by Allan Sekula & Noël Burch
Thursday 2 March 2017
7pm

The Forgotten Space (2010), 112 min

Our film is about globalization and the sea, the “forgotten space” of our modernity. The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.

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. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.

- Allan Sekula & Noël Burch

The Forgotten Space is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Two-hander by Rallou Panagiotou.