Adam Harper is “currently doing a PhD in Musicology at Oxford. He writes for Wire magazine and blogs at Rouge’s Foam.” He also finds time to write for the Guardian: 

Aware that reality itself is the territory on which they’re fighting the government, many student protesters have been challenging the government-sponsored realism they now find so dubious with playful surrealism.

Ah, “government-sponsored realism.” Not economic reality, as discussed here, which might lead those protesting to a larger, more troublesome understanding of the world. It’s just a cruel and dubious fabrication to be swapped for something more flattering and congenial. Students Make Protest an Art Form, reads the headline. And how could mere reality withstand the fearsome repertoire of the contemporary artist?

Few things summed up this battle for reality better than the statue stood in the main quadrangle of University College London, greeting visitors to the student occupation there. Placed in front of banners reading “Art Against Cuts” was a post-cubist humanoid figure assembled from found objects and painted silver.

By Muhammad’s beard. Empires will topple.

In front of it was a sign announcing that “THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING.”

I trust readers are all stocked up on canned goods and ammunition.

Upon entering the occupied Jeremy Bentham Room, one noticed strange details among the hundreds of posters covering the walls: references to Harry Potter characters (“Albus Dumbledore Was a GREAT MAN”), a neo-classical statue made to carry a mock-up Pokéball (which, as anyone born between 1985 and 1995 knows, is where Pokémon are kept when not in battle), puns so terrible and esoteric they become hilarious (“They say cut back, we say Feuerbach,” in homage to the 19th-century philosopher) and complete non sequiturs (“HUMBUGS ARE ZEBRA EGGS”).

It’s dangerous, dizzying stuff. Now hand me your wallet. You’ll soon be feeling an urge to bankroll more of this.

Someone else spent several hours in the Parliament Square kettle dressed as a bright pink Star Wars stormtrooper, the Bansky-esque gesture beautifully counteracting the lines of armour-clad riot police.

See? You’re warming to their demands already.

Sound-systems enabled spontaneous raves amid the cops and burning benches, with crowds bobbing in time to the wacky syncopated beats and pitch-shifted vocals of Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor.

Oh no, they’re fighting back with abstract disco.

Such displays could easily be dismissed as infantile and hedonistic, but they play an important role in outwardly showing confidence and boosting internal morale. In some cases they also serve a practical purpose.

I know, you can’t wait.

A Van Der Decken’s Sifaka, a lemur, photographed by Stephen Alvarez in the limestone forests of Madagascar.

Well, that was interesting.

One enormous placard read, “We are not your slaves!” An odd sentiment, really, from people so engorged with entitlement they assume an almost aristocratic right to other people’s labour and other people’s earnings. A more honest placard might have read, “You will pay for things I want or I’ll smash up your stuff.” But that would sound like extortion more than slavery.

And Tim steers us to The Englishman, who offers a handy summary of the higher education funding debate: 

The Question, Punk, Is Do You Think Your Course Is Worth £9000?
? 
If you answer no then there isn’t a problem. Do something else.
If you answer yes there isn’t one either. Grow up, invest in your future.

Update, via the comments:

It’s strange how the protestors are somehow missing the larger issue. The higher education bubble appears unsustainable. This has quite a lot of bearing on assumptions of inter-generational subsidy. For instance, the average lifetime financial return on an arts degree is estimated at around £30,000. Set against the cost of courses, accommodation and lost earnings during the period of study, the net result is most likely a reduction in lifetime earnings. In short, there’s no longer a return for the taxpayer and little economic incentive for inter-generational subsidy.

Students first aimed their indignation at Conservative Party offices, to loud and destructive effect. A predictable gesture, certainly, but one that misses a much more pertinent target. The current bubble was inflated largely under New Labour and largely by people sympathetic to the left, with widespread grade inflation, an implausible doubling of first class degrees, insubstantial or disreputable courses, including football studies and pole dancing research, and an arbitrary target of 50% of young people in higher education, supposedly in the name of fairness. Taken together, these factors have had a huge impact on whether higher education is economically sustainable in its current form. The bizarre belief in “degrees for (almost) everyone” comes at a high and unprecedented price. Loans and higher fees follow from that egalitarian conceit. Subsidies and maintenance grants for 2% or 5% is one thing; for 20% or 50% it’s something else entirely.

Some view “free” higher education as an entitlement warranting violence. But who’s going to pay for this “free” service when its value is increasingly called into question, not least by employers, many of whom point to dramatically lowered standards and ill-prepared graduates? One complaint we hear is that many students will be left with large debt (or theoretical debt) and limited prospects of a suitable job. But if so, doesn’t that call into question the value of what’s being demanded? In the UK there are currently around 20,000 students of fine art, 10,000 philosophy students and 27,000 enthusiasts of media studies. But is there a corresponding economic need? If the investment of time, effort and (other people’s) money doesn’t pay off with a lucrative and fascinating career in the private sector, and a return via taxation, then how is the process justified in its present form?

You’d think of spot of protest would be aimed at the egalitarians who devalued the investment and made it all but unworkable.

Kim Jong-Il looking at things. Includes Kim Jong-Il looks at wall and Kim Jong-Il peers through hatch. // The lifecycle of bureaucracy. // Kubrick’s ‘elevator-of-blood’ redone with CG. // Inception heist in real time. // Quote of note. // How crayons are made. // “Wisconsin man builds own planetarium.” // Building a terrarium. // Build your own Egg-Bot. // Edible gingerbread playhouse. // Yes, those Jews control everything, even sharks. // It’s a spoon, it’s a fork, it’s a metric wrench. // Mining sulphur. // There are bodies on Mount Everest. (h/t, MeFi) // Hundreds of Mad magazine covers. // They grow up so fast. // Paths of Flight.

Photographed by Andrew Zuckerman. One of these. Via.