Dit interdisciplinair langetermijnonderzoeksproject, gezamenlijk ontwikkeld door het M HKA en de KU Leuven, richt zich op een specifiek maar complex werk: één met veel facetten, dat variabel geïnstalleerd kan worden, onvoltooid is, en een open einde heeft: Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2010-2013) van de kunstenaar en theoreticus Allan Sekula (1951-2013). Het project, gevoed door het onderzoek van de teamleden, blijft evolueren via onderzoeksresultaten die opeenvolgend getoond worden, onder meer op dit digitaal platform.

Allan Sekula. Collective Sisyphus

WARNING. I'm the longshoreman your mother warned you about (The Dockers' Museum, object nr. 8)
Prent , 20,3 x 30,6 cm
ink, paper

WARNING. I'M THE LONGSHOREMAN YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT, plastic geprint bord (bumper sticker), massageproduceerd, 20.2 x 29.8 cm. Aangekocht door Allan Sekula via eBay op 24 maart 2010. [TDM 8]. 


A joke graphic in the form of a traffic sign, something typically American, Sekulas own biographic background, growing up in the port of Los Angelos. The term longshoreman is a more typical American synonym for Docker, like stevedore or warphie (wharf labourer) is for Australia. Nowadays people in California also use the term longie, which morphologie is taken from the Australian habit of using diminutives which shorten a noun using an “ie”-ending. Normally Americans don’t do that, but the founder of the Dockers Workers Union was Australian, which may explain this. The word stevedore originated in Portugal or Spain, and entered the English language through its use by sailors. It started as a phonetic spelling of estivador (Portuguese) or estibador (Spanish), meaning a man who stuffs, here in the sense of a man who loads ships, which was the original meaning of stevedore.