Male and Female Slave Universities

The “multidisciplinary art practice” Atelier Van Lieshout in the Netherlands has developed architectural models of what they call a Male Slave University and a Female Slave University – dystopian comments on the ongoing commodification and marketization of higher education under present-day managerialism.

Both Slave Universities form part of ALV's “SlaveCity”, where people are held captive and enslaved by capitalism and virtual(ly worthless) money.

SlaveCity is “rational, efficient and profitable”. In tune with current thinking, it is the world's “first 'zero energy' town; [...] a green town where everything [including humans] is recycled and a city that does not squander the world's resources”:

www.ateliervanlieshout.com/works/slavecity.htm

On arrival in SlaveCity, people [including students] “have to pass the Welcoming Center. [...] Old, cripple[d], sick and bad tasting people will be recycled in the biogas digester”:

www.ateliervanlieshout.com/works/welcomingcentre.htm

The people at ALV describe the Male Slave University as “made to train the slaves for better performance and [...] linked to a[n] environmental friendly biogas installation”:

www.ateliervanlieshout.com/works/maleslaveunivesity.htm

The Female Slave University is an “elegant and efficiently designed education center [...], a contemporary labour camp”:

www.ateliervanlieshout.com/works/femaleslaveunivesity.htm

Professors “are the only ones receiving payment for their work”. Students “are being educated to function good and efficient within the objectives of SlaveCity”, which notably resembles our own society. Living conditions afforded to slaves in SlaveCity are reminiscent of those of employees in any urban sprawl of our days. Working conditions of students and young researchers and academics are as precarious as those at most universities we may know.

It is where democracy and the massification of higher education lead. Egalitarianism means equal enslavement.