What We are
The University Without Conditions, also know as the Free University Auckland Aotearoa, is a free university.
By free, we mean free of conditions. We recognise that education at other institutions is only open to those who are willing to live with debt, and our aim is to not be a burden on those studying with us.
Established in 2012 by a self-organising collective and running without ties to Government or corporations, it exists not to produce ‘degrees for jobs’, but to enable a human being to improve themselves and the society in which they exist.
Between 2012 and 2017 we ran a series of philosophy and sociology courses in community spaces around Auckland’s CBD. Check them out here. Courses are currently on hiatus. If you want to run a course get in touch.
In 2014 we established the Performance Ethics Working Group, a research cluster to explore the role of ethics in contemporary arts.
The Performance Ethics Working Group
The Performance Ethics Working Group is research cluster in the University Without Conditions. As the name indicates the core focus of the Performance Ethics Working Group is the intersection of ethics with contemporary performance practices across and between the fields of theatre, dance, live and visual arts.
Led by Melissa Laing the working group’s structure is very informal, coalescing around a question or event.
To date the Performance Ethics Working Group has undertaken two major research projects. These are:
An investigation of the ethical concerns, understandings and practices in performance culminating in 2014 with a podcast series as well as essays, convened discussions and conference papers.
An onsite research project On Conversation, alongside the exhibition Share/Cheat/Unite at Te Tuhi focusing on the role and practice of conversation as a tool or formal strategy within contemporary art. A series of group discussions were facilitated as well as individual interviews. The initial findings of the group were published in a research report titled Navigating Conversational Frequency.