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Allan Sekula, The Dockers' Museum

Abstract:

In mines and ports across the world, human labor sustains our industrial and globalized economies. Allan Sekula imagined and set out to realize an artwork, The Dockers’ Museum, which makes the struggles of miners, dockworkers, and seafarers visible through networks of metonymic objects that embody these workers’ imaginaries. The collaborative notes gathered in this publication accompany the presentation of the “Mining Section (Bureau des mines)” of The Dockers’ Museum at the Anatomical Theater in Leuven in the Fall of 2016. Allan Sekula: Mining Section (Bureau des mines). Collaborative Notes inscribes itself into a larger research project Art Against the Grain of “Collective Sisyphus:” The Case of Allan Sekula’s Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2010-2013) jointly developed by the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Art and Visual Culture (LGC) at KU Leuven and M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen. Collaborators on this research project who have contributed to the present publication: Mieke Bleyen is a postdoctoral researcher at the LGC and the Institute for Cultural Studies at KU Leuven. Edwin Carels is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Arts KASK /HoGent (University College Ghent – Faculty of Fine Arts). Bart De Baere is the director of M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen. Anja Isabel Schneider is a Ph.D. candidate in Curatorial Research at M HKA / KU Leuven and a research associate at the LGC. Nicola Setari is a postdoctoral researcher at the LGC and in the Art History Department of KU Leuven. Hilde Van Gelder is a professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at KU Leuven and director of the LGC. Jeroen Verbeeck is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at KU Leuven and a research associate at the LGC.