Free International University

The Free International University (FIU) for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research was a support organization founded by the German artist Joseph Beuys.

Laing, Tapio Varis, Dorothy Walker, Conrad Atkinson, Dr. Rhea Thöngens, and many others, based on principles laid down in a manifesto written by Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll and the 1975/6 feasibility study by art critic Caroline Tisdall.

[1] It was founded as a "organizational place of research, work, and communication" to ponder the future of society including political-economy.

Major presentations of FIU occurred in Kassel Documenta (1977 & 1982), London Battersea Arts Centre (1978), Guggenheim Museum Gallery New York (1979), Edinburgh Festival (1974, 1976, 1980), Abruzzo Italy (1984), plus conferences in Erice Sicily (1975), Cambridge (1978), and others.

The Free International University was revisited and taken further by various people and groups, including in Edinburgh (Demarco Foundation and Summerhall), Belfast (Troubled Image Group and Art & Research Exchange), and London by Robert McDowell, Richard Demarco, and Caroline Tisdall, by Renee Block, the author Rainer Rappmann under the FIU-Verlag and the F.I.U.s in Amsterdam, see: FIU-amsterdam, Antwerp, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, and Munich, which were begun by students of Beuys.