Ecology of invasive cargo

• Exhibition Temporary Art Centre (TAC) and Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven 2022.

Container ships, enormous anonymous boxes that sail through our maritime landscape, transport more than goods. With the ballast water that is carried in large tanks and discharged in the next port, countless organisms also travel to new places. And not without consequences: these exotics disrupt the existing ecological balance. They often influence or displace native species. In this way, an estimated 7,000 species have already been spread to new habitats all over the world.

With boxes, Noud created a kind of herbarium of freight containers, which shows a speculative scenario of gigantic insects and all kinds of new, strange and mysterious species. It raises a big question. How can we keep a grip on technology and our relationship with nature?