The Residual Poetics of Mutiny in Allan Sekula's Ship of Fools/The Dockers' Museum (2010-2013).

This essay proposes a possible conceptual framework for the understanding of Allan Sekula's last and unfinished project Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum (2010-2013). It explores how the vast collection of vintage objects Sekula assembled for The Dockers' Museum allows to build imaginative sequential geographies of historical maritime struggle. It presents a reading of six images, selected from the corpus of The Dockers' Museum and considers each image as a micro-historical narrative related to Sekula's interest in mutiny as a form of resistance. The analysis is informed by a close study of Allan Sekula's earlier project Fish Story (1989-1995) and essays, (unpublished) lectures, interviews and personal notebooks related to Fish Story. Taken together the images retrace a residual poetics of lost collectivities and outbursts of social conflict and connect instances of human agency that metonymically evoke the intersubjective dimension of work and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]