Programming

Sub-event of

Off-Biennale

22 — 31 May 2009

➜ Please note that this event could not be fully realized. The OFF-Biennale team was forced to end activities earlier than planned, for reasons beyond our control. Some activities have been postponed to the following programming season.

Dates:: Sunday, May 24 and Sunday, May 30 both at 11:00 am
Location: Cabot Square

The Université populaire à Montréal (UPAM) is a project for exchanging, sharing and building knowledge, with the aim of promoting a vision of education that is open, free, transdisciplinary and empowering.

A descendant of the European popular university movement and nourished by Quebec activism (communitarian, libertarian, feminist, anti-authoritarian, environmentalist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist), UPAM was born under the banner of dissent during the 2007 student strike. Following the success of this first experiment created in a state of emergency, participants formed a permanent committee that has since been working to explore the prospects of a popular university in Montreal. With no knowledge tests or selection competitions, the upamien-ne-s work in a free and participative environment, with the aim of stimulating reflection and developing the spirit of the community. and the development of critical thinking, rather than the training of economically productive elements with a focus on the job market. In fact, a great deal of space is given over to discussion and interaction with and between participants.

Since then, UPAM has pursued its advocacy and educational work by organizing itself on an ad hoc basis, in times of crisis, on the terrain of conflict, directing its activities away from the university assizes towards the interstices and commonplaces of the public arena.

= Free market =

Reflecting on the current crisis, on the high and low tides of cursed, sticky capitalism, on the all-too-often sad falseness of the relationships that frame our exchanges.... emerged within UPAM the idea of setting up, on a sporadic basis, renewable at will but always with a gently subversive outlook, a free market. We would exchange know-how, ideas and objects, each time with the possibility of opening, studying, understanding, negotiating, discussing, exchanging, distributing, reproducing etc. This market would bring together the following kiosk trailers: /ArtLibre /InformatiqueLibre /AmourLibre /VéloLibre /BouffeLibre /EspaceTempsLibre /HerbesFolles /LibrePensée . On the program: DIY, opening black boxes, sharing, reappropriating, learning, negotiating, tinkering, liberating, copying, reinventing, babbling and other little subversions.