OURGANISATION:
SELF-INSTITUTION RESEARCH UNIT
 

After research and rhetoricising around the notion of 'post-media' my current interest seems to have developed into pursing the idea of self-institution. In many ways this has marked a shift from the creativity involved in making cultural products and events to the creativity of the social relations that surround such products and that make cultural production a collective endeavour. This was always a key element of the 'post media operators' agitation and there are several axioms that cut through both i.e. an immediate concern with the 'means of expression' and the long term aim for a 'dual power in culture'. What I found, following on from sustained collaborative research into the Situationist International and remembering earlier research into forms of working class self-organisation (i.e. workers councils, autodidactic groups), is that self-institutional initiatives have been a constant means of not only creating spaces for critique and sustainable oppositionality, but of creating social relations, means of being together.

My recent experiences as an 'associate researcher' with the Copenhagen Free University (CFU) initiative have confirmed, under the terms of a 'knowledge economy', that it is not only a matter of redefining knowledge as an affective dynamic, but of redefining institutions as forms of revolutionary organisation. This marks a step away from the 60s notion of an 'anti-institution', from the hierarchic political party and the cultural replication of the 'alternative space', into a recognition of institutions as forms for the self-organisation of selves. It also marks an acceptance of institutional internalisation. Castoriadis: "Individuals become what they are by absorbing and internalising institutions. This internalisation... is anything but superficial: modes of thought and action, norms and values, and, ultimately the very identity of the individual as a social being is dependent upon it". If, for 'post media operators', the aim was to secede from an increasingly modelised culture, then, in many ways, self-institutional initiatives (already present as music labels, websites, political groups) become organs of an 'engaged withdrawal' or 'exodus' from capitalist social relations. The long term aim of such endeavours could become a re-creation, a re-assessment, of the 'public sphere'.

In order to explore these theories more fully, and, importantly, to investigate such growing practices in the current cultural climate, I would like to propose to MAP 2002 that a series of small scale discussions on the theme of 'self-institution' be established and taped. I perceive that these discussions would be conducted more on the lines of a 'situation'; they would be 'closed' meetings so that any public performativity or 'spectacle' could be avoided and an intensity of focus and free-expression could be won. The public interface element of this project could be developed firstly by circulating 'situation' transcripts to each of the participating institutions (beginning with an already available transcript of an exchange at the CFU). After building up a sense of stimulated and affective connection between participating institutions, the next stage, ideally worked-up between delegates from the different institutions, could involve a public workshop, a publication, a reference website, a documentary exhibition etc.

My initial list of potential participating institutions includes a broad spectrum of socio-cultural activity.  Another aspect of the project, then, would be to make these projects visible to each other by means of the common denominator of their self-institutional practice as well as exposing each instituion to the different languages of the other. Exchanges could be arranged on a person-to-person basis or by means of IRC.

- Copenhagen Free University
- AMM (improvised music ensemble since 1966)
- Instiutio Media (education institution transferred onto Net, based in Vilnius)
- The Cube (based in Bristol)
- Makrolab
- Society of Control (web based research and art project)
- Arbours Crisis Centre (psychiatric initiative co-founded by Joe Berke who helped set up
 the London Anti-University in the late 60s)
- Freenetworks.org
- 2 Reading groups (i) Marx 1844 (ii) Giorgio Agamben
- ACLUB @ RFH
- Electonic Disturbance Theatre
- Melancholic Troglodyte
- Ultra-Red (LA based agit-electronica)
-  'I'd do anything to get girls into my bedroom': women's video distribution

If MAP is interested in this project then I will be eliciting the help, collaboration, input, participation, encouragement etc of Josephine Berry (Mute) and Jakob Jakobsen (CFU) who would become co-collaborants in the project.

Howard Slater for 'SIRU'
23/3/02