In Between

Never before have com­mo­di­ties been shif­ted so fast and so far around the world as they are being today. A T-shirt from Taiwan, felt slip­pers from Tyrol, wine from Aus­tra­lia – orde­red today and deli­vered to your door tomor­row. Even the indi­vi­dual ingre­dients for a tub of stra­w­berry yoghurt, when taken together, have already covered several thou­sand kilo­me­tres before lan­ding on the ref­ri­ge­ra­ted shelf of a local super­mar­ket. How is this possi-ble? What infra­struc­ture does it require? Henrik Spohl­er’s pro­ject takes us into that dif­fi­cult-to-access inter­me­diate realm of logi­stics where com­mo­di­ties are tran­ship­ped at an ever incre­a­sing speed: the frei­ght areas of air­ports, the laby­rinths of rail­way tracks in large shun­ting yards, the ware­hou­ses of inter­na­tio­nal hau­lage con­trac­tors, the con­tai­ner ter­mi­nals of sea ports. Pho­to­gra­phed in six dif­fe­rent coun­tries, these spe­cial zones, stre­am­li­ned for ruth­less effi­ciency, deve­lop an aesth­tic of their very own that oscil­la­tes bet­ween clear struc­ture, an almost medi­ta­tive monot­ony and a gigan­tism the sheer dimen­si­ons of which often go beyond man’s powers of ima­gi­na­tion. In these places, all indi­vi­dua­lity has been ratio­na­li­sed away; it is scar­cely pos­si­ble to say whe­ther the sce­na­rio is in Europe or Asia. Here, con­su­mer society has crea­ted itself a see­min­gly fic­tio­nal name­less realm of pure fun­c­tio­na­lity.

Hart­mann Books, 2017, ISBN 978-3-96070-004-3
Text: Thomas Ass­heuer (Eng­lish/German)
128 pages, 56 colour plates, hard­co­ver 30 x 22,5 cm
hart­mann­pro­jects.com