Research Project: Intermodal, ethnographic and museum-based research on urban economies, port work and logistics at Schuppenküche im Hafenmuseum
Schuppenküche im Hafenmuseum (“shed kitchen”) is a co-created social practice, a venue for encounters and research platform located in the midst of the port of Hamburg. Set in a former storage shed that houses the port museums’ collection open to visitors from early April to late October.
Schuppenküche im Hafenmuseum has been invented by a team of ethnographers, designers, museum professionals and volunteers as well as students as an open space where ethnographers, port/logistics workers and museum outreach professionals meet. All activities are intertwined on Thursdays during lunch-time when port workers, truckers, museum staff and volunteers and students come to eat a savoury, warm meal at a reasonable price, to hang out and to enter into otherwise improbable conversations on timing & tempo in today’s port and in history, on care and social infrastructures, on claims & conflicts that shape work life, as well as the visible and invisible spaces of logistics ion and beyond ports.
Schuppenküche im Hafenmuseum privileges informal modes of ethnographic inquiry – mappings, go-alongs, observations of port work based on all senses, conversations starting from museal artefacts and from a joint lunch. Ethnographic inquiry is practiced collectively by all team members and students (two BA seminars during spring/summer 2022), and research material will be co-produced.
Schuppenküche im Hafenmuseum is a knowledge exchange project funded by the University of Hamburg.
Photos: Louisa Schwope