Documentation of Terrible Karma: U-Haul truck as Mobile Exhibition Space

Terrible Karma: reverberations of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a mobile audio-visual installation exploring the global reverberations of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (in which 146 garment workers, mostly young immagrent women, were killed) on its 100th anniversary: March 25th 2011.

It brought together photographs detailing working conditions of garment factories at the time of the Triangle fire and oral histories of Triangle fire survivors with audio recordings of mega-scale garment factories in Qingyuan, China and protest cries and songs of present-day garment workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia to invoke the contemporary and global resonances of the Triangle fire.

The title – Terrible Karma – refered to both the title of a protest song sung by Cambodian female garment workers at a union rally in Phnom Penh (July 2010 – click for translation) and to the idea that events of the garment industry past continue to haunt the present, that they are always coming back.

The work arose out of experimental geographers – Adeola Enigbokan and Merle Patchett’s – mutual desire to mark the centenary of the Triangle factory fire whilst also exploring the constraints and conditions in which garment workers continue to work, live and die.

The installation ‘took to the streets’ on March 25th, 2011 when the audio-visuals were projected out of a UHAUL truck parked in downtown Manhattan locations associated with the events of the Triangle Fire. Passers-by were invited inside the back of the truck to experience the work from within its claustrophobic confines.

Below are some selected photographs documenting the day. While viewing why not listen to the audio component of the work: 

Making Flyers at City University Graduate Centre, New York

Flyer Making

Contemporary Equivalent of a Shirtwaist, made in Bangladesh

Testing out the mobile projector in Adeloa’s Kitchen

Waiting to pick up the U-Haul truck

Checking the truck for damage

Our mobile exhibition space for the day ready to depart

The collaborators: Adeola Enigbokan (driving) and Merle Patchett

Driving through Manhattan streets on our way to the Remember the Triangle Fire Rally

Parking to go to the Triangle rally near Washington Place

The Triangle Rally for Union Workers in the shadow of the Asch Building

Mourning Banners on the side of the Asch Building

Flyering at the Rally.

Present-day Union activists following the example set by the original Triangle protests.

Remembering the Triangle Fire

Our U-Haul truck parked beside Cooper Union Square.

Unpacking the Equipment

Getting set up next to Cooper Union Square.

Getting the projector set up inside the truck.

The battery-powered projector

Connecting the projector to the ipod which which played the audio-visuals

The full set-up: mobile projector, ipod, boom-box

Inside the Cooper Union Building.

In the basement of the Cooper Union Building.

First visitors/audience entering the truck

setting up the first showing

Discussing the work inside the truck

Getting comfortable

Exiting the truck

View from inside the truck

Setting up another showing

More visitors, including someone filming for Paper Tiger Television

Reading the flyers

Exiting after the final screening.

Crumpled flyer in the U-Haul Truck.

After dropping off the U-Haul truck.

In the following short documentary Charles Kernaghan, Director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, makes a passionate plea that the legacy of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Fire should be legislation that bans the import of child labour and sweatshop goods into the United States.

The documentary highlights the fact that the events of the Triangle fire continue in today’s global garment economy by reporting on a garment factory fire on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh on the 14th of December 2010, which saw female workers jumping to their deaths from the 10^th and 11^th floors as fire exits were blocked. As the documentary makes clear, the events at the Ha-meen factory fire in Bangladesh horribly echo the conditions which brought about and exacerbated the Triangle Shirtwaist factory tragedy.

The events of the Ha-meen factory fire partly inspired Terrible Karma: reverberations of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and its focus on marking the centenary of the Triangle Factory Fire on its centenary in New York whilst also highlighting the struggle of garments workers in places like China, Cambodia and Bangladesh (we did this by meshing audio recordings of a mega-scale garment factory in China and the protest cries and songs of garments workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia with oral histories of Triangle fire survivors and photographs of garment sweatshops from the Triangle period).