A Presentation by Andrea Fumagalli

A Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry event

Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 7:00-9:00 pm
Room 066 | John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design | University of Toronto | 230 College Street

“Money,” said Francis Bacon, “is like muck, not good except it be spread.” As incomes polarize, unemployment rises, precarious employment spreads, and capital’s use of ‘free labour’ and social knowledge grows more sophisticated, unorthodox economists and social movements are increasingly advocating a radical reform of the welfare system. Basic income is a social policy proposal for a new welfare in the form of an annual income that would be distributed universally and unconditionally. Aiming to guarantee a basic level of income security for all, the basic income proposal is receiving unprecedented attention, particularly in Europe. Join us for a presentation by the Italian economist Andrea Fumagalli on basic income security as a policy response to the inequalities inherent in contemporary cognitive capitalism.

Read paper presentation was based on here: Fumagalli-Lucarelli.pdf

Andrea Fumagalli is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Pavia. He also teaches political economy at Corso di laurea interdisciplinare in scienze multimediali, University of Pavia and advanced macroeconomics at Bocconi University. Professor Fumagalli is member of UniNomade Network, Vice-President of Bin-Italy (Basic Income Network, Italy), and Honoured member of BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network).

A talk by Beka Economopoulos and Jason Jones

A Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry event

Sunday June 14, 2009, 4:00pm
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West (just east of Lansdowne), Toronto

Not An Alternative is a volunteer-run non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, New York, whose mission is to integrate art, activism and theory in order to affect popular understandings of events, symbols and history. The organization operates a multi-purpose venue, The Change You Want to See Gallery and Convergence Stage, where free and low-cost lectures, screenings, panel discussions, workshops and artist presentations occur. The space also consists of a production workshop, filming studio and video editing suite. During the day it is a collaborative office space (aka coworking) for like-minded cultural producers. Not An Alternative’s recent projects have focused on combating gentrification in Williamsburg (The Fugheddaboudit Project, Gentrification Tour), the whitewashing of protest from Union Square in Manhattan (Heroes of Union Square), the current housing crisis (The Real Estate Industry), and an ongoing collaboration with New York City’s Picture the Homeless. For more information see: www.notanalternative.org.

Beka Economopoulos has been a field organizer for various causes for the past 12 years. She directs the Greenpeace online organizing program, where she develops and uses technology tools to coordinate scalable online/offline grassroots organizing and volunteer efforts, and develops outreach and advocacy strategies in online social networks. She is a founding member of Not an Alternative.

Jason Jones is a practicing artist based in New York. Since completing the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2001, he co-founded Black Out Media, a nationally syndicated TV show and in 2004 acted as one of the principle organizers for Arts and Media Clearing House in preparation for the Republican National Convention. He is a founding member and Creative Director of Not An Alternative.

A TSCI event with Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch

Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 7-9 pm
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
Room 066 (basement)
University of Toronto
230 College Street

Listen to mp3 audio of event

“This sucker could go down”: the outcome feared by George W. Bush has, for the moment, been averted. But global capitalism is, like the planet itself, in panic: stock markets continue to plunge and soar; entire countries verge on insolvency; fiercely pro-market governments nationalize their banking systems. Our political-economic system is experiencing a profound upheaval. The future of the financial crisis, and the response to it, is sure to shape the economic context of our lives for years to come.

What are the roots of the ongoing financial crisis? What might its impact be on an already dreadfully unequal world economy? What effects might it have on our cities and communities? What does it say about the place of personal finance in everyday life? What are the political possibilities and risks it carries for progressive social movements? If casino capitalism makes our lives precarious, what elements would a stable alternative to it include?

These are some of the questions we will explore with Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, who will present an explanation of the current financial crisis. Eric Cazdyn and Kanishka Goonewardena will offer responses, and then there will be a collective discussion in which the audience will be invited to participate.

Sam Gindin is Professor in the Department of Political Science at York University, and has served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers and chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers.

Leo Panitch is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at York University and an editor of the Socialist Register.

Eric Cazdyn is professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has recently edited a volume of South Atlantic Quarterly on the philosophical and political problem of disaster.

Kanishka Goonewardena is professor in Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. He recently co-edited Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre.

Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI) designs education events inquiring into the new enclosures: enclosures on time, space, creativity, thought, ecology, love… We seek to understand how these enclosures work. But combating against cynicism, we also inquire into creative pathways within, against, and beyond the enclosures: pathways of thinking, collaboration, organization, experimentation…

TSCI would like to thank the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

An informal conversation with Michael Hardt

Sunday 20 May 2007
2:00 – 4:00
Tequila Bookworm (upstairs)
512 Queen Street West

With Michael, we want to take up the question: Can love act as a political concept? In the final pages of Multitude, Hardt and Negri approach the concept of love as what is needed to grasp the constituent power of the multitude. They end by writing, “We can already recognize that today time is split between a present that is already dead and a future that is already living — and the yawning abyss between them is becoming enormous. In time, an event will thrust us like an arrow into that living future. This will be the real political act of love.” (Multitude, 358)

It is with these last words that we would like to begin our conversation on how to construct a new concept of love — a love that is both personal and political; a love capable of constructing new networks and new subjectivities; a love that is learnt and developed in relation to the network; a love based on differences; a love that creatively experiments with singularities; a love that is ontologically productive. Michael Hardt will begin with a few thoughts on why the concept interests him as well as the advantages, problems and limitations he sees with the concept. Together, we will move outwards from there.

In anticipation of the conversation we suggest reading the following texts:
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 348-358
Hardt, “Conclusion: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy,” in Gilles Deleuze, 112-122

A slow-food dinner conversation about the politics of what we eat

Thursday, October 27, 2005
7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Toronto Free Gallery

Admission? Free if you bring a desire for conviviality and a dish of your choice to share, made from something locally-grown. Dish or not, all are welcome!

Why should we “eat lower on the marketing chain”? Can a politically aware eating experience still be pleasurable? How have processed and packaged foods separated us geographically and psychologically from what we eat, and from each other? Is it realistic to ensure healthy and locally-grown food for all Torontonians all the time? Is it possible for city-dwellers to eat what they grow themselves? Can the fair food, slow food, organic food, and other such movements, help to eradicate the risky ecological footprints caused by our consumerist paradigm and over-consumptive lifestyles? How can we integrate fairer food practices into our everyday lives?

Join us for a slow-food dinner conversation where we will be engaging with these critical questions while partaking of a lively community dinner together.

The conversation around the dinner table will be enriched by the research and experiences of the following Toronto-area food activists:

• The University of Toronto’s Josée Johnston
• FoodShare Toronto’s Karine Jaouich
• Toronto food security activist Lauren Baker

Nick Dyer-Witheford and David Noble in Conversation

Monday, September 26, 2005
7:30pm – 9:30pm
Toronto Free Gallery

Back to school special! How are commercial interests reshaping Canadian universities? How is the neoliberal agenda playing out in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences? What is it like to teach and learn in a university in an age of entrepreneurship? Is the university a place of diversity? Relevance? Do students and young academics have just cause to be cynical? Can critics really say that the university today is simply a pawn to profit? What strategies might be used to challenge the corporatization of education? What might the university yet become?

Join us for an intimate conversation around these questions with Nick Dyer-Witheford and David Noble—two of Canada’s foremost analysts of global capitalism, higher education, and social movements. Nick and David will talk for about 45 minutes and then the event will be open to audience discussion.

There will also be a screening of John Greyson’s Motet for Amplified Voices (2004, 5 min.), documenting the recent megaphone choir action at York University.

Nick Dyer-Witheford is a professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at University of Western Ontario in London, where he coordinates the Media in the Public Interest program. He is author of Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism. Dyer-Witheford’s essay on the university in the era of cognitive capitalism will be published in a forthcoming collection, Utopian Pedagogy.

Scholar and activist David Noble teaches at York University. His books America by Design, A World Without Women, The Religion of Technology, and Digital Diploma Mills have reshaped our understanding of the evolution of technology, religion, and education. His latest book is Beyond the Promised Land: The Movement and the Myth. Noble has an essay on the contemporary university in the September issue of Canadian Dimension.