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.