Tug of Cabin

Tugging. Photography: Next Wave

Tug of Cabin

Cabin Exchange: Will Foster, Charlie Bosanquet, Stephen Jakub, Beth Hamer, Nick Carlin, Jenny Herman

Containers Village at Next Wave Festival
Melbourne, Australia
March 2006

The shipping container contributes to the transformation of a city’s physical fabric, economy and identity. These ubiquitous metal objects symbolise a network of world-wide transition: distribution, trucking, shipping, cargo, freight, shifting, moving, building.

For the duration of Containers Village at Next Wave, the shipping container was used as a hub for recruiting participants. The aim was to bring people together to form a collective mass with the common goal to tug a container across the floor. Though seemingly impossible to achieve, on Sunday 26th March 2006, 34 people succeeded to pull the 3,200 KG container across the floor using ropes.

Participants were given the following instructions: “Stand to the left of the rope. Slip your right toe under the rope, and at the judge’s command, lift the rope with your foot and take it with your hands and stand upright, well balanced on both feet, rope positioned between your body and the upper part of your arm. The rope should be in a straight line and fairly taut from front to rear, but the team should not stiffen themselves in any way.”

Tug of Cabin was supported by Scottish Arts Council and Next Wave

Project website www.cabinexchange.co.uk

Tugging. Photography: Next Wave