How to Send Things to Africa, or: The Joy of the Supply Chain

In the African Terminal, Hamburg’s new locals have partnered with cultural workers to organize maritime trade between Hamburg and West Africa. Emerging from this is an alternative supply chain that incorporates donated goods, postcolonial debates, ports, customs, artistic research and the expertise these recent arrivals to Hamburg have regarding West Africa . The African Terminal both embodies and explores the supply chain, but from the perspective of migration, which in the global logistics of things is otherwise left out of account. For Transaction II of this project, the African Terminal has measured out the volume of a 20-foot shipping container, using it as storage space directly within the “Mobile Worlds” exhibition. Visitors are invited to donate items on the “List of Moving Things,” with all items eventually to be shipped to Banjul (Gambia) and sold, with proceeds going to the new-Hamburger project members. Alongside Transaction II, a booklet, “How to Send Stuff to Africa, or The Joy of the Supply Chain,” is also being developed.

African Terminal: Transaction II, 2018
Installation, performance and business school
Courtesy of the African Terminal

More information: www.africanterminal.com