Allan Sekula

Exhibition views Alan Sekula, The Docker's Museum , La Criée contemporary art center, Rennes.
Courtesy La riée contemporary art center
Photo credit: Marc Domage

For his last project as the Director of La Criée contemporary art center and before taking the lead of the Rockund Art Museum in Shanghai, Larys Frogier invited the artist Allan Sekula and the curator Jürgen Bock to conceive an art project related to our experiences, memories and trasncultural relation to the sea, and also to grow an art project gathering research, exhibition curation, and insitutional partenrship with Cité Lumiar in Lisbon and collaborations with the M HKA Antwerp and Stills - Scotland'sCenter for Photography Edinburgh.
From intensive research and deep sincere friendship based on the importance of engaging with societal and economical challenges in different cities and harbours, they came out with the idea of an art project titled THE DOCKER'S MUSEUM. As the guest curator JÜrgen Bock states:

"Allan Sekula adapts each exhibition through a rigorous selection of photographs and objects specific to the venue’s context, thereby rewriting his own narrative by rearranging the work. As the exhibitions travel from place to place, a connection is forged between cities and ports, evoking the production and circulation of goods within the complex networks of port cities—a central theme of Sekula’s work. La Criée is currently presenting the exhibition The Dockers’ Museum. Photographs from the Ship of Fools series—previously shown in Antwerp, São Paulo, and Edinburgh—form part of the exhibition. In Rennes, however, the layout differs, placing greater emphasis on the artist’s collection of objects related to the world of dockers and sailors, as reflected in the exhibition’s title, The Dockers’ Museum. These "objects of interest" are not to be viewed as artworks in themselves, but rather as elements that contextualize Sekula’s photography; conversely, the photographs contextualize the artist’s ceaseless collecting of objects. Sekula sources these "objects of interest" from online auction sites, highlighting the contrast between the mythical "speed of light" of the Internet and the slow movement of cargo ships—which account for 90% of maritime traffic.

One of the key works presented at La Criée is a series of portraits of the Global Mariner’s crew. In 1998, the International Transport Workers' Federation converted a cargo ship to house a traveling multimedia exhibition in its holds. This initiative was part of an eighteen-month global campaign against the practice of "flags of convenience" and the resulting exploitative, low wages paid to crew members, whose rights were severely restricted. Allan Sekula’s participation in various stages of the voyage resulted in a photographic series in which the artist draws attention to the unsung figures at the heart of this deplorable situation.

By focusing on the "forgotten space" of the sea—with its 100,000 ships and 1.5 million workers—Allan Sekula reflects on the consequences of contemporary neoliberal ideologies. His work questions their promises of a seamless, painless flow of goods and capital, highlighting the realities of consumption and the erasure of labor and working conditions that lie behind it. This reveals the profound impact of globalization on people's lives."

Les Presses du Réel
Published by La Criée contemporary art center
and Frac Bretagne, Rennes.
Edited by Hilde van Gelder.

Essays by Jürgen Bock, Gail Day, Bart de Baere,
Steve Edwards, Alan Sekula, Sally Stein,
Alberto Toscano, Hilde van Gelder.

Graphic design: Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié, Cécile Binjamin.

Published in March 2015

French edition
17,2 x 23 cm (Softcover)
240 pages (ill.)

39.50 €

ISBN : 978-2-906890-15-2
EAN : 9782906890152

Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum is the project on which the US artist and writer Allan Sekula worked during the last three years of his life (2010–2013). The work consists, first, of a corpus of thirty-three framed photographs and two slide projections of in total over one hundred images, all made by the artist (Ship of Fools); second, it contains a gigantic collection of various objects, graphic images, postcards, and prints which the artist purchased, mostly online (The Dockers' Museum). Sekula dedicated this work to both historical and contemporary labor solidarity in and around the docks. At the time of his sad passing in the Summer of 2013, Allan Sekula was in the midst of collaborating on this publication with all four contributing authors: Gail Day, Steve Edwards, Alberto Toscano, and Hilde Van Gelder, each of whom he had asked to write essays. This volume, which includes a representative ensemble of images and objects that are part of Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum, follows as closely as possible the instructions given by the artist and is the first substantial scholarly analysis of this impressive project. It contains a preface by Jürgen Bock and Bart De Baere, who both curated exhibited installations of the work during the artist's lifetime. The volume also includes draft text materials written by the artist himself, as well as selections from the multitude of unpublished interviews, public debates, and lectures that Allan Sekula delivered between 2010 and 2012. Finally, this publication includes a moving essay on the project by the artist's widow, Sally Stein.

Publication