Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge
2008
The Bluecoat, Liverpool
Research and Production Assistant
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photographs by Alex Wolkowicz
This one-night only art installation and performance was devised and directed by Berlin-based curator and dramaturge Hannah Hurtzig of Mobile Akademie. 50 experts including an archeologist, garbologist, psychoanalyst, freegan, entomologist, politician, architect, and activist shared knowledge, stories and myths on the topic of waste. Audience members could book a 30 minute dialogue with an expert of their choice for £1.
In the role of Research and Production Assistant I was instrumental in identifying and recruiting experts, and contributed to delivery and production. Hannah’s approach to colliding research, curation and relational practice has had a lasting influence on my own work as a curator and researcher.
A Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge is an interdisciplinary research inquiry that imitates familiar places of knowledge exchange like the archive or library reading room, and combines them with communication situations such as markets, stock exchanges, counselling or social service interviews. Each market presents a different topic, generating an encyclopaedia with local experts.
In Liverpool, the theme dealt with the relationship between human beings and their waste, the moment when things lose their form, deteriorate, rot, explode, slide into decay; and when remembrance and forgetting lose their distinction. In our economy of waste, garbage is the repressed side of consumption, whilst non-biodegradable, radioactive toxins have made waste an ecological survival problem. In response to this we have developed a range of methods to stabilise waste, such as recycling, burning, conserving or archiving.
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Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz. -
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz. -
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz. -
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz. -
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz. -
Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photograph by Alex Wolkowicz.
Images from Market For Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No.11 ON WASTE (2008). At the Bluecoat. Photographs by Alex Wolkowicz.
Collaborators: This event was part of the Bluecoat’s Liverpool Live programme for the Liverpool Biennial 2008. It was a project by Mobile Akademie Berlin, presented in association with the Live Art Development Agency.
Funders: Arts Council England, Liverpool Culture Company and the Goethe Institut Manchester
Related projects:
I live and work on Bidjigal and Gadigal land. I pay my respects to custodians past, present and emerging by revering the land and paying the rent. Always was, always will be.