_– _– _– 18 Cutting through society After the first Blackmarket, which obviously grew out of the assemblage of invited experts, i.e. people who had previously contributed to the community of the Mobile Academies, Hurtzig conceived the following editions of the Blackmarket around a cluster of topics. The principle of not assigning an overarching topic in order to curate knowledge according to artistic, cultural, social or political interests still remains an important aspect of the ethics of the Blackmarket. There are, however, certain procedures and aims to follow in preparing a topic as an area of research. While not imposing a particular theme for a particular context w<strong>ith</strong> the interpretative arrogance of «this is good for you», Hurtzig does account for a certain telos, or at least a set of preferences and criteria: «As I’m not a talented person, I work on the basis of ‹deficit and deficiency›. I search for what I think we’re lacking». For instance, in the Blackmarket held in Warsaw in 2005 the topic of «ghostly or invisible knowledge» made connections between people, knowledge and experience from before and after the regime change in Poland and presented different ways of deciphering and reading the process of political and economic transition and its ghostlines. The thematic guideline for this Blackmarket was a quote by Heiner Müller : «The phantom of the market economy has replaced the ghost of communism». Another example illustrates Hurtzig’s practice when — now that the model has become popular — she is commissioned or invited to contribute on a particular topic. Recently she was asked to organize a Blackmarket on the topic of aging in Germany. She comments: «Searching for what could be interesting apart from old people speaking about their lives, which isn’t particularly interesting, I came across the curious phenomenon of aged ‹researchers› — people who, after their professional careers were over, specialized in ‹small› topics. For instance, there is someone who spent 15 years since her retirement researching the pit in the cherry fruit. They are people who decided to do something they couldn’t do before. Self-determined and non-institutionalized, these researchers are driven by a passion towards a knowledge w<strong>ith</strong>out knowing who would use it.» The process of research resembled a «rehearsal process identical to the result — a communication process of two to three months, where you consult different sources that help you re-hallucinate a context». To do that, Hurtzig, together w<strong>ith</strong> her collaborators, takes a cut through society, which is entirely different from what is referred to as interdisciplinary research. An interdisciplinary approach presupposes that a topic arises as an event in the surplus effect of joining and mixing respectable disciplines. The mixture in the case of Blackmarket is along the lines of monstrosity: combining something that is known, established or reliable w<strong>ith</strong> something that is less so; thus mixing various registers of articulating knowledge — disciplined, alternative, parallel, lay, practical, pragmatic, technical, experience-based etc. — as something that one owns, is capable of, uses, is able to teach or learn or just to name. Briefly, it means «to combine a scientific person w<strong>ith</strong> one’s neighbour». Thereby one avoids having only «the usual suspects» or the discourse leaders («Diskursstatthalter»), and, secondly, the outcome is never just one, never just a single difference to what is established or dominant, and certainly not a coherent, unified or homogeneous set of expertise, but always an irreproducible connectivity between people, places, memories, and interests. Where to go and what to do One of the project’s aspirations is this: «I’m interested in situations where there is a collective moment of learning that people aren’t aware of and that, potentially, could lead to action, arousing enthusiasm and hallucination w<strong>ith</strong> the impossible». You may have noticed that the term ‹hallucination› used here is a recurring <strong>des</strong>cription. I am trying to understand what Hurtzig means by it: whether it is situated in the perception or participation of the users or in the social significance of the event. Today, when theory has become yet another superstructural development of late capitalism, featured both in the rhetoric of art as well as in the creative industries and in business management, it actually takes some skill to deinstrumentalize theory from producing an intellectual surplus value. The Blackmarket is not explicitly a pro-theoretical project. It does, however, conceptualize knowledge production, although not through a critical interpretation of its place in contemporary society but rather through an experimentation that operates w<strong>ith</strong> possibilities and potentialities of concrete situations.
19 Tom Lamberty Das ManuskrIpt In der FLasche Informanz — Deformanz Kein Studium an einer Kunsthochschule ohne Bücher aus dem Merve Verlag. Ausgehend von einer minutiösen Beschreibung <strong>des</strong> Merve-Verlagsbüros vergleicht Tom Lamberty die Arbeit <strong>des</strong> Verlegens mit einem vielfach faltbaren, nicht ganz schlüssig eingefassten Feld. Sprichwörtlich programmatisch reicht die offen gehaltene Auslegung <strong>des</strong> Begriffes vom ‹Verlegen› bis in das Verlagsprogramm hinein, indem durch die Vermischung nicht-akademischer Disziplinen mit der Philosophie ein neuartiger Zugang zur <strong>Theorie</strong> gesucht und mit der Bildung einer offenen <strong>Theorie</strong>szene das Rollenverhältnis von Autor-Verleger-Leser anders definiert wird.
Change language