Liz and Tim had the strange luck of being the last folks allowed inside occupied Trent Hall on the Middlesex University campus yesterday before the police served a final trespassing injunction. The occupation ended peacefully today around 5 PM, but the campaign to save Middlesex’s philosophy department continues.

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\\\\///\\ Counter/Mapping QMary ////
////////////////\\\////////the university and border technologies

To begin by asking <what is the university> requires an investigation of the function of the university not only as a knowledge factory but also as a border. Our investigation of what the university produces as knowledge, hierarchies and power exposes the border/s that operate in, on and around the university. That <the university is a border> is made possible by the operation of a filter mechanism. The counting of bodies, money in and money out, who can and can not enter, what are we when we leave, the limits of what is and is not knowledge and the complicity with national and global border regimes – who and what is stopped at the border?
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A group of students, staff and researchers at Queen Mary University have set out to map the ways in which migration, border technologies, surveillance and monetary flows intersect with the university as our place of work and study. Joining us in the project are the <Counter-Cartographies Collective from the University of North Carolina>, who will help to explore the dynamics and possibilities of mapping as method and action.
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From Thursday 13 May – Monday 24 May we will gather to discuss, research and take action to produce a counter map of Queen Mary University. As part of our practice we will be facilitating <three public workshops> to expand the participation and possibilities of the project. These workshops as well as the counter mapping production process are open to all who are interested and are free to attend – please see below for the programme and contact details. The venue for all events will be room 4.08 in the Francis Bancroft Building of Queen Mary Campus and is accessible.

//////Thursday 13May, 2pm
\\\\\\\\\\Imaginaries of the university

The Counter-Cartographies Collective will present their work on the neo-liberal university and discuss their maps, methodologies and actions. This session will address our imaginaries of the university – current and potential – and will conclude with a drift around QM campus.

\\\\\\\\Thursday 20May, 2pm
//////////How to make a counter-map

The Counter-Cartographies Collective will facilitate a workshop on radical collaborative mapping skills using available open source mapping software and web-based data-mining techniques. Free and open to all, email us to register.

///////Monday 24 May, 4pm
\\\\\\\\\\\The politics and potential of counter-mapping

In this event, Counter/Mapping QMary project will present their map of Queen Mary. This presentation will be followed by an open discussion of the methods and politics of mapping the university as a site of migration, education and labour struggles. Invited interlocutors: The Students not Suspects Campaign (Goldsmiths), No Cuts at Queen Mary Campaign, Jane Wills, David Pinder, Ishani Chandrasekara, Miguel Mellino, John Hutnyk, Alberto Toscano

//Contact
Counter/Mapping QMary
countermapping.qmary(@)googlemail.com
Facebook: countermapping qmary

\The Counter/Mapping QMary project is generously supported by the School of Business and Management and the Geography Department at Queen Mary University.

map: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/about/campus/mileend/index.html#map

www.ncrising.ingo

we wanted to share with y’all a couple of our impressions from the workshops at NC RISING! we were able to attend thanks to the very well organized daycare service at the conference:

2 hours workshops:

RADICAL MAPPING: nice turn out, around 50 people in a packed classroom in Saunders.
after a well crafted power point on 3cs work and other cartographic projects, people were interested in the nitty gritty steps of mapping and also in its theoretical underpinnings, bringing Foucault’s famous pair of knowledge/power several times in relationship to cartography. one of the interventions spoke about squatters in Brasil using GIS…3cs gave some hints about how to use local government websites to identify vacant buildings

OCCUPY EVERYTHING: the panelists represented the recent university occupations in New School of NYC and  San Francisco State College as well as  the monthly Really Really Free Market in Carrboro.
just listening to the histories of each of this struggle was worthwhile. also, among all of them, and together with interventions from the packed room in Bingham Hall, we got a kind of working definition of occupation that might be useful.
occupation, whether of a campus building, a forest, a house, a multi-story building, a construction site…. whether using chains, barricades, dance parties, exchange of goods, etc… might be understood as:
-experience of possibility
-experience of affinity and solidarity
-experience of transcending well established identities and defined roles
-the creation of a public space outside of capitalist logic
-a reference point that speaks stronger than other kinds of propaganda
-the feeling that something else, different from the norm, works

it was interesting to see that curious crowd and all the buzzing activity taking place at saunders and bingham hall, the quotidian spaces we go through on an everyday basis were temporarily transformed into a anarchist bookfare, anti-capitalist workshops and childcare service….in a way, the conference was an occupation of sorts in itself : )