October 2011
2 posts
7 tags
August 2011
2 posts
No Borders Ireland Gathering
August 26-27, 11am-7pm, Seomra Spraoi, 10 Belvidere Court, Dublin 1
On Friday 26th and Saturday 27th of August, Seomra Spraoi will be host to the first gathering of the No Borders network to take place in Ireland.
No Borders campaigns struggle alongside those effected for freedom of movement, for the freedom for all to stay in the place which they have chosen, against repression and the...
Weekend at City Arts: series of talks and...
Come down to the old City Arts building this weekend (friday and saturday) to discuss NAMA, public space and the university!
July 2011
3 posts
Talking Shop 6: The Citizen
Monday 25 July, 7pm Seomra Spraoi
The idea of the citizen has a long and ambigous history. In the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building we have been using this term to talk about ourselves as political actors and as people with rights, specifically the right to use empty NAMA buildings. But while citizenship can be used in this way, to talk about people’s politics as opposed to the...
Talking Shop 5: Debt
The next talking shop will focus on the idea of debt and will take place on Monday 11 July at 7pm in Seomra Spraoi The two suggested texts, which should provide a starting point for discusion, are David Graebers ‘Debt: The First Five Thousand Years’ and the recent Documentary by Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou called ‘Debtocracy’. The Graeber text gives a...
Campaign Launch Video
For those who missed the launch of the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building on June 11, video of talks which took place can be found here: http://campaigncityarts.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/campaign-launch-video/
June 2011
7 posts
'All power to the free universities of tomorrow'
The Copenhagen Free University began in 2001. It was an attempt to reinvigorate the emancipatory aspect of research and learning, in the midst of an ongoing economisation of all knowledge production in society.
It operated for six years out of an apartment. The question they asked themselves was:
what kind of university do we need in relation to the everyday?
This is in sharp contrast to the...
Talking Shop Session 4: The Gift and Autonomous...
The Talking Shop is a new discussion forum organised by the Campaign for Old City Arts Building, Dublin Housing Action and the Provisional University, but open to everyone. Our fourth session looks at the gift and autonomous social movements. 27th June 7:00 – 9:00pm Seomra Spraoi
This talking shop will explore non-market relations, in the form of gift/reciprocal exchange as a means of moving...
Breakfast at Old City Arts Building, this Friday,...
You are invited to breakfast this Friday from 8am to 9.30am at the (old) City Arts Building, 23-25 Moss Street, Dublin 2
We’ll be having breakfast with activists from the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building and passers-by and chatting about our campaign. All welcome.
Warm creamy porridge served up with sounds of tyres squeezed on tarmac , engines, pedestrian crossings and shouting...
Social Centres
The Talking Shop is a new discussion forum organised by the Campaign for Old City Arts Building, Dublin Housing Action and the Provisional University, but open to everyone. Our second session looks at The Creative City.
Seomra Spraoi 6:30 – 8:00 Monday 13th of June
2nd Session – Social Centres
Social centres operate at a distance from commercial and state interests, from consumerism and...
Launch of the Campaign for the Old City Arts...
Saturday June 11th, 6pm at Seomra Spraoi.
Campaign launch with talks by campaign members and Sandy Fitzgerald, former director of Dublin City Arts. Followed by Food and Party. 3 euro suggested donation from 10pm
Join us on June 11th for the launch of the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building (COCAB). Our aim is to take back the Old City Arts building, 23-25 Mosse St (near Tara dart...
May 2011
4 posts
Spain's 15-M: What happened and what can we learn?
It began on the 15th of May in the form of demonstrations across Spain with an estimated attendance of 150,000. This initial demonstration was organized by a new group called Real Democracy Now (RDN), a loosely organized collective which focused on expressing the feeling of outrage among the Spanish population without recourse to traditional left ideology.
The initial demonstration had two main...
The Creative City
The Talking Shop is a new discussion forum organised by the Campaign for Old City Arts Building, Dublin Housing Action and the Provisional University, but open to everyone. Our second session looks at The Creative City.
Seomra Spraoi 6:30 – 8:00 Monday 30th of May
2nd Session – The Creative City In the last decade, urban life has been characterised by words such as creativity, culture,...
“The essential idea is that cities are places of opportunity and possibility...”
The Right to the City
The Talking Shop is a new discussion forum we’re organising along with the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building and Dublin Housing Action. Our first session looks at The Right to the City. Seomra Spraoi 6.30 Monday 16th of May
Anyone living in Dublin over last decades can see that today the city itself is at the centre of social transformation and in particular the expansion of...
April 2011
1 post
“A free university in the midst of a capitalist society is like a reading room in...”
– ‘Communiqué from an Absent Future’, California, 2008
March 2011
5 posts
“The no opens cracks, the yes opens autonomous spaces. Perhaps they look the...”
– John Holloway
Another empty election
Last night we attended one of the many hustings (‘debates’) taking place for the election of the new Provost of Trinity College. Unfortunately there is no debate. All the candidates accept that the state should no longer provide free and equal education (because the government has decided the banks and bondholders are more important). Most of then encourage the re-introduction of fees....
European Struggles update: we are your crisis
Following a European meeting last February university based groups from around Europe formed a network, Knowledge Liberation Front, to advance their struggles at a coordinated European level.
The first event coming up is the European days of action, set to take place on March 24th-26th and involving different actions all over Europe.
In the run up to this the Knowledge Liberation Front in...
Reclaiming space
On Saturday the provisional university took part in a discussion entitled ‘What do you stand for?’ About sixteen groups, mostly involved in the running of independent art spaces, had five minutes to present their projects. There were about eighty people present. The short discussion afterwards was welcome for the important questions that were raised, questions that went beyond the role...
Open Letter to Dublin City Council
Today, the 2nd March, the provisional university sent an open letter to the City Manager of Dublin City Council demanding a space for student-managed teaching and research and denouncing the neo-liberalisation of the university and the destruction of the public good. This is the second step in our campaign to reclaim a space to fight for education as a right and to take back the university. The...
February 2011
9 posts
New Blog Launched: University in Crisis
The university is in crisis. Those who have control of the university have, reluctantly or enthusiastically, been leading the way in reducing education and research to the neoliberal agenda. This tendency is not limited to the cuts in public funding or the re-introduction of fees brought on by the fiscal crisis. Nor is it limited to Ireland. In Europe and beyond, students, researchers and...
Open letter to Trinity College Dublin
Today, the 22nd of February, the provisional university sent an open letter to the Provost of Trinity College demanding a space for student-managed teaching and research and denouncing the neo-liberalisation of the university. This is the first step in our campaign to reclaim a space to fight for education as a right and to take back the university. The text of the letter follows.
Dear...
Statement from the Paris University Struggles...
For a New Europe: University Struggles Against Austerity
Paris - Saint-Denis Meeting, 11-13 February 2011
Common Statement
We, the student and precarious workers of Europe, Tunisia, Japan, the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Argentina, met in Paris over the weekend of the 11th-13th of February, 2011 to discuss and organize a common network based on our common struggles. Students from...
“One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how...”
– J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
9 tags
NAMA and the Search for Space
The Provisional University presents: NAMA and the search for space: A discussion with prof. Rob Kitchin of Ireland after NAMA, and introduction to the NAMAland app by its author Conor McGarrigle. After the discussion we will take a short walk in Dublin city centre using the NAMAland app as our guide. At a moment when we at the Provisional University are reflecting about the need for independent...
8 tags
For a New Europe: University Struggles Against...
European Meeting of University Movements: Paris, 11-13 February, 2011
The Provisional University will be attending a European meeting of all those groups involved in struggles within and beyond the university.
The meeting, organised by Edu-Factory and the Autonomous Education Network, follows the collective consensus of the ‘Bologna Burns’ meetings in Vienna, London, Paris and...
Ireland After NAMA →
“I’ve never had any love for Mubarak or his system before, but my mind-...”
– Atef Seif El-Din- Electrical Engineer, Egypt
January 2011
2 posts
really open university →
5 tags
December 2010
4 posts
“A Dog starved at his Masters Gate,
Predicts the ruin of the State”
– William Blake
“Yet it can happen suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in the...”
– John Berger
Lacan Research Group
The Lacan Research Group begins on the 13th of December and will be Meeting every Monday from 7:00 to 8:30 in the Sybil Connelly Room, National College of Art and Design, (N.C.A.D.) Thomas Street.
The Jacque Lacan research group of the Provisional University has been set up to research the work of French Psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan.
The research group is dedicated to answering the question: What...
1 tag
August 2010
4 posts
Introducing the provisional university
The provisional university is an autonomous education project based in Dublin. Our commitment to autonomous education stems from the fact that the independent and egalitarian dimensions of study and research are under attack. This attack is not limited to the university. It echoes wherever people act independently of market objectives and, in particular, act on the basis of equality (e.g....
Community resisting cuts, November 4th, 730pm,...
The community sector has been hit hard over the past two years. This is part of a more general pattern whereby social institutions or those oriented towards equality (e.g. public health care; the university) have come under attack. In this public meeting activists from ‘Community First’, based in the south-inner city, will talk about their struggle against cuts imposed by the local drugs...
Stop the Immigration Bill!
Meeting in Trinity College Dublin, 5pm Thursday 28th of October, Arts Block room 4050B
The Immigration, Residency and Protection Bill (IRP), currently going through the Dail, maintains and increases State racism. The University can be neither open nor egalitarian in a society in which citizenship is denied to many who work and study in Ireland. In addition, the IRP Bill will further...