The Route
2006
35mm transferred to DVD．color & b/w． silent．17’ 12”．single-channel video + documentation
Artwork Context and Introduction
Made for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, Chen Chieh-jen’s video The Route is based on the historic Neptune Jade incident and the global worker’s movement. For the video, Chen invited members of the Longshoremen’s Union of the Port of Kaohsiung to perform a simulated strike. (1)
In the 1980s, all British ports started undergoing systematic privatization under the Thatcher government. Companies assuming control of the ports replaced unionized longshoremen with temporary and non-union labor.
In September of 1995, the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company dismissed eighty Liverpool longshoremen without warning. The company’s nearly four-hundred other longshoremen immediately banded together, staged a strike and picketed the company. The Liverpool demonstration touched off a global longshoreman’s movement against port privatization.
Two years into the strike in September of 1997, non-striking dockworkers at Liverpool Harbor loaded the Neptune Jade, a container ship bound for the Port of Oakland in San Francisco Bay. Workers in Oakland, notified of the Liverpool strike by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), supported the strike by picketing and refusing to unload the ship when it arrived.
Longshoremen in Vancouver, Yokohama and Kobe also joined in supporting the Liverpool strike, and the Neptune Jade was unable to unload its cargo at these various ports around the world. At 12:30 am on October 17, 1997, the ship finally sailed from Kobe to Kaohsiung, where the cargo and the ship were reportedly auctioned off together. (2)
The longshoremen in Kaohsiung never had contact with the ILWU and were unaware of the events surrounding the Neptune Jade. The Kaohsiung Longshoreman’s Union had also staged a work stoppage the same year as the Liverpool incident to protest the Taiwanese government’s privatization of the loading and unloading of cargo ships. Due to the complexity of local politics and lack of international support, however, this protest did not change privatization policies at the Port of Kaohsiung, resulting in these longshoremen having to accept their status as temporary, day laborers.
After discussing the Neptune Jade Incident with the Kaohsiung Longshoreman’s Union and getting their approval, Chen Chieh-jen staged a symbolic strike from August 17 to 19, 2006. Without their employer’s knowledge, workers at a private company (a Port of Kaohsiung tenant) helped Chen gain access to a private dock near the port, and it was here, along with an adjacent public area, where filming took place. The film was later exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial, thus initiating dialog with Liverpool residents.
Chen’s simulated strike responds to neoliberalism promoted by national governments’ alliances with capitalism, and suggests a course of political action for the future. In making this film, Chen was also concerned with art as a means of extending the outcome of the historic Neptune Jade incident and highlighting its inspirational value and dynamic significance, such that it will continue to occupy the public imagination and experience.
In the video Chen mostly focuses on the expressions and movements of the longshoremen. He deliberately crops out the ocean and port scenery to suggest that as the world’s ports are gradually swallowed up by privatization policies, these areas are waiting to be opened up and seen again.
Notes
- Information regarding the Neptune Jade incident and related developments is available in the Chinese articles by Professor Chen Hsin-hsing, including “The Legend of the Neptune Jade—Memorializing a Contemporary International Workers Rally.” Information for this introduction and preface to Chen Chieh-jen’s video was obtained from Professor Chen Hsin-hsing’s article, as well as from interviews with Liverpool longshoremen involved in the incident.
- Chen Chieh-jen went to the Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau to inquire about the auction of the Neptune Jade, but was unable to obtain any information.
- The Route was completed with the assistance of the Longshoremen’s Union of the Port of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung City Bureau of Labor, and the Kaohsiung Museum of Labor Preparatory Office. Additional information and the documentary Solidarity Has No Borders: The Journey Of The Neptune Jade were provided by the Labor Video Project, San Francisco, USA; and CASA UK.