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allan sekula & nol burch

The Forgotten Space

The subject of the lm is globalization and the sea, the orgottenspace o our modernity. Its premise is that the oceans remain the cru-cial space o globalization: nowhere else is the disorientation, violence

and alienation o contemporary capitalism more maniest. But thistruth is not sel-evident and must be approached as a puzzle, or mys-tery; a problem to be solved. Sea trade is an integral component o theworld-industrial system, but we are distracted rom the ull implicationso this insight by two powerul myths. The rst is that the sea is noth-ing more than a residual mercantilist space: a reservoir o cultural andeconomic anachronisms, relics o an older and obsolete economyaworld o decrepitude, rust and creaking cables, o the slow movemento heavy things. The second is that we live in a post-industrial society,

that cybernetic systems and the service economy have radically margin-alized the old economy o heavy material abrication and processing.Thus the ction o obsolescence mobilizes reserves o sentimentallonging or things which are not really dead.

As ships become more like buildingsthe giant, foating ware-houses o the just-in-time system o distributionactories begin toresemble ships, stealing away stealthily in the night, restlessly searchingor ever cheaper labour. A garment actory in Los Angeles or Hong Kongcloses; the work benches and sewing machines reappear in the suburbs

o Guangzhou or Dacca. In the automobile industry, or example, theunction o the ship is akin to that o conveyor systems within the oldintegrated car actory: parts span the world on their journey to the nalassembly line. Today, over 90 per cent o the worlds cargo moves bysea. Without a revolution in ocean-going cargo-handling technology,the global actory would not exist, nor the phenomenon o globalizationitsel. What began in the mid-1950s as a modest American improve-ment in cargo logistics has now taken on world-historic importance.The cargo containera standardized metal box, easily transerred romship to truck to trainhas radically transormed the space and time oport cities and ocean passages. There have been enormous increasesin economies o scale. Older transport links, such as the Panama Canal,risk sliding into obsolescence as ships become more gargantuan.

Notes for a Film

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The lm moves between our port cities: Rotterdam, Los Angeles,Hong Kong and Bilbao. It visits the industrial hinterland in southernChina and the transport hinterland in the heart o Holland. The rst

three can be classed as super-ports, the largest in the world. In Bilbao,a ading port with a brave maritime history, unctional atrophy coexistswith the symbolic hypertrophy o the Gehry Guggenheim, a deliriumo neo-baroque maritime nostalgia wedded to the equally deliriouspromise o the new economy. Super-ports, pushed to the peripheryo the metropolitan centre, require vast tracts o land or the contain-ers sorting and storage. The old, sheltering deep-water port, with itssteep hillsides and panoramic vistas, is less suited to these new spatialdemands than low-lying delta plains, which nonetheless require con-

tinual dredging or the ever-deeper drat o the new super-ships. The oldwaterront culture o sailor bars, fophouses, brothels and ship chan-dlers gives way either to a depopulated terrain vague orblessed withthe energies o real-estate speculatorsto a new articial maritimespace o theme restaurants, aestheticized nautical relics and expensiveocean-view condominiums.

As the class character o the port cities changes, the memory omutiny and rebellion by dockers, seaarers, shermen and shipyardworkersstruggles that were undamental to the ormation o theinstitutions o social democracy and ree trade-unionismades rompublic awareness. What tourist in todays Amsterdam is drawn to theold monument commemorating dock-workers heroic but utile striketo prevent the Nazi deportation o the Dutch Jews? Todays seaaringcrews are drawn rom the old and new Third Worlds: Filipinos, Chinese,Indonesians, Ukrainians, Russians. The conditions they endure are notunlike those experienced by the lascars o the 18th century. The legalinstrument underwriting their exploitation is the fag o conveniencesystem, which allows ships owned in rich countries to be registered inpoor ones. Here again, American capital was in the lead, seeking to

break powerul maritime unions in the wake o the Second World War:the fag o convenience was created to obscure legal responsibility orsaety and air labour practices.

The cargo containers are everywhere, mobile and anonymous:cons o remote labour-power, carrying goods manuactured byinvisible workers on the other side o the globe. For apologists o glo-balization, this fow is indispensable or the continued prosperity othe West and or the deerred prosperity o those who labour, so araway. But perhaps this is a case or Pandoraor or her more clairvoy-

ant sister, Cassandra.

The Forgotten Space will be screening in selected cinemas rom May 2011.