Containers of Consequence: Shipping Containers and their Unintended Deliveries

Abstract

The modern shipping container has come to deliver the unexpected. Each shipment one carries can closely connect distant landscapes, cultures, communities, economies, and political systems. The use of these peripatetic parcels pulls the future possibilities for people, places, and spaces closer together through the seemingly benign global transport of goods. These simple steel boxes are the basis of our globally interconnected economy and yet their role and impact are not always readily apparent. My interest in the topic of shipping containers was initiated by my personal experience of internationally transporting my belongings utilizing a shipping container. My sculpture-based practice-led research is an inquiry into the impact of shipping container use and the chance connections and inadvertent ramifications made by the cargo it moves. The main question in this research is: How might sculptural artworks incorporating glass and other media manifest the intended and unintended impacts of transporting goods using shipping containers through their utilization and movement across the globe? This research aims to utilize sculptural contexts to develop a methodology of manufacture that would make transparent the volume of container use and address the scale of their impact in both a global context and an individual perspective. I locate my sculptural study of this topic with reference to artists John Salvest, Liu Jianhua, Rachel Whiteread, Antony Gormley, Michael Johansson, Norwood Viviano, Mary Iverson, Kimsooja, Nida Sinnokrot, Walead Beshty, William Kentridge, Jeffrey Smart and Louise Bourgeois. The varied construction techniques and conceptual works of these artists have positioned my enquiry enabling its distinct stance in relation to the topic. Historians, sociologists, economists, and writers including Marc Levinson, Alexander Klose, Craig Martin, Saskia Sassen, Martin Stopford, and James Burke have informed my understanding of the historical developments and cultural consequences of our global economy and its system of delivery. The writings of Paul Virilio, Kevin Lynch, Spiro Kostof and Rachel Wells have assisted in shaping the arc of my arguments to include social, urban development and sculptural theories. The resultant creative works of this research utilize metal to relate their construction to that of shipping containers and incorporate kiln-formed sheet glass to enable ways of concealing and revealing insights into the open or obfuscated fabricated forms. They aim to unpack the complexity that has been delivered to our everyday from the global proliferation of container freight systems. In these artworks, I engage with the concept of the shipping container as a singular structure and as part of a system. I explore the potential of its volume and layered space as well as expose the range of its activity. In doing this, I suggest the immeasurable scale of its impact in moving both physical and intangible forms of our world in a way that has delivered our once separate spaces towards a shared endpoint.