Messy Democracy: The Art School as War Machine

This chapter offers a critical case study of an educational collaboration between the artists’
collective @.ac (www.attackdotorg.com), and the staff and students of the University of
Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, 9th April - 2nd May 2018 (fig. 1). This pedagogical experiment
saw the university gallery, Hanover Project, transformed into an autonomous art school whose
curriculum and agenda was controlled entirely by the university’s students for the duration of
the exhibition. This practice-based research project attempted to make visible the concealed
power relationships operating implicitly within the teaching of art and design, and also
participatory art projects. This artificial ‘democratisation’ of the art school within the
institutional frame of the neoliberal university highlighted the extent to which the
marketisation, commodification, and financialization (McGettigan, 2013) of HE art education
have de-democratised the art school.

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