Pictures © Thomas Aurin
17 31 — # 08/09 (Dezember 2006) Das Magazin <strong>des</strong> <strong>Institut</strong>s <strong>für</strong> <strong>Theorie</strong> der Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich (<strong>ith</strong>) _– _– _– Storytelling It is the technology that explicitly distinguishes knowledge transfer in the Blackmarket from any other learning situation. Telling a story immediately disassociates the object of transmission from a discipline w<strong>ith</strong> a history. That is furthermore why the Blackmarket is an event: it has nothing to do w<strong>ith</strong> the inscription of difference (the political mission of inscribing a different knowledge), w<strong>ith</strong> tracing or archiving the traces of erased traces. Even if it does have the economy of excess, of dépense or expenditure as the surplus of signification, it still is a trade and not a matter of gift and exchange. Selling one’s story unmasks a fundamental social contract: it places the storyteller in the blatant position of «perform or else» and the client in a position to demand the supply. Narration leads away from the academic methods of analyzing, contextualizing, commenting on and verifying information. It actually disassociates knowledge from information and defines it halfway between what one knows as an object of knowledge, study, discipline (savoir) on the one hand, and what one is subjectified by as experience or acquaintance (connaissance) on the other hand. The knower here is not someone who has a love for knowledge and whose knowledge is necessarily legitimated by an institution, but the knower can be a trickster who not only betrays the dominant regimes but also takes possession of territories that do not belong to her or do not exist yet and are, therefore, invented. Subjectification and expertise If subjectification is not just identification or interpretation of something from one’s own experience, but always already a transformation, making something one’s own by bastardizing it, ‹fucking› it up, giving it one’s own body, then expertise implies honouring a general condition, or a condition for a general intellect: that there is always something one knows. The ability to know and pass on that knowledge consists not so much in what one knows but rather in how one knows. Subjectification is all about partiality and partial insights that, in fact, enable participation on a contingent basis. Partiality should also be read in opposition to ‹being impartial›, i.e. objective, unbiased or dispassionate. Now, the Blackmarket’s mission is not to empower humankind by making it realize its own capacity, but to unravel potentialities that constitute uncertain and less visible circulations of that which makes up knowledge: assumptions, beliefs, opinions, habits, facts, information, techniques etc. The talk is an encounter that establishes a relation between knowledge and non-knowledge, activates learning and unlearning, explores the difference and the distance between ignorance and opinion on the one hand and what is idealized as its opposite, i.e. knowledge, on the other hand. In Hurtzig’s own words, quoting Niklas Luhmann, the Blackmarket should be understood pragmatically as a «tool to find problems for the solutions that already exist». Topics and experts In the first Blackmarket there were a hundred talks featured under the following headings: Accidents, Activism, political, Aeronautics, Animals, Architecture, Cartography, Choreography, Communication, Customs, Dilemma, Ecotrophology, Education, Ethics, Games, Language, Media, Memory, Meteorology, Millinery, Music, historical string instruments, Music, listening, Music, composing, Music, noise/sound, Music, song, Money, Nirvana-Principle, No Headword, Orientation, Poetry, Quantum mechanics, Sex, Somatology, Space, Sports, Techniques, arts, Techniques and body, Techniques, crafts, Text, Theatre, Tourism, Translation, Urbanism, Work. Listing all the topics serves to show that the heterogeneity was not choreographed from above, as a pool of themes to choose from and respond to. Rather, the themes were the result of an a posteriori grouping of the talks as they were formulated by experts. The formulations cover a variety of strategies and tactics of self-determination: from a straightforward understanding of one’s own professional knowledge (e.g. Tilman Muthesius, violinmaker, «Historical stringed instruments before 1800. The Viola da Gamba and the Viola da Braccio»), through politically edgy propositions (e.g. Katja Reichard, co-initiator of the bookstore pro qm, artist, collective projects on urbanism, gender, work «Forms of self-exploitation: working life in times of difference capitalism»), unexpected mismatches between profession and proclaimed expertise (e.g. Quantum mechanics, Alexej Kairetdinow, poet, translator: «The uncertainty principle does [not] work w<strong>ith</strong>out formulas. A philologist explains an experiment from quantum mechanics»; or Percy McLean, judge at the Administrative Court, expert for human rights, honorary president of the organization for holistic medicine ‹Der Weg der Mitte›: «Face and neck massage. Theory and practice») to characteristically humorous or bizarre inventions (Christof Kurzmann, musician: «Learning Viennese w<strong>ith</strong> Asterix»; Carmen Bruder, Psychologist, PhD TU Berlin, men-machine-interface: «Why it is not your fault if your computer goes nuts. On the psychological background of technical systems development and what you can contribute»).