy, but also of artistic and culturalproduction. This atmosphere is also the reasonwhy I have time and again preferred self-organized contexts, which, though they are notimmune to these issues, offer other possibleways of dealing with them.đđđđđđđđđđPS: Among my personal acquaintance, Iknow about a dozen people who, after twenty ormore years of innovative project-related work ina wide variety of fields – from exhibitions andparticipative projects to the creation of entirecurricula – now receive rejections in response toapplications because they are “overqualified.”They are told, “You have already implemented somany demanding projects, we don’t think we canoffer you enough!” Or, on the other hand, they arerejected because they don’t have a degree –“Unfortunately, a BA or MA is an absoluterequirement for working with us!” These peopleare now forced to look seriously into gettingsome degree or other for 20,000 Euros. That is aperversion and a gigantic scandal. The minimumdemand in light of such absurd developmentsshould be that the first degree, at whatever age,be free.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: People need knowledge for differentreasons. Sometimes you just need experienceand to exchange views. The projects I aminvolved in are more about initiating cognitive

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processes and less about knowing theory andhaving the right quotes ready. They are aboutgaining insight, about perceiving in new waysand making something public or communal byexhibiting, publishing, et cetera. This can happenby way of a variety of practices – a fact that isoften effaced from the institutionalized debate. Ihave arrived at important insights through designor manual processes, or because I failed atsomething. And the most important thing is to beable to move among different kinds ofknowledge, build social relations, open spaces,make a different subjectivation possible, and soforth. All that is part of the sphere of action.đđđđđđđđđđEE: The goals should be cognitive processesand critical engagement and not theaccumulation of knowledge as a form of deadcapital. The idea of an official knowledge oftencorresponds to thinking in disciplines. Universitycurricula are designed to introduce students tothe methodologies and habits of specificdisciplines, rather than provide skills withpractical applicability. That is where an artisticor creative praxis that serves as a cognitiveprocess, in the way you have just described, isdifferent. Moreover, the field of art – as a more orless autonomous sphere – can itself serve as asite for analysis and renegotiation betweendifferent interpretations and positions, for thepossibility of experimental, interventive, andactivist artistic praxis and research, if we want todescribe it in these terms. That is the sort ofpraxis I would be interested in, and it is preciselynot about objectifying, generalizing,standardizing, or quantifying a certain kind ofuniversal knowledge.đđđđđđđđđđPS: The way we as artists and culturalproducers engage theory, too, tends to resemblea form of interference. We have read some thingsand been told about others or picked them up indiscussions. Combining these with our ownprojects or with questions directly related to ouractions produces new ideas, books, spaces,images, and projects. It was never about havingread everything. In reality, things work in muchmore playful and fragmentary ways. What iscentral for us is that we identify with the issuesand projects, that we stand behind them, areresponsible for them, perhaps even havesignificant doubts about them, but that we are inany case willing to commit ourselves to them.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: These practices have been undersiege by the ongoing neoliberal educationalinterpellations for more than ten years. In themid-1990s, I could still write with a very lighthand about different forms of knowledge-production and collectivity of the sort developed,say, in exhibition projects. Now that has becomedifficult, since everyone’s working lives are tiedup with institutions in which a number of

antagonistic relationships also take shape.đđđđđđđđđđPS: But that demonstrates even moreclearly that all knowledge is situational orsituated, that it comes into being in very specificsocial contexts and networks, in places wherewe are active, where we communicate, think,produce, and act, in the domains of activitythrough which we move. It is very difficult totranslate these things into bureaucratizedstructures or curricula. At the same time, weshould note that the universities themselveshave also never produced anything butsituational knowledge, which is to say, that theyare specific with regard to their social context,their actions, and their social habits.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: But in contrast to other contexts, thisexclusive specific context has time and againbeen able to define how knowledge ought to beproduced and which knowledge is relevant.đđđđđđđđđđPS: Exactly! And that is also the source ofthe one-sided preference given to certain formsof knowledge. There are, in contexts defined byprojects, very different forms of experience orreferences that would warrant greater reflectionand study. For example, a certain sort of musichas played a role, or certain works of art; weencountered all sorts of experts, on variouslevels; certain spaces and sites influenced thedevelopment of a project or became a centralpoint of departure for new ideas and insights, etcetera. When the complex constellation ofexperiences, observations, and events that makeup a specific everyday practice interacts in thisway with theory on an ongoing basis, we willnotice significant differences from the academiccommunication of knowledge, also as regardsthe results. There would certainly be more to it inthe end than text production.

Constitute and UniteMvO: If we place the focus on the contemporarypraxis of the producers of culture and knowledgeinstead of on the educational institution, wearrive at different results. If it is recognized thatknowledge has been and is being producedeverywhere, that emancipatory knowledge isengendered outside the university or theacademies, that cognitive processes of centralimportance are contained in manual activities aswell, and not just in intellectual achievements,then that matches the idea of interpenetration,of immanent knowledge, and at once entails adifferent conception of praxis, as well asproduction. What emerges is a differentunderstanding of the communal and the publicand the erosion of the division between manualand intellectual production. Which is to say, wecan recognize practices that counteract theinstitutional scarcity we talked about earlier,that are also points of reference for a

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Materials of "Halle School of Common Property" at "Common Property - Allgemeingut," 6th Werkleitz Biennale Halle, 2004.

postcapitalist politics.đđđđđđđđđđPS: At their core, these the are central ideasof the emancipatory movements of the 1960s.Looking back at my school days, I have to saythat these were also the ideas that provided mewith strong arguments against all sorts ofauthorities in the family and the school, as wellas against the social interpellations that pushedme to train for a respectable profession. Noquestion: elementary schools, paperbacks,street fairs, and adventure playgrounds were allstrategies of dissemination, of participation andself-empowerment. I find it interesting now torecognize that, under different social conditions,there are again possible ways to pick up wherethese movements left off, not only in theory butalso in concrete action.đđđđđđđđđđEE: Just as you have described it, we areexperiencing an accelerating shift in theconfiguration of capitalist conditions. After thetransformations of the past decades – from thepostwar Fordism shaped by Social Democracyand Keynesianism to a neoliberal mode ofgovernment driven by financial markets – cracksare becoming apparent in today’s neoliberalism,and not just since the financial crisis of 2008;which is to say, its social hegemony is crumbling.Whereas alternatives have in the past appeared

highly unlikely, changes in the social, political,and cultural conditions have now become moreconceivable. In her introduction, Marionproposes a general change of perspective,inquiring about a postcapitalist politics andpraxis and more specifically about where such apolitics and praxis are already taking placetoday. I think that is a very interesting approach.So where can we find a praxis of this sort, or thedevelopment of a sense of such postcapitalistpossibility, in the praxis of knowledge and theartistic contexts we have discussed? Art that“operates in the domain of the political” wouldnot be the least important space of contingencyin which a political, social, and culturalimaginary, as well as new postidentitariansubjectivities, could take form. I have oftenwondered how the intensity of politicization,collectivity, debates, and counterpublics invarious projects can be harnessed to createsomething sustainable in the long term thatwould in turn effect more concrete changes. Butthese changes are taking place; for what we dodoes something to us. A situated andpostcapitalist praxis of knowledge is a process oftransformation that proceeds step by step andchanges the individuals in turn. Such a praxis isin motion and serves the abolition of putative

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boundaries – be it in the emergence of acommunist society within the capitalist one, i.e.,in the progressive accumulation of thecommunal from the bottom up, as proposed byHardt and Negri in Commonwealth; or in theconception of new communisms.đđđđđđđđđđPS: I would propose that we conceive notonly knowledge production but also learningitself as context-specific and situational, andthink of it as much more separate frominstitutional structures. Quite patently, there areindividual ways to proceed that respond todifferent initial situations, interests, and sets ofproblems: professional training, projects,starting a business, forming a band, traveling,internships, university studies, founding aninstitute, taking some time off, et cetera. Thecounter model against wasting resources on eliteuniversities might be a generous “educationallowance” in addition to a guaranteed basicincome. Everyone would be entitled to it, at anyage, and it would be deposited into their accountas soon as they knew what to do with it.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: The call for an unconditional basicincome is of absolutely central importance. Onlywhen my material conditions are secured am Iable to do something that does not need to bepaid for, that does not have a price and can beshared without having to become property.Without a different material and structural basisfor our labor relations and living conditions, allfantasies of knowledge as a common good willremain farcical – they would amount to nothingmore than yet another innovative variant ofzombie neoliberalism and remain shaped by ourdependency on the institutions of modernity.đđđđđđđđđđFA: I would agree, as long as this basicincome is in principle a global, which is to say,transnational, entitlement and covers the marginof subsistence beyond a reasonable degree; onlythen can we prevent the transformation of thisdemand into the rotten compromise of anational-chauvinist flat rate whose primarypurpose would ultimately be to undo the Fordisttangle of social transfer payments. That thisdemand, easy to understand and generallydesirable though it is, will not become globalreality – it would undermine the internationaldivision of labor and the compulsion to sell one’slabor for the enrichment of others, andultimately lead to the abolition of capitalism –would be a worldly answer to Philippe VanParijs’s question, “Real Freedom for All: What (IfAnything) Can Justify Capitalism?” The questionof providing material security for learningprocesses aside, it seems important to me toemphasize the physical and affective quality ofthe difference that separates book knowledgefrom knowledge based on personal experience. Alearning experience takes place in social

struggles that is accompanied by a considerableproduction of affect and knowledge. That, to mymind, was one of the most importantachievements of the protest movement of2009–10: not that specific demands were met,but rather that the active subjects related indifferent ways to themselves as well as toothers, on both sides of the barricades, andcontinually displaced these barricades. Withinthe protest movement, questions such as howknowledge-production within and outside theuniversity works were subjects of continuousdiscussion in working groups and workshops.One result of these discussions among many wasthe creation of the initiative for a Critical andSolidary University.1 Other issues that came upwere a so-called “Augustine Academy” (astructure conceived in collaboration withhomeless people), and the understandabledesire to bring together students, teachers, andresearchers in artistic and scientific fields.đđđđđđđđđđEE: Besides the unconditional call for aglobal basic income and social infrastructure(e.g., education) for everyone, then, there arealso short-term demands that have emergedfrom our concrete and immediate context sincethe education protests during the winter of2009–10. There is the demand that the spacesand infrastructures now controlled by studentself-determination, such as the squattedauditoriums in Vienna and elsewhere, spaceswhere participants can exercise a postcapitalistpraxis of knowledge, be retained and expanded.Study-ins as well as expanded open andinterdisciplinary communities of teaching andlearning, a more comprehensive self-organization of the precarized knowledgeworkers at the universities, support for leftistuniversity networks and magazines, and thedevelopment of alternative avenues of access tothe universities, and so forth – by now, suchspaces are once again under threat of beingforcibly cleared. An applied knowledge-production of this sort is a process that aims toabolish the current state of affairs, with itsartificial scarcity.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: That inevitably implies redistribution!A redistribution of resources, money, and spaces,that is to say, of the instruments for a differentpraxis, is necessary. I would primarily championthe idea of small steps instead of an all-for-allperspective. A start would be to conceive newtrans-institutional structures in our work lives.That would be to take the situation with whichwe began – knowledge is being producedeverywhere and by many actors, not justacademics or artists – a lot more seriously. To mymind, this also means that we call the existingbinary and hierarchical opposition betweenintra-institutional and extra-institutional

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knowledge-production into question, in theexisting public institutions and in our self-organized production. đđđđđđđđđđPS: The demand for different conceptions ofeducation – to the extent that we need to raisethis demand at all – cannot be directed at theschools and universities alone. Theseinstitutions would have to gradually becomesideshows – or better: become the places where,perhaps not unlike the internet, people cancontinually exchange and comment on thewealth of insights, experiences, and productionsgenerated in all sorts of contexts.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: So one central demand would be thateveryone who needs emancipatory practical ortheoretical knowledge has to get access to it,and not just those who have a qualifying highschool diploma and wealthy parents. Which isthe current situation. The working-men’s-clubmovement and the adult education center arejust two examples that stand athwart the wholenonsense about Clusters of Excellence and eliteuniversities. Creating different desires, desiresfor radically democratic practices andstructures: that is something for which thecultural field would be a suitable place, becauseit lends itself to the articulation of wisheslocated at the center of social change. And Ithink that is roughly the conclusion at which wearrive when we debate “educational turns” andsuch. By contrast, little has happened in astructural sense, or by way of an “everyone is anexpert” movement. So the small circlespracticing alternative knowledge-productionremain elite structures, if we do not engage inconstituting inclusive conditions and openingsfor diverse actors and actions.đđđđđđđđđđPS: To the extent that there is no way to dothis without formalized structures backed by thestate, one alternative to learning in institutionsthat might be interesting is a kind of mentoringprogram that would appeal to a great variety ofpeople, both as teachers and as students. Such aprogram might do more to render the distinctionbetween praxis and theory obsolete, or rather,make it a matter of context-specific needs.đđđđđđđđđđMvO: Describing the city or even society as“our university” in order to render visible that themost diverse actors and cultures of knowledgeinteract and cooperate here might be a potentialpoint of departure, allowing us to reflect muchmore on the contemporary composition ofknowledge and culture and to operate in theactual relations of production. đđđđđđđđđđPS: In any case, it is unacceptable that theinstitutions, no matter whether museums oruniversities, use our reputations and ourknowledge – which we have worked for years tocreate in projects we have invented ourselves, infree and often massively underfinanced projects

– to bolster their profiles by, say, employing usfor a few years; that they do not nearly offer usthe conditions we would need to continue ourwork with comparable intensity; or that theyultimately deny that we have the qualificationswe actually have. At the same time, it is alsobecoming clear that the thoroughly rationalizedenterprises of the “cultural” and “educationalindustries,” designed to produce excellence inthe most efficient way, have lost the capacity foranything but administration and marketing, andare thus becoming ever more dependent onprecarized cultural producers and knowledgeworkers. This is exactly the point at which weneed new organizations of our own that exertinfluence to ensure that, for example, the“reputational benefit” the institutionsincreasingly extract for their own internalexpansion flows back into our projects andnetworks. For instance, we must form poolsthrough which institutions can access ourknowledge, our experience or reputation, butonly receive it on loan and on our conditions;through which a share of all honorariums, projectgrants, royalties, and revenues flows into acommunal fund that will provide independentfinancing for our research and our projects and,if need be, our livelihoods. So not another debateover “copyrights” or “intellectual property” –these are the strategies of the factory owners inthe “creative industries.” Instead, toward greatersolidarity, communal soup kitchens, and cultureclubs. Knowledge producers of all disciplines,unite!đđđđđđđđđđ×Translated from the German by Gerrit Jackson.

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Fahim Amir is a Viennese theoretician and culturalproducer with Afghan origins. Recently (2006/2007) heworked as dramatic adviser of spiel:platz at thedietheater Vienna. Here and elsewhere he realizedartistic, theoretical, and post-disciplinary projects onself-organization and critique of society incontemporary artistic and cultural productions. Hewas guest professor in the class for post-conceptualarts practices at the Academy of Fine Arts(2005/2006). During this time, he worked on post-operaistic approaches, theories of governmentality,post- and neo-marxism. He is involved in variouscollaborative practices in the field of art, theory, andculture. đ

Eva Egermann is an artist based in Vienna. She isinterested in aesthetic, theoretical and politicalpractices that are aimed at disrupting normativeregimes, and forms between artistic formats, socialspatialization, and experimental text production. Shehas been working in various media and collectives, asin the framework of the Manoa Free University(www.manoafreeuniversity.org), the groupGirlsOnHorses, within the magazine MALMOE(www.malmoe.org), or other individual collaborations.She is currently Assistant Professor at the Academy ofFine Arts Vienna. Together with Anna Pritz she editedthe two Publications School Works and Class Works in2009 about pedagogical, artistic, and researchpractice. Together with Elke Krasny she is organizingthe exhibition project “2 or 3 things we’ve learned,Intersections of Art, Pedagogy and Protest” that opensin September 2010 at the IG Bildende Kunst Gallery(www.igbildendekunst.at) in Vienna. đ

Marion von Osten works with curatorial, artistic andtheoretical approaches that converge through themedium of exhibitions, installations, video and textproductions, lecture performances, conferences, andfilm programs. Her main research interests concernthe working conditions of cultural production in post-colonial societies, technologies of the self, and thegovernance of mobility. She is a founding member ofLabor k3000, kpD (kleines post-fordistisches Drama),and the Center for Post-Colonial Knowledge andCulture, Berlin. đ

Peter Spillmann is an artist, researcher, and curator.He is a founding member of the media art collectiveLabor k3000 Zurich and the Center for Post-ColonialKnowledge and Culture, Berlin. Since 2006 he hasbeen lecturer at the University of Applied Science andArts, Lucerne. Among his latest projects are: “This-was-tomorrow.net” (2008-2010, Haus der Kulturen derWelt Berlin/ MACBA Barcelona / Museum SztukiWasaw), “Der Park” (2007, Kunstraum LakesideKlagenfurt and MigMap), “Governing Migration” (2004-6), and “Projekt Migration” (Kölnischer Kunstverein).

đđđđđđ1The Kritische und SolidarischeUniversität, or KriSU; seehttp://krisu.noblogs.org.

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