Art of Free Cooperation

Business has a mad crush on collaboration — witness the billions spent on social networking sites, or all the hype around “collaboration studies.” But beneath all the flirtation, business needs to remain the boss. As long as the process of collaboration is controlled and monetized, the relationship will always be one of forced cooperation. This book argues for Free Cooperation — an alternative way of doing things together, from parenting and the workplace to event organization and cultural production. Brian Holmes, Howard Rheingold, Christoph Spehr and the editors critique the dominant methods of socio-economic integration, and elaborate a practical alternative, one that promises to surmount both the problems of inequality and the lack of independence in daily life.

The Art of Free Cooperation includes a DVD with a feature-length film collage, narrated by Tony Conrad, illustrating the principles of Free Cooperation through the visual language of science fiction movies, additional texts, interviews and highlights from the international “Free Cooperation” conference, organized by the editors, that led to this book.