This twenty minutes talk is focusing on the question of free cooperation in the framework of educational settings. The talk took place as a discussion via webcam, with Trebor Scholz and Tony Conrad from and at the Media Department of the State University of New York (Buffalo) and Christoph Spehr, at the Bildungsoffensive office in Berlin. The Video is from the Berlin office, showing Christoph during this talk, whereas Tony and Trebor can only be heard from Buffalo. This talk is the first one in a series of such webcamtalks that deal with the question of new media and education.

Free Cooperation is a concept developed by Christoph Spehr , that was generating in the reflection about political utopia nowadays. "So one could say you have to bring utopia back to the kitchen, and it has to work there, and the rules of the kitchen have to be the rules of bigger cooperations - and not the other way round." (introduction into the concept). In trying to make a clear distinction between those forms of cooperation that are part of an utopia and those that aren't Spehr is distinguishing between free and forced cooperations, whereas forced cooperation means the dominant forms of relations we know from everyday life. Free cooperation is on the opposite trying to define relations that are truly equal, emancipated and free. It is defined through three preconditions:

1. freedom of negotiation: all rules of the cooperation can be questioned by everybody;

2. freedom of refusal: everybody has the possibility to change rules in cooperations through refusal;

3. freedom of movement: everybody can leave the cooperation at any time, whereas the costs of this split will have to be shared.

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