"Panjancontainer - A Manual Last-Mile Delivery" stems from the on-going project Single Container Transport (SCT), a concept of aggregated one-container container ships independent from traditional fuels. SCT takes the exact opposite approach to the current mode of cargo shipping which started to well exceed 20,000 TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit) per vessel in recent years.
This mega-ship phenomenon can effectively be described by borrowing an expression from
Dialectic of enlightenment:
The increase in economic productivity which creates the conditions for a more just world
also affords the technical apparatus and the social groups controlling it a disproportionate
advantage over the rest of the population. The individual is entirely nullified in face of the
economic powers. These powers are taking society's domination over nature to
unimagined heights. While individuals as such are vanishing before the apparatus they
serve, they are provided for by that apparatus and better than ever before. In the unjust
state of society the powerlessness and pliability of the masses increase with the quantity
of goods allocated to them (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002, as cited in Berardi, 2018,
p.116-117).
SCT is a proposed autonomous system that brings power back to the individual, allowing a single person to deal with global shipping. Although SCT has the potential to radically reshape port activities, it cannot operate on its own; a
complementary land-based system is required, in order to bridge the gap between a waterside where a shipping container is dropped off and the final destination in a residential area.
"Panjancontainer" is a zero-emissions container transportation system that can be operated by a single person completely manually. It consists of three components: lifting spindles, a vehicle salvaging inflatable bag, and custom-made steel wheels which can be locked into ISO container corners.
References
Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (2002).
Dialectic of enlightenment :
philosophical fragments. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Berardi, F. (2018).
Breathing : chaos and poetry. South Pasadena, CA:
Semiotext(e.
The project was kindly supported by CBK Rotterdam.
Photo: Luuk Smits