Panel, Screening

The Aperture Foundation, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the Photography program at Parsons The New School for Design present a special screening of The Forgotten Space, a film by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch. The evening concludes with a conversation with Sekula, scholar Kristin Ross, and independent film curator Chi-hui Yang.

The Forgotten Space follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks; listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China—whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. In Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, are somehow obsolete.

A range of materials is used: descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies. The result is an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today. The Forgotten Space is based on Sekulas book Fish Story (1995), seeking to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex, symbolic legacy of the sea.

Participants
Kristin Ross, Professor of Comparative Literature, Arts & Science, New York University
Allan Sekula, photographer and filmmaker
Chi-hui Yang, film programmer, lecturer and writer