K-HOLE’s Dena Yago and Sean Monahan are going to find the skeletons in our closet. Leaders in trend forecasting, Yago, Monahan, and their co-founders belong to a New York-based collective that investigates how brand and consumer experiences are crafted in contemporary culture. They have been invited by the Institute of Contemporary Art to use Miami as a case study during a three-day residency, where they will examine real estate development, social practice, and community and historical events, among other social and visual metrics. On the final day, Yago and Monahan will present their research and discuss findings in an interactive workshop that will be filmed and documented in K-HOLE’s ICA Magic City report.
If there’s a question about what New York trend forecasters might think they know about these tropical parts, it’s worth noting that K-HOLE doesn’t fall into the typical marketing agency trope. Rather, their reports are understood as creative texts, more therapeutic and circumstantial than predictive. In an excellent Rhizome story, Lemmey describes how “The K-Hole Brand Anxiety Matrix” paper tried to “contextualize and understand the [technological] revolution, in a similar vein to science fiction.” Where science fiction was once used to help consumers process the advent of technology and the integration of machines and automation into everyday living, trend forecasts are like consumer fiction—they’re a reflection of the post-Internet age, not a prognosis of what’s to come.
On the surface, Miami is ripe with experiential consumerism, entrepreneurial art, social media heroes, and creative construct—its seemingly oblivious layers of contradiction are part of the charm. Perhaps K-HOLE will help make sense of it all: their interactive workshop on Saturday, August 8 at 2:00 p.m. is open to the public. For more information and to RSVP for free, visit the website at https://www.icamiami.org/idea/k-hole/.
