Creative protesting

It’s time to heed the complaints and free art schools from the constraints of the university system, says Niru Ratnam

The field seems open for new for-profit providers to develop art schools which wouldn’t necessarily have to involve three-year courses but might offer more intensive two-year degrees where students are eligible to receive the preferential loans open to other university students (this model is operated by Britain’s first private university, the University of Buckingham). Another alternative would be to ditch the degree entirely and the largely unwanted components it brings with it, such as the need for a dissertation, and provide an education that fits with the conceptual openness of contemporary practice.

It isn’t too difficult to imagine how this latter option might look — an obvious example is unitednationsplaza, an open-access, discussion-heavy art school-type forum with associated informal residencies that initially took place over a year in Berlin between 2006 and 2007. It featured more than 100 of the international art world’s intellectually hippest artists and theoreticians who delivered free-wheeling seminars before retiring to the well-used bar.

However, those who laud initiatives such as unitednationsplaza tend to be the same artists and academics lending their support to London’s students protesting against the Browne Review. Few seem to note that unitednationsplaza was cross-subsidised through the private sector by the profits of e-flux, the online exhibition advertising business of the main organiser, Anton Vidokle.

The artists and academics currently debating the future of art schools are deeply suspicious of private finance. But before the possibility of for-profit providers reared its head they were equally suspicious of state funding. Frankly, after 40 years of critical theory, most of them are suspicious of everything. It’s time to set art schools free.