From Market Forces: Claire Bishop on Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler at Fondazione Prada and Hannah Hurtzig at La Pelota, Milan
Texte zur Kunst
April 12, 2024
In the context of her ongoing inquiry into research-based art, Claire Bishop recounts her experience at the Market for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge in December, “Milan and the Unpredictable” (Licence No. 13/2023):
I spoke first with a management consultant who deploys mosaic art to explain organizational complexity to his clients. I was intellectually underwhelmed. An hour later, I sat opposite a young trans stand-up comedian (the only one in Italy!), who presented himself as an expert on transitioning in Milan. Our tête-à-tête was candid and wide-ranging, as opposed to the opaque mystifications of the consultant, and better fulfilled the Market’s capacious approach to expertise.
In the end, Hurtzig’s Market is less an educational opportunity and more a theatricalization of what used to be called “knowledge transfer” (shudder). A cursory glance at the Encyclopedia quickly establishes that the expertise on offer adds up to a sprawling, idiosyncratic take on a subject rather than a comprehensive overview. Plus, any one audience member gains a limited perspective, encountering at most six experts over the course of the three-hour event – a modest slice of the dozens actually present.
By foregrounding a claim of usefulness, Hurtzig distracts from the fact that her Market flirts with excess. Each one is unique, requiring months of research, and the assembly of experts come together for one night only – a proportionality that flouts any rational logic of investment, in either effort or money. (Aside from that one-euro fee to chat with an expert, the event is free to the public.) And while a handful of conversations from every Market are accessible via an online audio archive, I honestly can’t imagine anyone listening to them outside the context of the live event.
Instead, the Market’s value seems to lie in the sociality engendered by the overall spectacle and odd pleasures of the staging conceived by Hurtzig, whose dramaturgical background is apparent in the lively pace and many creative details. The structure and aesthetic are always the same: Each two-person table is topped with green baize and lit by a single low-hanging bulb; the lights flicker and a gong bongs to cue the start of each session. Hosts and hostesses wear matching uniforms and thick ’80s-style makeup as they assist at the check-in booths or hold up handmade placards with wry aphorisms (in Milan: “The future is already here, it’s just badly distributed”). I visited a complaints booth staffed by a pink-wigged drag queen, who listened to my gripes about the limited food options at the event and offered a shot of vodka as consolation. Although attendance tailed off in the last hour, the performance had all the buzz and excitement of any good marketplace.