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The Whispered Story of Knowledge
The Mobile Academy offers one-on-one conversations with experts
for € 1 - an artistic project by Hannah Hurtzig
There is a crush at the counter where the experts are booked. On
the stage, forty tables have been set up in four long rows; at each,
two people sit facing each other. Bare bulbs dangle over their heads,
illuminating the scene. A gong sounds, and everyone starts to speak
and gesticulate. Behind them, two women can be seen talking on two
large screens. In the public gallery of the HAU the audience listens
through headphones.
The "Hallucinated Community College of the Mobile Academy
with 100 experts from Berlin" seems to appeal mostly to people
in their mid-20s to late 30s. The Mobile Academy Berlin is a project
by the dramatic advisor Hannah Hurtzig in collaboration with the
HAU. Hurtzig used all her persuasive powers to secure the involvement
of celebrities and experts in this evening's performance: film-maker
Harun Farocki, historian Dr Barbara Duden, the deputy Ambassador
of India Amit Dasgupta, actress Maria Kwiatkowsky and many others.
This may be part of the appeal for the public - where else would
they have the chance to spend half an hour in conversation with
a future researcher, an entomologist, an aviation engineer, a film
director, or a violin-maker, for example? There are 42 topics to
choose from, ranging from A for Aeronautics to U for Urbanism. Anyone
who doesn't want to book an expert of their own can listen in on
the dialogues that interest them through their headsets.
"What sound does a penguin make?"
The experts are seated on the left; to the right are their clients,
who listen intently. Just before the gong sounds, they have to place
a euro on a marked area of the table. Eager assistants collect the
cash. For thirty minutes, the experts share their extensive knowledge,
debate with their clients, give a singing lesson, read an aura,
or carry out a thought experiment - and may even learn something
in the process. Composer Ulrike Haage talks about "treating
music and language with equal rights". Harald Preissler, a
future researcher with car company DaimlerChrysler, ponders "the
dilemma" with his clients. Aura-reader Monika Bruns calmly
taps into her client's life energies, unperturbed by the background
noise and potential eavesdroppers. Opera singer Burkhardt von Puttkammer
expects his clients to play an active role in "singing in the
Antarctic": his table is studded with microphones so that the
public can listen in. "Imitate a duck!" he exhorts. "And
what sound does a penguin make?" Facing him, his female client
has to breathe out heavily while emitting a high-pitched hum. The
maestro is keen to teach her that the volume of her voice will increase
if she uses her whole head as a resonance chamber - but the gong
saves her from the unaccustomed challenge. Surfing the eight different
channels on the headphones reveals scraps of conversation about
the most diverse topics: liberating the body from the constraint
of reproduction, the absence of utopias, why penguins have white
stomachs …
Knowledge transfer to the rhythm of the gong
While the Black Market is running, sociology professor Barbara Duden
speaks on-screen about "The body as a place of learning and
a scene of forgetting" and is joined in discussion by experts.
To follow the on-screen event, the audience has to listen through
their headphones. Without the headphones, all that is audible is
the animated buzz of voices from the tables - until the gong abruptly
sounds and the dialogues break off. There are six sessions in all,
with each expert giving one-on-one lessons to two clients. The public
listens closely, and every question - no matter how basic - is answered
patiently. The clients' enthusiasm was more palpable than the one
of the audience and the experts.
"The Mobile Academy always changes location, time and theme,
maintaining a consistent intensity and a growing sense of doubt",
says Hannah Hurtzig, who designed the project and implements it
with changing collaborators. Hurtzig lives in Berlin and works as
a freelance dramatic advisor, curator and programming director at
international festivals. She was previously the artistic director
at Hamburg's Kampnagelfabrik and a dramatic consultant to the Volksbühne
in Berlin. The first Mobile Academy took place in Bochum in 1999,
followed by Berlin in 2001 and 2004. It offers intensive interdisciplinary
programmes lasting several weeks, as well as one-on-one sessions
and "black markets". A Mobile Academy is scheduled to
take place in Warsaw in summer 2006, focussing on "Ghosts,
Spectres, Phantoms and the Places Where they Live". This joint
German-Polish project is supported by Germany's Federal Foundation
for Culture.
Knowledge transfer or art?
So is it knowledge transfer or art? Well, both, really. The strict
choreography makes sense, for this is not just a community college
event with celebrity guests but a multi-faceted performance. The
discussion with Barbara Duden about the body as a place of learning
and a scene of forgetting reflects what is happening in the auditorium.
The clients sit on the stage; some can be heard live. They are an
integral part of the installation.
The performance could be described as a "black market"
because the knowledge that is being haggled over here is otherwise
unavailable or is very difficult to acquire. So what does she mean
by "knowledge and non-knowledge"? According to Hurtzig,
knowledge appears as the mirror-image of its seeming opposite: ignorance
and belief. She sees this black market as a "production and
showroom in which narrative formats of knowledge mediation will
be tried out and presented…. The transfer of knowledge …
will thus become a collectively whispered story of knowledge …taking
place in the theatre, the original location of public debate".
Long may the Hallucinated Community College continue!
Ingrid Scheffer
is a freelance journalist and graduate in cultural studies
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