The crazy part is that this journey is only the tip of the iceberg for this pedometer. It is made of many components, all of which follow similar journeys to the pedometer factory from their respective factories. And the components are made of raw materials, which are also shipped around in a similar manner after being mined. And the mining itself displaces those who live in that space.
Yeah its unfathomable, we were inspired by an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel about the components of an electric toothbrush. Our dream was to follow the components of the pedometer all the way back to the mines, however, we haven't done so yet.
Why did they do this backwards? It sounds like they took the trip in reverse. I thought they recorded it forward (tracking an actual object the whole time) and presented it in reverse, but it looks like they didn't actually follow a real object. They just chose a path and took the path in reverse, using the types of transportation that such an object might in theory have taken:
> They write that, “Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China.” As per the trip: “We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao’an.”
The idea of following a single, real object from point of manufacture to destination--documenting all the transfers and hiccups along the way--is interesting to me. Presenting it in reverse chronological order is an artistic decision I'm ambivalent about. But it doesn't sound like that's what they did. They didn't track a pedometer; they just took freight vehicles along a path that maybe the thing went on, without following the actual transfer of the item from box to container, from truck to ship, etc.
I'm disappointed. I was ready to actually watch the whole thing. But it's contrived.
Absolutely, the best thing would have been to actually follow a specific, unique product. We tried for one and a half years to get the company where we bought the pedometer to cooperate with us. It was impossible. But we managed to get the company to tell us which route they used in most cases.
It's only contrived in the way all art is contrived. The very idea of an 857 hour move mostly filming the bridge of a containership is a contrivance in the extreme.
Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, we spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of Logistics on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in Sweden, we will not be able to keep track of the stream. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works. Unfortunately we will not be able to stream the entire film this time, but hope to do so later.
It brings me to a story from two years ago about Norwegian (...) fish - branded as "environment friendly" - is sent from Norway to China for filleting, and then back to the market. About 25% of all the cod sold by one of the biggest companies in Norway has endured this trip.
It's worth mentioning that the fish in question comes from "all over the world", but still.
I wonder how large (in file size) the final cut was and what codecs were used. Such slow moving footage probably compresses well, but at 857 hours of footage it’s probably still big.
> I Watched An 857-Hour Movie To Encounter Capitalism’s Extremes
International trade is not the same thing as capitalism. International trade existed before capitalism, and if capitalism disappeared tomorrow, short of everyone simultaneously adopting anarcho-primitivism, we would still have trade between nations.
I think ideally we'd have shared information (open source hardware designs) and distributed manufacturing. This would be a bit more robust, and avoid shipping, while making repair and recycling a lot easier.
yes this article seemed very obsessed with capitalism more than the movie itself. does the theory of marxism hold that there would be no more container ships, no products shared between nations, no people whose job it is to drive ships, trains and trucks anymore? that's all specific to capitalism? really? like if I wanted a pedometer, someone down the street would be making them ? or we just have no gadgets at all?
> Going on the Logistics journey means encountering a staggering depiction of alienation, isolation and just how much capitalist social relations have distorted our ability to understand time and space.
Bit of a stretch. Would anarchist shipping take less time or be less boring somehow?
I mean, it seems like the guy went into the viewing already with a notion that capitalism is bad, and then watched a lot of really boring video, and then attributes the self-imposed tedium to how capitalism "distorts or ability to understand time and space". Only someone predisposed to this perspective would think that makes any sense at all.
Certainly the parties involved would have a better understanding of the time and space under discussion, because they would have taken part in the decisions about sourcing and logistics.
The author mentioned that they started out looking for the world's longest horror film but ended up finding a film which exposes capitalism's underbelly and brings home why life is turned into a blur by capitalism.
If you ask me though, based on this paragraph they did actually find the world's longest horror film! As for the anti-capitalism hints in the article, try watching an 857 hour film without starving in a non-capitalist economy!
"There came a point about three weeks into my viewing where the maddening, non-Euclidean shape of Logistics fully formed in my mind. I had an unnerving migraine. I could barely get myself together, let alone watch a boat not move for nine hours. I thought about quitting or taking a few days off, but then it occurred to me: the crew of the ship couldn’t quit, and the filmmakers couldn’t take a day off. I was now a part of this filmic thing, and I couldn’t stop until it was done."
Not quite that long, but the Norwegian national broadcaster NRK did a week-long trip one one of the coastal shipping routes in the nortern part of the country. Might be of interest for you. I know they used to offer the whole thing as a torrent, but it can also be found here:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/hurtigruten-minutt-for-minutt
the mid-section of this article is just rephrased paragraph after rephrased paragraph, each less philosophically sound than the last.
we get it, the film is an art piece making a point about how capitalism compresses time and space into inconsequential objects. it was a big undertaking schedule-wise. you don’t have to say this backwards and forwards 5 times
While not nearly as harrowing a journey nor the commitment as watching the film described in this article, reading this article in its entirety was surprisingly riveting and oddly fulfilling.
Not a critique if the film, but rather the article ablut it:
>> Logistics may have been birthed into this world in 2012, but the past few years have given the film a second life, with the pandemic laying bare the fragility of just-in-time logistics.
I so hoped we got past that already... JIT had nothing to do, as a root cause that is, with the supply issues the world is facing since the pandemic. I hate this meme so much.
That being said, I live the film project! Even if I would never watch 35 days plus on part of my day job, the idea is great so!
Do you have a good resource for getting to grips with the current supply issues going on around the world? I'm sure there isn't just a single issue responsible for the huge variety of symptoms cropping up, but it'd be great to get past the memes and get some deeper understanding.
So...buying items made in your country is an extreme right winger thing.
And if you buy shitty stuff from communist china then it's exteme capitalism.
Would you watch a real time "movie" of the countless man-years it took to design and develop the infrastructure that made it possible for you to "watch", write and publish about this? I thought so.
I use a simple webview browser on Android because it's 10x faster than something heavy like Firefox. Every few months I come across a site, like this one, where the page flashes into the screen before being redirected to a data URI. Does anyone know what causes this? I'm inclined to think of trackers and ads, but it's a bit hard to debug without developer tools.
This is what the submission redirects me to, a 1x1 image the browser says: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logisticsfilm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7373737373|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] desindol|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caymanjim|3 years ago|reply
> They write that, “Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China.” As per the trip: “We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao’an.”
The idea of following a single, real object from point of manufacture to destination--documenting all the transfers and hiccups along the way--is interesting to me. Presenting it in reverse chronological order is an artistic decision I'm ambivalent about. But it doesn't sound like that's what they did. They didn't track a pedometer; they just took freight vehicles along a path that maybe the thing went on, without following the actual transfer of the item from box to container, from truck to ship, etc.
I'm disappointed. I was ready to actually watch the whole thing. But it's contrived.
[+] [-] logisticsfilm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|3 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/VHn1zogeyO4
[+] [-] gizajob|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logisticsfilm|3 years ago|reply
Feel free to ask us anything!
official site is logisticsartproject.com
[+] [-] logisticsfilm|3 years ago|reply
The stream is live now at https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
The article makes a big deal out of finally seeing a person. Is that person aware of the movie?
Sounds like an interesting film, thanks for answering questions about it.
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
I suppose it would be nice if you could view a map with the current position while watching the movie.
[+] [-] Balgair|3 years ago|reply
What was the easiest?
Any advice for other film-makers?
[+] [-] thatwasunusual|3 years ago|reply
It brings me to a story from two years ago about Norwegian (...) fish - branded as "environment friendly" - is sent from Norway to China for filleting, and then back to the market. About 25% of all the cod sold by one of the biggest companies in Norway has endured this trip.
It's worth mentioning that the fish in question comes from "all over the world", but still.
Google translation: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/norge/miljomerka-torsk-ver...
[+] [-] gtsop|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] testplzignore|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idiocrat|3 years ago|reply
A container ship is sailing through a water highway, docks. The containers are getting unloaded/loaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16zyxiwDLY
[+] [-] 7373737373|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThinkingGuy|3 years ago|reply
https://omegataupodcast.net/146-container-shipping/
[+] [-] collegeburner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logisticsfilm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radicality|3 years ago|reply
I don’t see any info on their page either https://logisticsartproject.com/
I wonder how large (in file size) the final cut was and what codecs were used. Such slow moving footage probably compresses well, but at 857 hours of footage it’s probably still big.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|3 years ago|reply
It is extraordinary but then again it's just "the container will be here in three weeks"
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|3 years ago|reply
International trade is not the same thing as capitalism. International trade existed before capitalism, and if capitalism disappeared tomorrow, short of everyone simultaneously adopting anarcho-primitivism, we would still have trade between nations.
[+] [-] incompatible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzzeek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
Bit of a stretch. Would anarchist shipping take less time or be less boring somehow?
[+] [-] exitb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuramitropolis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kqr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delusional|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpalmer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drited|3 years ago|reply
If you ask me though, based on this paragraph they did actually find the world's longest horror film! As for the anti-capitalism hints in the article, try watching an 857 hour film without starving in a non-capitalist economy!
"There came a point about three weeks into my viewing where the maddening, non-Euclidean shape of Logistics fully formed in my mind. I had an unnerving migraine. I could barely get myself together, let alone watch a boat not move for nine hours. I thought about quitting or taking a few days off, but then it occurred to me: the crew of the ship couldn’t quit, and the filmmakers couldn’t take a day off. I was now a part of this filmic thing, and I couldn’t stop until it was done."
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chha|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RajT88|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drdebug|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] permo-w|3 years ago|reply
we get it, the film is an art piece making a point about how capitalism compresses time and space into inconsequential objects. it was a big undertaking schedule-wise. you don’t have to say this backwards and forwards 5 times
compress your article space and time-wise
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wizardforhire|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hef19898|3 years ago|reply
>> Logistics may have been birthed into this world in 2012, but the past few years have given the film a second life, with the pandemic laying bare the fragility of just-in-time logistics.
I so hoped we got past that already... JIT had nothing to do, as a root cause that is, with the supply issues the world is facing since the pandemic. I hate this meme so much.
That being said, I live the film project! Even if I would never watch 35 days plus on part of my day job, the idea is great so!
[+] [-] crabmusket|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readerbaza|3 years ago|reply
Would you watch a real time "movie" of the countless man-years it took to design and develop the infrastructure that made it possible for you to "watch", write and publish about this? I thought so.
[+] [-] Aachen|3 years ago|reply
This is what the submission redirects me to, a 1x1 image the browser says: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==