Robert Schlicht et Romana Schmalisch

Our new long-term project “Fishing for Flotsam”, which is based on research in the industrial harbour of Marseille-Fos, will revolve around the emblematic image of modern globalisation, the container, which in its standardised, abstract form and with its opaque surfaces reveals nothing about the commodities it contains, let alone about the relations of worldwide economic exchange in a globalised capitalist world. The container will act as the device allowing us to create connections and chains of associations. We intend to cinematographically and theoretically connect and juxtapose the real operations on container ships, in harbours and distribution centres, the piloting of vessels, the organisation and modelling of flows of ships and containers, the history of trade, the reification of social relations, the simulation of operations, the fetishisation of objects, and the mystification of society – in order to create a conceptual image (or ‘Denkbild’, as per Walter Benjamin) of the container as the pivotal object of the global economy today – reflecting but also transcending a reality that has ‘slipped into the functional’.

“Fishing for Flotsam” is a visual, cinematic and theoretical artistic project developed in close collaboration with actors from the port of Marseille-Fos. The project will manifest itself in various media, with an essay film at the centre, but also including lectures, site-specific installations, as well as theoretical explorations in the form of texts, workshops and symposia with participants from the fields of, among others, economics, art and film, AI programming, labour history and philosophy.