The ships of South Korean company Hanjin Shipping carried billions of dollars’ worth of cargo, crew members who miss their families, and one unexpected traveler: a British filmmaker and performance artist on a 23-day residency on board a ship. Rebecca Moss is finally back on land along with the crew of the Hanjin Geneva, even though she disembarked in Tokyo over the weekend when her trip was supposed to end in Shanghai last Thursday.

The idea behind putting an artist-in-residence on a cargo ship was to raise awareness of how goods get from place to place, and to let artists create in a “natural space” that isn’t really anywhere. The Canadian gallery behind the project raised money on Kickstarter, and chose four artists for 2016.

Only the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping brought our attention to how important cargo ships are to our economy and how one company’s bankruptcy can affect people all over the world. Shipping containers bring us items ranging from cotton t-shirts to frozen meat and are great tools of globalization, and having less than a hundred ships stranded and unable to unload was close to being an economic disaster.

One of the people stuck on the ship was Ms. Moss, who gave e-mail interviews and posted to Twitter and Instagram about her experience. The good news, the gallery reported, is that the crew will still have jobs: their ship has been purchased by a German company.

Stranded Artist Ends Her Adventure on Hanjin Ship [Wall Street Journal]
Rebecca Moss: A Travelling Artist Residency [Access Gallery]

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