Useless Collegia

Part and parcel of the PhD project, "W4W2", the draft essay "Useless Collegia" departs from a reading regarding patronage in the Italian Renaissance and social production, wherein Marx makes a brief appearance, and then engages in an argument with Marx about forms of social capital and mediation in relation to revolutionary praxis in the Arts and Humanities. The essay ends abruptly with comments on the necessity of producing totally useless collegia versus nominally useless collegia in relation to the creation of new radical forms of artistic scholarship. The essay is intended to launch an experimental collegium of artists and scholars under the rubric "ART + LAW" (scare quotes, capitalization, and plus sign all telltale) toward exiting the commercium of the art-academic industrial complex and the establishment of a new ecosystem for works in artistic scholarship based on the "no rights" idiom of the W4W2 project.