View source for Project 3 * The Piracy Project

= Starting point and context: Byam Shaw School of Art Library closure =

[[File:Piracy Project Byam Shaw Reading Room Co-op-Abake poster.jpg|450px|thumb|left|link=|Byam Shaw Reading Room Co-op. Poster designed by Åbäke, London 2010.]]


The Piracy Project started at Byam Shaw School of Art as a response to restrictive university policies: in 2010, the university management announced its plan to close the Byam Shaw School of Art library due to a merger with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.{{Annotation|Byam Shaw}} Students were advised to visit the library on the main campus in the city center. In a joint effort, students and staff – supported by the acting principal – turned Byam Shaw's art college library into a self-organized and self-governed library that remained public, and intellectually and socially generative. There was not a clear-cut question that triggered TPP at this point. It was rather a political situation at the art school and the desire to organize against it – as well as Andrea Francke's parallel and puzzling discovery of specific cases of book piracy in Peru, where pirates had started to alter and amend the plot of some fiction books anonymously.

[[File:Piracy Project Byam Shaw Fight the cuts demo lowres.jpg|450px|thumb|left|link=| Fight the Cuts Demo London, March 2010.]]
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Annotation	Byam Shaw +, AF Open Call +, AF Catalogue +, AF PS1 +, AF Truth is Concrete +, AF Oslo +, AF Munich +, AF Paper Struggles + and AF Discursive +
Annotator	AF +