AULABIERTA[1]: a collective model of rhizomatic pedagogy.

Translated by Neil Younger.

Don't sow, grow offshoots! Don't be one or multiple, be multiplicities! Run lines, never plot a point! Speed turns the point into a line! Line of chance, line of hip, line of flight.” (Deleuze and Guattari, pp 24-25)

[A rhizome] has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills.” (Deleuze and Guattari, p 21)

(Introduction)

Rhizomes: towards a multiple flow

In this text I will try to define the collective practice entailed in the Aulabierta project using a rhizomatic work model. To understand this work model the first thing that needs to be made clear is the meaning of rhizomes. For Deleuze and Guattari, rhizomes entail a way of conceiving the sciences and knowledges produced by them that is different to how they have traditionally been constructed. In the eyes of these authors, there exists a kind of science called aborescent which, simulating the growth structure of a tree, appears to firstly necessitate some deep roots, then a body of knowledge or trunk, and then some branches which finally give us the fruits of knowledge. These sciences produce an aborescent knowledge which is based on dialectical structures consisting of a binary logic of dichotomies (the good and/or the bad, white and/or black, above and/or below, the one who knows and/or the ignorant,...). Consequently, the roots always structure and generate compartmentalized knowledges which are monolithically controlled and directed from top to bottom. Tracing and reproducing establish themselves as logics of knowledge, and always according to pyramidal hierarchies which must always bear their fruits at the very top of the cusp.

Contrary to the image of the tree, the authors propose a different type of knowledge which unfolds according to the figure of the rhizome: subterranean, invisible and transversal insofar as they break disciplines and unsettle frontiers.

When a rhizome is cut or one tries to stop it, its chaotic growth ensures that it appears elsewhere through using gaps, and its overrunning growth recommences. Rhizomes are based on differential production and cartography, in other words, on a map which is constantly being built, unfolded and reappropriated by others, “always detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits.” (Deleuze and Guattari, p. 21)

Rhizomes are like tubercules, subterranean, emerging partially and growing chaotically, connecting and mixing themselves with other networks, without any logic, just a relation to segmentations which causes lines of flight, in other words, overunnings of lineal order systems. Rhizomes always grow by means of multiple lines of intercrossing and flight: the logic of the individual - group or subject – breaks down. Rhizomes are always collective and multiple (we are always multiple “I”s and many other external ones dwell in all of us) so they are not just a literary figure but a determinate way of situating and understanding knowledge and, thereby, addressing its politics. They are elements of a multiple in-between flowing: between systems, individuals, rules, territories; their speed and fluidity derives from being both in the middle and a medium. So rhizomes always connect, they never stay static or get blocked or interrupt themselves, they always rise up elsewhere. Other animals like a pack of rats or a colony of ants are also rhizomes:

“A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given point, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed”.

(Deleuze and Guattari, p.9)

So a rhizomatic pedagogy would be one that grows and disperses itself transversally and collectively in the interstices. The fruit it bears are unexpected as are its growth and extension. For this reason pedagogy as a political element only exists in its multiple flowing, as continuous re-emergence in unexpected gaps, structures and spaces, always reconnecting and dispersing itself, flowing and overrunning...

(The work framework)

Collective pedagogies: assemblages emerging from transborder work

To situate a rhizomatic practice in an educational context, in this part of the text I will define pedagogy specifically from a post-structuralist perspective, basing myself on previously presented frameworks. A collective pedagogy would be one that promoted a multiple enunciation of subjects without a differential relation between professor/learner, and where the very subjects could, by means of a series of coalitions, negotiate and construct their own self-organised knowledge spaces generated by action. In this sense, collective pedagogy can be understood less as a method or recipe than a tool box, in other words, it would be composed of multiple work methods responding to particular circumstances, contexts and the limits that need to be overrun. The metaphor of the tool box is used by Deleuze and Guattari to emphasise a contextual use of the theory of agency that they modelled: political action and theory unfolds according to the situation and reinvents itself. This pedagogy would offer itself, therefore, as an open resource, as a rhizomatic path open to multiple concatenations and relations, hence its capacity to be appropriated, relocated, displaced and repeated, to mark a contextual difference and emerge again. It is clear that this position does not allow us to talk of containers of knowledge, or even of educational programming, closed curriculums or objectives that are delimited and established by imposition according to an institutional discourse. Even less does it admit binary or dichotomous power relations of the type: educator/learner, expert/layperson or professor/student or evaluator/evaluated. Instead, knowledge would exist socially and relationally, unfolding through the interaction of mediums, agents as well as structural situations where educative action emerges from an agenda of political action.

This pedagogic work does take shape following just one track but by assuming multiple forms and becomings, or, following Deleuze and Guattari's vocabulary, in assemblages. These act as political processes by strengthening and multiplying individuals' capacities and at the same time break power relations. So assemblages allow a group of people, whose members are not identified as subjects or individuals by any category, to become something more than a group and, thanks to this, to transform spaces and situations in a continuous process of overrunning. This could be the case of Aulabierta: a series of people, catalogued as “students” by some, form a group and work collaboratively with another series of agents and people, designated as “architects” or “professionals” by others, to construct a different political space and pedagogic model from inside a university education. They work with the laws and discourses of the university, inducing movement in them as well as radically subverting them to the point of winning a space, both physical and symbolic, of

recognition and legitimation in/outside the university.

Such a style of education therefore delimits itself as performative and at the same time as transborder insofar as it crosses discourses, constantly translates positions, constantly subverts norms and discourses and finally overruns institutions. In this sense we could speak of a radical pedagogy, inasmuch as the situation and the framework where the education emerges overruns the limits of any institution, including educative discourse itself, according to the collective political action that emerges and the antagonisms it produces at the very heart of the institution. This type of practice, as I will now exemplify through the work of Aulabierta, is a rhizomatic pedagogy: it expands from the in/outside of the system, deterritorialises and subverts it, emerging in unexpected and even contradictory forms, in its collective flowing process (talks, seminars, publications, weblog, interventions in the adjacent neighbourhood, etc...) We will see how...

(The origin of a collective emergence)

Aulabierta as a work model of resistance: deconstruct the university.

The Aulabierta work model is composed as a resistance which emerges from inside the very university, in other words, from inside an institution and the limits of its discourses. In order to understood this starting point, it is necessary to establish a double genealogy, firstly, by reviewing some proposals for a popular and critical education, and secondly, by locating Aulabierta's origin in its own chronological emergence. One after the other.

First, a general description of university education and its framework. University pedagogies are being subjected to a whole series of market scrutinies and regulations which are converting them into armed parts of the neoliberal system, of the disciplinary tradition and company pragmatism. Educators and intellectuals such as Chomsky, McLaren, Giroux or Popkewitz to name just a few, have been telling us for some years about the penetration of the business sector in universities and in the production of knowledge on a global scale, in detriment to a critical, collective and above all public pedagogy. Given this situation it is understandable that in numerous points of the planet educative and cultural work projects have emerged which are building collective organisational models, of self-organisation or of co-operatism. In these types of initiatives horizontal relations and transversal projects are promoted to enable work in networks, so as to offer operational and viable work models inside educational institutions.[2] This type of work, let us not forget, derives from the tradition of collaborative and co-operative models informing the new European school (Freinet or Summerhill) and have already been applied in popular education fronts in Latin America (such as the Zapatistas or the Movimento dos Trabalhadore Rurais Sem Terra) as well as in the sites of revolt of 68 and its subsequent progressive models (both in Paris and in San Francisco and Berkeley) to mention some of the most discussed historical examples. In all of these movements, education has been structured as a relation inside the system: social movements understood it as an articulating force (the Zapatistas) or as an element of social revolution and transformation of constructive education and in favour of social justice (the new school or the popular education movements or today's currents of critical pedagogy.

With these references noted we can now go on to situate Aulabierta's overrunning point: the impulse behind the project, composed of a group of students of Granada University's School of Architecture and Fine Art Department, was the same necessity to construct an alternative space, a different space, or better said a heterotopia as defined by Foucault (1967). This heterotopia is constructed in relation to a space crossed by networks, a space in transit, where the everyday is altered leading to a multiple juxtaposition of places which include external elements and relations.[3] This is a differential space, an interstice, which acts in relation to unconventional norms and where relations of power start circulating in unusual ways. In other words, they subvert each other momentarily, and so lead to uncontrollable or invisible spaces in relation to dominant discourses. So Aulabierta emerged from a contextual relation in a discursive system characterised generally by a traditional and technocratic pedagogy (in other words, the teaching practice found in Fine Art and Architecture departments which is mostly stuck in eighteenth century disciplinary discourses), to attempt to break with its routines and work forms. As a counter-reaction, the students, with the support of the faculty vice deacon of students, decided to set themselves in motion and announce an alternative way of working was possible. Their starting point was a “tactical”[4] model, in other words, working with the university's organisation of courses to obtain credits. This is their account of the position they took:

“We have used the various routes for obtaining university credits as a possible penetration strategy, exploring the requirements and possibilities that the university itself presents in order to, if necessary – each situation we have been involved in has been characterised by its particular form of imposed administration – appropriate them. The attainment of freely selected credits (by means of the conversion of tuition hours into curricular credits)for participation in the activities we organise and their consequent inclusion in our academic record has never been an end in itself but a means to expose a double situation: a) students' potential (in both senses of the word) to design and, thereby, to intervene in their own academic record, and b) the academic legitimation resulting from the recognition of our activities as part of the curriculum (hence the awarding of credits) demonstrates the capacity of some nonconformist students to transform, from inside, the content of university teaching.

The real driving force behind the project has been pleasure, in other words, we do what we do because we want to and because we like doing it and not because of the immediate benefits we might receive.” (E-mail written by Antonio Collados of Aulabierta commenting the first draft of this text, 18 August, 2007. Emphasis added).

The project's original proposal was based on a series of seminars and actions in keeping with its “penetration strategy” position. By means of this tactical approach and thanks to the support and close collaboration of Santiago Cirugeda, it became possible to produce a different type of space, not only on a discursive but also a physical level.

In short: it is clear that Aulabierta's starting point conforms to our rizhomatic pedagogic perspective from the very beginning. Aulabierta produces a battery of alternative proposals, all of them recognised by the system in which it inserts itself, thereby creating an assembly space where new forms of work can be established inside the university. It is important to emphasis this point: Aulabierta emerges from inside the system; it neither renounces nor eliminates it. Aulabierta utilises it subversively, deconstructing it by using the same arms as the system in which it operates. This is political educational guerilla work: copy the forms, learn them and use them for a different purpose – tactical, of course. In this sense it appears as a minor language: it utilises the official language's codes, instrumentalising and parasiting them through collective enunciations. As we shall see later, Aulabierta looks for places from which it can spread and break the routines and disciplines imposed by the university. The project rereads the university's systems and discourses to then reappropriate them in favour of a collective work of resistance against ossified models and vertical power relations. This work entails a series of complex negotiations, three of which I shall describe because from my point of view they present exemplary collective work procedures.

(Example one)

Deconstruct to construct a different space: the emergence of the molecular revolution.

The first example I shall describe is the construction of Aulabierta as a physical space in terms of a process of political negotiation. As I have already indicated, Aulabierta as a physical space arose from the proposal to do a collective project with the architect Santiago Cirugeda. A very interesting deconstructive process emerges here since the university's credits system is activated to subvert it from within and eventually enable the emergence of the building that to this day constitutes the project's base. To this end, the collective decided to initiate a course with a powerful trigger effect: “AABIERTAdes/mon/ta/je. A Practical Course in Health and Safety in Construction Works” (14-22 September 2005). In this course, apart from a series of theoretical components and the making of some work safety notices, a direct action on the basis of a practical case was proposed: dismantle a complex of warehouses ceded by the Granada Provincial Delegation for the development of the course. Through this “action-course” materials were reutilised for the future construction of the project's base in function of a series of new ones used for the foundations, closings, roofing and assembling, progressively giving form to the new space (that is to say, the courses served to carry out the physical construction of the space). This course is therefore just the first piece in an open chain that functions as an assemblage to make Aulabierta's space emerge.

The interesting thing about this work is the series of negotiations and coalitions that Aulabierta, with the collaboration of Santiago Cirugeda and his studio (Recetas Urbanas[5]) had to carry out in order to eventually construct their own space. This series of actions involved convincing Granada University's Vice-Rectorate of Infrastructures, obtaining permission for the dismantling, working with students and all the other agents involved in a construction project, coordinating hours and contents with two faculties, legitimating all the work in the various institutional spaces according to the pertinent bureaucratic language and, above all, negotiating the warehouse's dismantling with the Granada Delegation and the University as a practical form of work and institutional learning.

All this work of “penetration strategies” entails rereading subversively the systems and norms that constitute academia and from this position propose tactics of intervention, camouflaged and developed in the form of - let us not forget- accredited courses. This kind of deconstruction has been defined as positive by understanding it as political practice (Butler 1995) or also as pragmatic deconstruction by understanding it as a space of action (Spivak 1987). Here, deconstuction, owing to this political dimension, becomes a way to open multiple fronts beyond the courses themselves: these courses are ways of creating possibilities of action, work tools that unite institutions, agents, territories and discourses conceived by the system as independent and isolated. So Aulabierta's tool box are these spaces of collective intervention. It constructs them, openly offers them to others and disseminates them. But these tools are not everlasting but provisional and contextual since they in the service of a greater project. Taken as a whole, the offered courses imply a continuous transgression of the discourses on which academic discipline is founded: a group of architects and a group of artists working in the field of autoconstruction, inter-disciplinary collectives working and dirtying their hands, local and collective knowledge belonging to students, activated by the materiality of experience, to mention examples of particular activities.

This multiplicity of dimensions characterising both the project's collaborative work and its composition is what constitutes its political condition, more than the fact of a course with an architect, a recipe for autoconstruction or a collective dismantling. It is the concatenation of the actions and the project's multiple fronts that constitutes the political, not just the material practice or the workshop. Or better still, it is impossible to separate the one from the other, material construction from the constitution of a discourse about construction, or the deconstruction of a warehouse from the university's political modes. This might be the crux of the project's political work: how to uninstall glass or unscrew in order to dismantle (simple, material group actions carried out in the context of a course on security in works) also involves a concatenation of actions that endow a collective with a capacity for desterritorialisation (of the construction site as well as the territory of knowledge proper to academia). The articulating point is the unfolding complex political actions of construction which unite diverse dimensions on the basis of work in its own discursive space.

At this point in the argument it is important to look for the way to describe Aulabierta's flowing. It can be approached in terms of a molecular revolution exactly as Guattari already predestined some years ago using the example of feminist movements or free radio.[6] A molecular revolution is not composed by an external revolution or a direct attack on systems of government by compact groups or adversaries but on the basis of a series of coalitions characterised by subjectivities in progress which disarticulate any type of governability or space of control, all the time gaining in coefficients of freedom and getting involved in diverse antagonisms and social concerns (Guattari 2005, p.65). The project's capacity for action is constituted by an indefinable collective, its actors cannot be defined in terms of a molar subject, that is to say, an identity essentially susceptible to being controlled and limited in its scope for action by a dominant system. Rather, one can only understand the molecular formula from the perspective of the events, alternative technologies and alliances that a group movement can constitute. Thanks to the driving force of the courses and workshops, Aulabierta developed a network of alliances, both internal and external with the university and other groups and agents. These alliances have been able to regenerate themselves by means of collaborations with other groups, and at the same time broaden its scope of action by adopting other models beyond the university system (I will discuss this question in more detail later on).

To understand the movements produced by a molecular revolution we need to visualise the fractures, conflicts and possible appropriations they produce. The revolution unfolds/composes itself through intensities and multiplicities, by its effectiveness and openness to the outside, not by finished products. Aulabierta takes shape as this space of encounter, of difference between diverse agents and and interests, and, above all, of disruption relative to the static energy that controls the university system: by breaking education's regulated space, by interrupting and constructing practical courses with and for students, by smashing the university's management of knowledge, and by breaking the individual and technocratic model of work based on the success of the individual, and, above all, by offering the uncertainty and the contradictory hope specific to collective work. It is from the perspective of these lines of interruption or overrunning that the history of this project can also be written.

The initial dismantling course which went on to become the collective construction of Aulabierta's factory entails, in this sense, a desterritorialisation of the university system and its subsequent reterritorialisation in the construction of the project's base thanks to the molecular movement of the project's expansion. What is interesting is, on the one hand, to distinguish the the ways in which Aulabierta moves between the university's striated, outlined and limited spaces and, on the other, to describe the open, collective and molecular spaces that emerge. It is in these transgressions produced by the openings/closings where molecular practice is negotiated and makes sense. I will now give an account of another of these forms of multiplicity which leads us to ask ourselves how to prolong this collective work within the university.

(A second example)

Managing collective work: a multiple enunciation.

I shall take as my second example Aulabierta's work of consolidation through its legitimation as a project of cultural management. If I have described Aulabierta's first steps up to now as a collective becoming supported by particular actions, in a second register,[7] an approach I consider as a stage or phase in transit, the associative dimension of the project gains considerable importance with the consolidation of a work network. However, at this point it would be more a case of describing an intensity where the project had to construct itself discursively and acquire corporeality. While Aulabierta went through a period of openness to multiple relations, it had to define and structure itself as an association. But at the same time it had to continue forming itself with new alliances in order not to diminish its capacity for action or limit its tool box to the tactical model of extraordinary courses. This lead to tension generated by both the collective consolidation of the project and its simultaneous framework of semi-permeability conferring it institutional legitimacy. Apart from the opening/closure that the courses proposes in order to construct Aulabierta and its final form as warehouse it was necessary in the project's future to deconstruct its very structure. By this I mean Aulabierta had to open itself out again so that it did not constitute itself in a molar type only, and be able to play again with the inside/outside limit.

This transitional game assumed a notorious visibility when the Aulabierta project presented itself as a company under the umbrella of a young cultural management company and won first prize in an entrepreneurs competition organised by Granada University. Once again a moment of legitimacy inside the university resulted while at the same time it seemed to visualise the project's parameters of work inside the system. This situation led to Aulabierta constructing itself as an intermediary space, situated between the direct action stemming from student's needs on the one hand, and its internal legitimacy within the university on the over, which obliged it to open its space, and therefore the university's, beyond its territories. This type of work then can no longer be considered as a series of subversive actions but forces us to understand it as a self-organised cooperative space. This consideration allows us to argue that the significance of the project's coordination work was to dissolve a traditional organisational model and to construct a new one based on coordination as a political strategy of activation and political becoming. So coordination does not only include work carried out in courses but also the mode of self-organisation and self-representation (in the sense of creating a political image and gaining presence) in order to consolidate a network of multiple assemblages.

These points are not meant to imply that this theme was not present from the start of the project but rather that owing to its molecular evolution the question of the form of organisation inevitably became one of the project's vital concerns. In this context, coordination took on the meaning of a latent political action found in social movements, exactly as suggested to us by Lazzarato with his example of the temporary performing arts workers in France. According to this author, coordination entails the double movement of, on the one hand, the internal destructuring of the system and, on the other, political subtraction or the opening of possibilities. This double movement enables the constitution of a minor or micropolitical politics, one that induces the emergence of a space for transformation propelled by a line of flight. This political method does not seek to counter a situation of domination using war strategies opposed to a tactical politics but with modes of co-creation and co-effectuation, as Lazzarato argues: “The logic of invention is of creation and the effectuation of different worlds in the same world that neutralises power, at the same time as it makes possible the fact that one stops obeying. This unfolding and proliferation produces a prolongation of singularities through relations of adjacency with other singularities, drawing a line of force between them, making them momentarily similar and co-operating, for a time, for a common goal, without denying, therefore, their autonomy and independence, without totalising them”. (Lazzarato 2006, pp. 201-2)

This work of unfolding is only possible on the basis of a collective enunciation, (exactly the same lesson assemblages teach us), multiple modes of work and networked coordination. This collective in action entails a decentralised presence that utilises tools and events as political arms of work and organisation, permitting, if possible, a relational mode of organisation. Finally, I will indicate another level of description which opens another line of action in Aulabierta.

(And the third example)

The work of dispersion: a multiplication of work fronts

It is important to draw attention to the making of alliances and relations that emerge from the micropolitics animating Aulabierta. They constitute, in fact, a framework of networks for the project's dispersion. This aspect corresponds to a third level of description that seeks to account for the articulation and dispersion of the relations, bearing in mind the inside/outside tension described above.

As already stated, Aulabierta does not only constitute itself as a physical space, but also emerges as a platform in order to continue experimenting and seeking other spaces for collective actions. This aspect entails the making of coalitions in a practical manner with subjects, workshops or seminars which potentiate this collective learning space. A multiplying effect operates through a series of action fronts that could articulate Aulabierta's work beyond its own limits. This type of work unfolds in various fronts: some are formed by new seminars and practical work in the classroom understood as an experimental space, whilst others are formed by work materials and resources that lead to the constant re-articulation of work in a state of dispersion. Let us consider them one by one.

In the sense of a networked work space, the work articulated with some academic subjects enables Aulabierta to be the ideal framework for the application of experimental projects in this other possible space. It also enables a direct relation with the adjacent La Chana neighbourhood, as another experimental space opening the university's barriers, inducing a rethinking of the common relations and interests that can emerge from the ambits of participative investigation work or ICTs applied to community work. So the emergence of Aulabierta's work as AAABIERTA (the association running the Aulabierta project) might well exemplify a work of articulation of space and transversal knowledge organisation and university space, constituting the coalitions and forms of cooperation necessary for each occasion.

But at the same time, Aulabierta has always presented itself and taken decisions collectively and as way of collectivising knowledge, by means of diverse technologies which enunciate a practice going beyond itself: in other words, Aulabierta points to a constant work of dispersion like a collectively distributed toolbox. I shall focus on this aspect because I think it marks the point where the project attains a truly rhizomatic practice, in the sense of a contradictory and uncontrolled proliferation.

From the beginning Aulabierta has been conscious of the need to visibise itself as a collective that invites other collectives or projects to appropriate or learn from them their way of working (which is similar to Santiago Cirugeda's “Recetas Urbanas” or Fiambrera Obrera's “modos de hacer”[8]). Thanks to its relational way of working, Aulabierta has been able to unfold on several fronts: its transparency on various levels as a transversal work model has enabled it to expand through its invitation to other collectives of the same type to emerge and define their own field of action. The project's degree of autonomy depends on its relational character, that is, anyone in theory can share and learn from their materials and so construct their own toolbox.

Further proof of its relational work model consists in the fact that Aulabierta has always published all types of documents in open code, not only in a technical sense (use of Creative Commons licences and wiki platforms) but also as an operational model. So the project could be conceived as a resources archive composed of diverse templates, instructions and other modular elements which have been deployed in the courses, enabling its continuous articulation (hence the appropriateness of the toolbox metaphor). In this way Aulabierta pretends to share its experience and knowledge with others who are free to rearticulate it. In other words, it allows them to produce knowledge as a group in order to reproduce and disseminate it collectively. The challenge here is to maximise transversality and collaboration in the work of collaboration in order that the actual project can distant itself from its original actors and motors (Santiago Cirugeda, the Recetas Urbanas studio or the present members of the association AAABIERTA as interlocutors with the architecture and fine-art university departments). This step, the most difficult and nevertheless the most productive, would entail relating to other groups and projects as a node in a network in such a way that this politico-pedagogic operation continue unfolding and connecting to other unforeseeable spaces. The role of the project of organising knowledge in this task of multiplication is to promote the collective work's nodes and transversal relations, spreading and reactivating itself constantly like a rhizome. A project that emerges and disseminates itself in other fields, other realities, thereby multiplying the possibilities of action. In this sense the rhizomatic pedagogic model operates to full effect by enabling its dissemination beyond itself, in a relational model that unfolds new fronts of action and ends up overrunning itself.

(The End, for the moment...)

The in/conclusion of rhizomatic pedagogy, or towards an uncertain future.

In this text I have attempted to explore diverse avenues in order to understand Aulabierta's complex and multiple work. The different levels of description I have used to narrate the project have aimed to reveal the different dimensions this type of collective project works in and activates. Despite this, as a final comment, I would like to point out the blind spots of these type of projects, not to criticise destructively but in the spirit of a process of learning, and almost as a reflexive space of self-critique in order to continue advancing.

The challenges and contradictions that collective projects like the one described here face are many: multiple authorship and the dependence on key actors and individuals to the detriment of the regeneration of the network; the struggle against the precariousness of life in all its dimensions; the subsequent devaluation of collective knowledge and the neo-liberal integration of creativity in the global market of the general intellect; the new forms of “neocon” marketing applied to the pedagogic factory and its subtle compartmentalisation in neo-colonial cultural policies, both in the academy and cultural centres or progressive museums; or the elimination of dissent and difference by means of a hyper-productive domestication/institutionalisation of political conflict in the cultural market in detriment to public social policies. These challenges open up again avenues and necessary explorations in order to continue our movement in the obscure and dynamic waters of collective projects, and require, needless to say, a multiple and collective response.

On a final note, and by way of introducing a certain degree of optimism in this text's last part, I believe that a rhizomatic pedagogic model, like the one presented here and exemplified with reference to Aulabierta's multiple emergence, can help to rethink political modes of coordination and collective work beyond the the discourses and power relations that systematize our daily lives. The continuous event of in-between emergence of this rhizomatic practice and its inestable relational modality are without doubt its greatest virtues/defects, since, when faced by an uncertain future, the best response is action and collective learning to invent different lines of action. This might be the most important lesson that these type of rhizomatic practices teach us: do not wait for any future or utopia devised by others, but build it ourselves collectively, in the present here and now.

Javier Rodrigo Montero

Educator and art researcher. Member of various networks and other projects in relation to critical pedagogy, collaborative art and community practice. He works for Observatori dels Publics, Associació per a joves, the Artibarri network and collaborates with diverse museums and cultural centres.

Bibliography

Foucault, M. (1967) Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias. http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html

Butler, Judith (1995). “Contingent Foundations: Femminism and the question of Postmodernisms”, in Benhabib, Butler, Cornell (1995). Femminist Connections: A philosophical Exchange. Routledge. Morata. Madrid. 35-58.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, translated br B. Massumi, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Guattari, Félix (2005) Plan sobre el planeta: Capitalismo mundial integrado y revoluciones moleculares. Traficantes de sueños, Madrid.

Guattari, Félix y Suely Rolnik,Suely (2006) Micropolítica. Cartografías del deseo. Traficantes de sueños, Madrid.

Lazzarato, M (2006) Por una política menor. Acontecimiento y política en las sociedades de control. Traficantes de Sueños, Madrid.

Mörsch, Carmen (2007).Estrategias y tácticas: prácticas en la frontera entre Arte y Educación. En Rodrigo, Javier (2007) Prácticas dialógicas. Intersecciones entre Pedagogía crítica y Museología . Museu d ´Árt Contemporani a Mallorca Es Baluard .Palma de Mallorca.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1987) In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Nueva York, Methuen, 1987.

Licence

This work is under Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Spain. To see a copy of this licence visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/es/ or write to: 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.