The first session explores the questions of the commons and
cooperatives as modes of ensuring the survival of the notion of the
public. Taking as its example the so-called “public” institution of art
and culture, the session investigates organizational models as political
forms, asking how current processes of governmentality and
marketization can be reversed and how we might reclaim management from
neoliberal discourse, thus positing instituting anew as an alternative
rather than an exit strategy or mere symptom of
anti-institutionalization. At stake are the questions of how we wish to
organize ourselves and whether self-instituting is an effective means of
survival now that the state seems to be withering away.