The Cheapest University was an experimental and free school: its shape and organization was carried out by artists. It was formed by elective affinities, around a spirit of enthusiasm and openness. As a contributory and artistic university, it was as committed as it was immediate: only dependent on the will of its members – all volunteers. The proposals came from their practices, as an extension of their personal research or as a collective invention of situations tending towards the art piece. The Cheapest University strove to create collective working conditions that allowed it to welcome new members, whatever the state of their practices.
The Cheapest University enabled knowledge to be co-produced and transmitted. Unlike a traditional university, writing was not the only privileged form. The artwork, regardless of the medium, the exhibition and the publication were considered as interfaces allowing access to the knowledge produced within The Cheapest University.
In 2015, a research group was set up through monthly meetings, public conferences (Saisir l’école avant qu’elle ne s’évanouisse at Paris 8 University and the Cheap Talks at Villa Belleville), two preparatory workshops (Workshop-tranquille in Pornichet in Loire-Atlantique and L’école emportée in Treignac Projet in Corrèze) and the setting up of a participatory website.
The Cheapest University continued its research and developed educational programmes in various spaces (art institutions, radio stations, art schools, residencies, etc.). Its activities revolved around a series of experimental courses open to the public and to external contributions (How to Become a Lesbian, EAAPES, Silent Red Alert, Making Babies Butterflies, …). The Cheapest University also organised public meetings and discussions in the framework of experimental course programmes (Everybody Knows, What’s in my bag, Pleasure of Missing out – La sèche). In 2016, Donna Quixote Press was created, a publishing house which published translations and experimental prose, fiction and essays produced in their workshops.
The Cheapest University was a community of attention that encouraged collective experimentation and emulation around work formats and presentations whose public character and formal nature were all variables adjusted to the necessity of the projects that were initiated there.