PULP is an open platform and an international network of people from different backgrounds (activists, artists, students, precarious workers…) engaged in bringing out information and fighting the consequences of global capitalism. Aim of this publication is to push an existing discourse of possible ways of resistance to an increasingly oppressing system from an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist position.
In this case it is also important to consider that changes in the social and political sphere, above all, those for the benefit of the already privileged, do not just appear from nowhere. They are the outcome of a historical process of regulations and deregulations, as you can also see in Lina Dokuzovic’s reflection on the educational reforms.
In this first issue we focus on changes in the educational context and their connection to the globally failing social structure. Because the crisis of the university is just one facet of the socio-economic crisis, we want to find out the connections with the whole society in an international context.
By creating a space of reflections about the society structures and our role in it, we elaborate a way of involving a broad public in the procedure of developing a critical thinking upon matters that affect us daily. In particular, as students of the fine art academy Vienna, we seek to involve students in the reflection about the art institution, which we are part of.
Day by day we are spending our time in a semi-public space that is our university. At first view it looks as if we would be free to create and organize this space as we wish. But it’s not. Every day there are decisions being taken. Are these decisions transparent to everybody? How can we influence and take part to the decision making process for our collective interest?
Conscious of the fact that we are fully part of this elitist institution, we still believe that the academy structure is a wrong one because every year hundred of people are excluded from educational processes. It’s a totally strict structure, although the academy is presented as an open one, in the neo-liberal way. We think that everyone should have the opportunity to enter the space of the academy, to study, to make research, to improve their artistic practices, to have infrastructures where to work… Well, and if then it’s a problem of space, few teachers and many students: let’s invest more in education and less in banks.
Therefore, in the beginning of this academic year, driven from our own unanswered questions about the role of the entry examination, we decided to meet some of the applicants for the academy and discuss with them about their opinion on this procedure.
PULP is a no budget publication. We urge you to copy and spread it around. We thank all those people that have been involved and helped in the realization of this first issue
pulp@riseup.net