Bio

Irit Rogoff is a theorist, curator and organizer who writes at the intersections of the critical, the political and contemporary arts practices. Rogoff is Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, a department she founded in 2002. Her work across a series of new 'think tank' PH.D programs at Goldsmiths (Research Architecture, Curatorial/Knowledge) is focusing on the possibility of  exchanging knowledges across professional practices, self generated forums, academic institutions and individual enthusiasms. Publications include; "Museum Culture"  (1997) "Terra Infirma - Geography's Visual Culture" (2001) , "A.C.A.D.E.M.Y" (2006) "Unbounded - Limits Possibilities" (2008) and forthcoming "Looking Away - Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities" (2010). Curatorial work includes; De-Regulation with the work of Kutlug Ataman (2005-8) ACADEMY (2006), "Summit - Non Aligned Initiatives in education Culture" (2007), "Education Actualised"(2010) special issue eflux online journal 14.

Education Actualized

For the conference I would like to extend some aspects of the special issue of e-flux I edited last year "Education Actualised" - in particular my own text entitled "FREE."

The notion of “free” is currently so degraded in terms of the free market, the dubious proposals of the new “free” economy of the internet, and the historically false promises of individual freedom, that it may be difficult to see what it might have to offer beyond all these hollow slogans. Nevertheless, the possibility of producing some interrogative proximity between “knowledge” and “free” seems both unavoidable and irresistible, particularly in view of the present struggles over the structures of education in Europe.

1. First and foremost, what is knowledge when it is “free”?

2. Whether there are sites, such as the spaces of art, in which knowledge might be more “free” than in others?

3. What are the institutional implications of housing knowledge that is “free”?

4. What are the economies of “free” that might prove an alternative to the market- and outcome-based and comparison-driven economies of institutionally structured knowledge at present?