The Many Faces of Shipping Containers

The mere fact that these oftentimes nondescript boxes - in some circles lauded as the poster children of globalization -  can simultaneously embody such diametrically opposed realities is staggering. A few words that quickly come to mind are: innovation, simplicity, decadence, desperation, corruption, survival, adaptation.....

With the advent of viable shipping containers in the 1950's, global trade was revolutionized in one fell swoop. In his book, "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy," Marc Levinson discusses the impact the container has had upon the modern economy.

Both licit and illicit markets have flourished through the ease with which shipping containers traverse the seas.

....art installation "Journey" depicts the shadow economy that is human trafficking on the side of a shipping container, which serves as one of the many vessels employed to traffic and smuggle human beings across borders.

Worker housing, shipping containers, Dubai.

While statistics regarding transnational organized crime are speculative at best, the UNODC estimates that "less than 2% of the 420 million shipping containers used globally every year are inspected, creating major opportunities for drug traffickers and smugglers to conceal illicit cargo." If these numbers are even remotely close to being realistic imagine the resulting implications. Being floored would be a natural response.

Home made of shipping containers outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. The occupants are workers who 'cast blast-wall sections' in concrete. Copyright: Simon Norfolk. Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan (show at the Tate's Level 2 Gallery).

Operation Smoking Dragon / Operation Royal Charm: a recent take down of an international smuggling ring stretching from China and Taiwan to Canada and the U.S. - contraband included counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals (viagra), methamphetamine, counterfeit $100 bills, and Chinese military-grade weapons (QW-2 surface-to-air missiles).
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/july/dragon_07051

House made of shipping containers that I spotted in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.

Central Gaza Strip, Nusseirat refugee camp's 'primary school' located in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) containers. 06/21/10.

Shipping container temporary relief housing prototype for Haiti post-earthquake disaster. A Shipping Container Housing Project. 02/10.

August 1, 2011 - Maersk Line flexes their corporate social responsibility muscle by partnering with the World Food Program to address the food scarcity situation of refugees from the Ivory Coast.

Four containers have been deployed by Maersk to Liberia, they have been painted in the United Nations World Food Program colors and are serving as mobile warehouses in Bahn refugee camp (located approximately 50 km from the Liberia - Ivory Coast Border).


“Our company can play a key role during crises and disasters, where transport and the lack of logistics is often a challenge,” says Lise Damkjaer, Head of In-fleeting, Maersk Line.


“The ongoing political instability in countries such as Ivory Coast, Libya and Syria has had a tremendous impact on the inhabitants,” explains Helene Regnell, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Maersk Line.

“As a transportation company we can help assist those people simply by leveraging what we do well, and by forming collaborative public–private partnerships to make the most of our relief efforts.” 

BRAND AS PLATFORM

WHERE DO YOU STAND // Kenneth Cole Fall 2011 by Sean Ellis

** main topics so far: marriage equality, abortion, gun control, and 'war'
For now I just want to say that I LOVE this kind of shit, it's genius.....

"The Paradise Destroyed by the Straight Line"(F. Hundertwasser) / "Journey is the Destination" (Dan Eldon)

"An ecologist without a conscience is doomed to failure, and the same is true of an artist who does not bow to the laws of nature.

The world has not improved. The dangers felt have turned into reality.

Nevertheless, today, although nothing has been done, my longstanding warnings are at last being taken seriously.

Yet there are still no lawns on the roofs, no tree-tenants, no plant-driven water purification plants, no humus toilets, no rights to windows, no duties to the trees. The essential reafforestation of the town has not come about.

What we lack is a peace treaty with nature.

 

We must restore to nature the territories we have unlawfully taken from it. Everything horizontal under the sky belongs to nature. Everything touched by the rays of the sun, everywhere where the rain falls is nature's sacred and inviolable property. We men are merely nature's guests.
In 1952 I spoke of the civilization of make-believe, the one we must shake off, myself, the the first of all! I spoke of columns of gray men on the march toward sterility and self-destruction.

The same year I used the term "transautomation" to show the way beyond the rationalism of technocrats toward a new creation in harmony with the laws of nature.

In 1953 I realized that the straight line leads to the downfall of mankind.

But the straight line has become an absolute tyranny.

The straight line is something cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling; it is a line which does not exist in nature.

And that the line is the rotten foundation of our doomed civilization.

Even if there are certain places where it is recognized that this line is rapidly leading to perdition, its course continues to be plotted.

The straight line is the only sterile line, the only line which does not suit man as the image of God.

The straight line is the forbidden fruit.

The straight line is the curse of our civilization.

Any design undertaken with the straight line will be stillborn. Today we are witnessing the triumph of rationalist knowhow and yet, at the same time, we find ourselves confronted with emptiness. An aesthetic void, desert of uniformity, criminal sterility, loss of creative power.

Even creativity is prefabricated.

We have become impotent. We are no longer able to create. That is our real illiteracy". (Hundertwasser)

'Service Station' along the freeway in Vienna by Hundertwasser.

 Public Urinal Installation by Hundertwasser, 1998. Kawakawa, New Zealand. 

At age 22 photojournalist Dan Eldon was stoned to death in Somalia, it was 1993. Documentation of the day-to-day through personal journal art and photography....

For more information on the life of Dan Eldon, check out: http://www.creativevisions.org/
and http://www.daneldon.org/site/

Social Commentary & Creative Tension (Steven Meisel + Vogue Italia)

It seems to me that the 'fashion industry', as a taste-making institution, has always harbored the capacity to reach out beyond the material conformity of consumerism and touch the core of ever-complicated social, political, and environmental issues....

The undeniable ability to influence the consumer, a vital extension of the fashion industry apparatus, is omnipresent in a world that is not only inundated with but dominated by the media. The embodiment of this idea is evident in the media that is conveyed through the medium provided by magazines, primarily in the forms of both fashion editorials and advertising. Fashion magazines, in particular, have the capacity to influence and shape the reader’s thoughts and choices regarding perceptions of everything from beauty, sex, and sexuality to lifestyle decisions. According to Vogue magazine’s mission statement, “for 118 years, Vogue has been America’s cultural barometer, putting fashion in the context of the larger world we live in- how we dress, live, socialize; what we eat, listen to, watch; who leads and inspires us”.[1] 

However, when one pauses to consider the large swath of social issues and injustice that is rampant throughout all the corners of the international scene, it is fairly safe to surmise that the mind does not tend to automatically gravitate towards the fashion industry to seek consultation. Why? Is it changing? Can private sector industries positively impact issues of human security?

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[1] The mission statement continues to say, “from its beginnings to today, three central principles have set Vogue apart: a commitment to visual genius, investment in storytelling that puts women at the center of the culture, and a selective, optimistic editorial eye. Vogue’s story is the story of women, of culture, of what is worth knowing and seeing, of individuality and grace, and of the steady power of earned influence. For millions of women each month, Vogue is the eye of the culture, inspiring and challenging them to see things differently, in both themselves and the world”.