Symposium: radical reThink

Please note: this event will take place from 11:15am until 6pm, with a break for lunch.

"Formal freedom is the freedom of choice within the coordinates of the existing power relations, while actual freedom designates the site of an intervention that undermines these very coordinates." (Slavoj Zizek, Organs Without Bodies)

radical reThink brings together leading educators, artists, designers, curators, and researchers for a day of talks, discussions and workshops to critically address urgent issues for Fine Art in Higher Education. Of interest to art students, educators and all who value community, this symposium considers strategies for building solidarities and enacting resilient alternatives to market-based models of education.

Grounded in practice, this critical and creative response draws on the inspirational activism of local and international practitioners, including contributors developing new decision-making models from reThink UvA (a response to the proposed restructuring of University of Amsterdam in 2015), to UAL’s successful fossil fuel divestment campaign.

radical reThink is SE Barnet, Marsha Bradfield, Georgia Brown, David Cross, Kelly Chorpening, Kyran Joughin and Ana Oppenheim.

Programme

The event opens with the ‘vertical’ model of transmitting knowledge from experts to audience, and moves towards the ‘horizontal’ model of knowledge exchange developed in radical democracy, feminist pedagogies, the Transition Town movement and Occupy. radical reThink aims to connect transmission, exchange and co-production of knowledge as complementary forms of learning and transformation.