In preparation to Visual Assembly: Planning an ideal University on 13th of November at 14-30 in the framework of Sommerakademie Paul Klee 2025
We live in a world where the education system is changing – new experiments are emerging and old structures that existed for many years are collapsing. Perhaps this is our chance to imagine something completely new that will exist in the future.
Here is the design of the table cloth we are going to use:
The images in the tablecloth for this Visual Assembly are intentionally loose and associative — not a plan, but an invitation to imagine. I added real photos from our carnivals, because I want participants to think of the university not as a rigid training system, but as something communal — collaboration, celebration, transformation. Like a carnival, where we change ourselves together.
If you want a downloadable Visual Assembly design to use it yourself, write to us.
So each participant starts drawing from their side of the napkin, and gradually everyone moves toward the center. All the existing drawings on the napkins can be erased, renamed, or drawn over. It is very important that people truly do what they want, in an atmosphere of freedom, almost like a home party.
Here are the questions we would like to discuss as we plan the ideal university:
- Will there be exams at your university?
- Should grades be given?
- What specialties would you like to have, and what classes would you want to attend?
- Will you build a garden, a playground, a library, a sports facility, or a dance hall?
- If you could choose any professors, who would they be? Would you prefer well-known figures from different countries, or people already living in Nairobi?
- Would you prefer to focus solely on dance, business, or something else?
- Could the university be a place you would build yourself, a place where you would later live? Would you like a university where everyone stays and works after they finish? Many of my friends who were good students got work positions at the universities where they studied. Later, I realized that this was a privilege of kids from a certain background.
- Do you want the university to be international? Would you accept outsiders, immigrants, or people from other countries?
- If there were cruelty or crimes at the university, like bullying, stealing, would you want to resolve these conflicts inside of the UNI or should external structures like courts or the police be involved?
- Would you like to imagine this university on a deserted island where you could build everything from scratch?
Imagine that this university doesn’t require you to pay tuition, like in the Soviet Union, and the government provides a small amount of money for everyone who wants to study. Would you then want to study your entire life and never work? How do you think university is connected to work? There is an opinion that universities should prepare the workforce, but there’s also the belief that this view is too harsh, that it doesn’t reflect how we should treat each other. After all, automation is happening worldwide, and soon robots will do most of the work. Everyone could become artists or scientists — this is what we once called communism. The only question is, where will we get the robots? But maybe we could build them in this very ideal university?
The most important thing to remember is that the Visual Assembly is truly a moment when anything can be imagined. It is crucial to allow ourselves to fantasize and fully express our true desires, forgetting about the constraints of reality.
In the end, if we don’t even know what we want or feel too scared to say it out loud, how can we ever start breaking free from the things holding us back and go after what we really want?
