Lecture The Forgotten Space

The American photographer-filmmaker-essayist-activist Allan Sekula is best known for his work-in-progress Fish Story. For this project he photographed and described the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Gdansk, Glasgow, Hong Kong, London, and various other large cities. An important theme in his work is the relationship between the flow of transport by sea, and the growing internationalization of a worldwide industrial economy. Sekula regards the sea as ‘the forgotten space’ of our modern age, where the globalization – while hidden from view – is most pressingly visible.

On the invitation of SKOR Allan Sekula has been working, together with the filmmaker and theorist Noël Burch, on a sequel to Fish Story in the form of a documentary.

Their point of departure is the construction of the Betuwe route; a railway track for freight, running between Rotterdam and the German border. The film moves between four port cities: Bilbao, Rotterdam, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. Sekula visits both the industrial hinterland of southern China, and the transportation hinterland in the heart of the Netherlands. He shows a particular interest for the ‘small stories’; the way that local communities, labourers, farmers, and consumers are affected by globalization. Although obviously in the form of a documentary, with much attention paid to the meticulous registration of social processes and testimonies, Sekula and Burch also allow space for a wide range of film styles in which exaggeration, animation, and the staged micro-drama feature.

Together with SKOR, the Lingewaal local council and the Provincie Gelderland participated in this project.
Producers documentary: Frank van Reemst; Joost Verhey