“(…) in a very literal sense, Kantian university is a fictional institution. Reason can only be institutionalised as far as institution itself can remain a fiction, if it can inly work ‘as if’ it was not an institution. When the institution becomes real, reason turns away.”
Bill Readings, The University In Ruins, Harvard, p. 68
MULTIVERSITY. Speculating future (queer) universities
We often fall into the rhetorical trap of constantly referring to the political constellations that oppress us, ultimately reducing ourselves to them, if not being totally merged with the confrontation and the fight we have ourselves initiated. And so we fail to build this “other world” where we want to live, with other priorities and other valuation regimes. More than a utopia (or the idea of an idealized freedom), MULTIVERSITY suggests a place whose parameters and rules are exposed. It is perhaps a very pragmatic exercise, performed in a transparent and revealing way: knowing the rules of the game is to know that we’re playing it, and this makes it less absolute. In the essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”, feminist author Jo Freeman supports the idea that there are no systems without structures, but only systems where the structures are not explicit to all its participants. If the parameters are not visible, the structure becomes absolute, and not negotiable. The policies inherent to the construction of a meta-academy (by the means of irony and fiction) are therefore of utmost importance; they are its dramaturgy. MULTIVERSITY dark-mirrors the Western University. It is an alternate version of a university-to-be. While discussing the contemporary rituals of academic commemoration — the university of numbers and rankings, the “university of excellence”, as criticized by Bill Readings —, MULTIVERSITY proposes an actualization based on a “de-masculinization” of the contemporary university’s system of representation, thus reacting to the ethics of individualization and the intrinsically “male” entrepreneurial self-empowerment behind Helvetica-induced motivational phrasings like: “you make your own path”, “you create your career”, “you can be a game-changer”. As a critical opposition to that, MULTIVERSITY presents itself as a trans-versal, trans-national and trans-gender university. A retro-futuristic apology to the precariousness, the ugliness and the failure. The unhealthy, the promiscuous and the defeated. A trial for an anti-institution embedded in a queer invisibility. A fight against the politics of “success”, the ideology of “the best country in the world according to studies”. An apology to the ones that don’t play the “game-changing” game. A crack in the system, a para-historical friction.
MULTIVERSITY proposes the building of a collaborative platform for inter-disciplinary thinking throughout 4 “school” years (or meta-academic stages), thus operating, both virtually and physically, between two European “extremes”: Portugal and Finland. Fluid and nomadic work groups will meet in temporary spaces driven by one major goal: to elaborate a hybrid model for artistic learning based on “non-artistic” methodologies, or how can one reach Art without being through art? A self-referential academy that offers one programme only — the “academic studies” program —, structured in a rhyzomatic and taxonomical dialogue between all Arts and all Sciences, within a discursive system that is non-hierarchical and post-capitalist. For that purpose, new educational paradigms will be tested, new modes of subjectivation and share of knowledge will be experimented, new ethical (therefore, aesthetic) models for the relation “master/apprentice” will be foreseen. Ultimately, some of the premises that originated the mission behind Western university will be recycled, those same premises that (post-) modernity, quantitatively entrepeneur and business-oriented (education as a product, student as a client), has been extinguishing for the last two decades.
Antes de iniciar:
Já sabemos que não houve Big Bang nenhum… A inexistência de um Início inaugural levará à consequente invalidação de toda e qualquer ideia de Fim. Vamos então impor, neste texto, uma nova temporalidade, uma historiografia transformada em historiologia, ou uma gramática do infinito: para uma ciência especulativa, e para uma elaboração trans-histórica à volta de uma tese, dos seus investigadores (somos muitos), dos seus orientadores (era bom que fossem menos) e dos seus leitores. A viagem será vertiginosa; aconselho alguma calma… E será aborrecida; aconselho alguma paciência… E confusa; aconselho uma cadeira, onde possam sentar-se a observar a vossa própria respiração. O texto que estamos a ler é uma emanação, etérea e intangível, da tese que não vamos, não queremos, ou não podemos ler, e projecta-se em várias direcções temporais e emocionais: para trás dela, para a frente dela, para dentro dela. Nunca por causa dela. Nunca sobre ela. O avesso da tese.
Aceitar que nunca viajamos no espaço, mas sim no tempo; e que este é circular, circulatório e circunscrito. Tal como o texto. Aliás, o que estamos a ler não é do Agora, esse chavão formal inventado à pressa pela Taschen para vender resumos Europa-América… O que estamos a ler é do regime do Depois. Não começa e não acaba, resistindo num sempiterno a-pós, num incomensurável e fatídico a-seguir… Entrar nesta realidade matricial implica termos que desapertar o cinto da convenção, parar o relógio, ficar à espera que a hora marcada volte a ser verdade, para então abraçarmos definitivamente a nossa condição de observadores sentados, em pano de fundo, a assistir à mesma tragédia de sempre. No texto, e também no encontro, se condensa(rá) tudo aquilo que já aconteceu e tudo aquilo que vai acontecer. Por serem desprovidos dos erros associados ao destino biológico — o texto são folhas de papel com um prazo de validade muito superior ao da pessoa que o segura; o encontro é uma realidade imaterial, logo, sem tempo — , ambos se apresentarão em permanente curto-circuito lógico, revendo infinitamente as milhares de hipóteses de futuros e de passados possíveis. É tudo verdade, aqui e ali. Qualquer semelhança do tempo do texto com o espaço do encontro terá sido pura coincidência. Ou puro acaso. São quase sinónimos…
multivers/-ity/-idade 