The Factory of the Common is a network of research events to explore the dimension of ‘the common’ in times of financial crisis and cognitive capitalism and to syndicate a new generation of autonomous studies in more stable institutions.

Instead of indulging in the ‘idea of communism‘ or in any fatalism for the financial catastrophe, we do explore the fields of the crisis and of the common as a material and productive social body. The common then as a living practice from below rather than a further stimulus package for nouveaux philosophes. From the ‘anomalous wave’ of protests crossing the global universities to the digital unrest against the intellectual property regime, from the struggles of precarious workers for basic income to the urban resistance against gentrification and the ‘creative cities’, here knowledge is defined by tension and conflict.

The reintroduction of the imaginary of the factory in times of financial derivatives and fashionable ‘creative economy’ is a vivid way to unpack the culture industry itself in its components and to unveil the machinic interiors of cognitive capitalism. On the other hand, if the term ‘commons’ is monopolising any debate on the economy of the immaterial (from Free Software to music industry), the definition of ‘the common’ is meant to include also material conflicts, living labour and living knowledge that exist beneath the much-celebrated commons of creativity.

We are but nostalgic of the past. On the contrary, this research aims to cover the trasformations and the tensions of new regimes of production: digital networks, culture industries, university education, art world, green capitalism, etc. Here the term ‘factory’ is embraced specifically as social factory to highlight how economy has escaped traditional modes of production to permeate society as a whole. If the factory went ’social’ and networked, research has to abandon the safe institutions of the ‘critical thought’ and turn itself into common research, that is a toolbox for a passionate transformation of the real.

The archive www.factoryofthecommon.org was initiated by Matteo Pasquinelli and Paolo Do as an international syndication platform in collaboration with Edufactory, Uninomade, institutional partners such as Queen Mary University of London and other initiatives of autonomous research. Contacts:  www.factoryofthecommon.org/contact