Building Metropolitan Consciousness

“If steam was the victory of the straight line over the zigzagsdemanded by the wind, containerization was the victory of the rectangularsolid over the messy contingency of the Ark. As we will see,containerization obscures more than the physical heterogeneity ofcargoes, but also serves to make less visible and more remote frommetropolitan consciousness, thus radically altering the relationshipbetween ports and cities.”(Sekula 1995, 49)In this passage from Fish Story, Allen Sekula reflects on the perceptualtransformations that occurred in port cities as a result of theshift to containerization as the predominant logistics system ofgoods transshipment. Sekula introduces ‘metropolitan consciousness’to describe collective awareness about the urban environment.By referencing the relation of cities to ports, he is further articulatingthat this is about a city’s understanding of its place in the world ofmaterial flows. So, not only is the nature of cargo concealed by thecontainer, but so is the relation of the city to its material network.

Volume Editors
Urs Peter Flueckiger & Victoria McReynolds

ISBN
978-1-944214-16-6