7 - From Document to Enactment: Transindustrial Sequences of European Maritime Industries on Film (1970s–2020)

Summary

Abstract

This chapter reflects on maritime industrial transformations through the lens of a series of artists’ films, that capture the transindustrial mutations of European port cities from the 1970s to the present. The selected films can be seen as articulating critical narratives that interrogate the identities and developments of European maritime history and heritage. Each depicts the lived experience of individuals and communities immersed in those industrial and cultural transformations, reflecting on the changing relations between machine and body, the local and the global, and crucially giving voice to the actors and landscapes they represent.

Keywords: Transindustriality; document; enactment; artists’ films; maritime industries; port cities

In the second half of the twentieth century, European maritime industries went through significant transformations following shifts in global economics. The introduction of standardized containers in the 1960s and 1970s radically changed the morphology of port cities. Selected container terminals located outside of the urban centres began to channel an increasing flow of goods, with major European hubs such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg handling the bulk of the activity. In parallel, European maritime industries have faced growing competition from new worldwide actors, particularly with shipbuilding facilities being established in East Asia in the post-war period to the detriment of European markets. On the one hand, these trends in maritime economics, which mirror global industrial shifts more generally, have induced significant evolutions in European port cities. Historic harbour districts and quaysides faced decline in the 1970s and 1980s, before economic regeneration strategies introduced new functionalities associated with heritage, tourism, and the service industries. On the other hand, these developments accompanied a repositioning of European imaginaries, marked by a contestation of the global outreach of European nations, and the socio-economic model of modernization such processes had promoted throughout the world. I have developed the use of the term “transindustrial” as part of the research group on the Textures and Experiences of Trans-Industriality (TETI) to describe and engage with these transformations. The term denotes in particular three dimensions: the survival of technologies from one historical period to another; the cohabitation of technologies associated with different historical moments within a same period; and, the transfer of technologies from one field to another.