Bologna, May 7, 2010, The transnational meeting Bologna Burns held in Bologna after 10 years of the application of the Bologa Process took place this week with the participation of students and activists from Italy, France, Austria, Spain, Romania, Slovenia, Russia, and Mexico to name a few.

We discussed our contrariety to the Bologna Process and how to construct common strategies to create a translational organization of autonomous knowledge production.

One of the most important strategies that we have decided to collectively adopt in order to fight the Bologna Process and to build a new, autonomous university culture is a European and global inquiry into the most pertinent questions regarding the lives of students, teachers, researchers and precarious workers.

The most relative points that we discussed and that we propose as rough guidelines for this active research are:

The meeting organized by Edu-Factory – in collaboration with European Alternatives – together with Sud Etudiant at the University of Paris 1 on the topic of the Bologna Process and the European university social movements enjoyed a wide and interested participation.

Inside the university structures of Paris 1, students, researchers, professors and political activists discussed many important points regarding university transformations on a transnational level, the shifting system of labor and productive systems as well as the organization of social struggles. Starting from the theme of the double crisis (both the economic and systemic crises) of the university described in the Zero issue of the Edu-Factoy Journal, new forms of the production of knowledge and subjectivity, the changes in the Welfare state and the strength and weaknesses of social struggles were analyzed in detail. Possible opportunities and strategies for the construction of a new university were then hypothesized based on this discussion.

First Open 48-Hour May Day Congress-Commune of Creative Workers. Moscow, April 29–30, 2010

Over the course of the two days, artists, researchers, translators, teachers, curators, union activists, journalists, writers and musicians from all over Russia will take part in round-table discussions, talk-marathons, poetry readings, and concerts. In recent years, the participants have been involved in many artistic and research initiatives that address the social and economic situation of creative workers in contemporary Russian society.

As neoliberalism continues to establish its hold, its ugly manifestations have become a daily reality for all of us. Not only have exploitation and lack of freedom taken on increasingly elaborate forms, but the very resourcefulness and creative potential of artists and researchers are also appropriated and capitalized by employers. It is against this backdrop that the issues raised by the phenomenon of precarious labor have become ever more pressing. It is our conviction that a reassessment of the precarious worker’s position in today’s economic structure calls for joint action in search of a new cultural space and an alternative educational platform outside of and beyond the fraudulent logic of the neoliberal market economy. Alongside the struggle against injustice at the workplace, collective defense of rights within militant trade unions, and street politics, we are now making another crucial step towards a re-examination of our position and, therefore, towards change.

Tuesday, May 4 - Queen Mary college, Francis Bancroft Building, 3.00-6.00

Introduction: Miguel Mellino (Edu factory, University of Naples L’Orientale)

Speakers: Stefano Harney (Queen Mary)

Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths)

David Harvie (Leicester University)

Joan Gual (Universidad Nomada Barcelona)

Emma Dowling (Queen mary)

Clare Solomon (UCL Union’s President)

www.edu-factory.org

www.euroalter.com/transeuropa/london/