Logistics (2012) is a 37-day-long film by Erika Magnussen and Daniel Andersson that tracks in real time the route of a cheap, electronic pedometer from its warehouse in central Sweden back to its factory in Shenzhen. While it does answer the question of where the stuff in our world comes from, it is primarily concerned with how it gets to us, via truck, train, ports, and most of all, container ships.
Logistics first screened in Uppsala in 2012 and has streamed on various platforms, but since Spring 2024, it has been available on YouTube in 107 8-hour segments. It feels right at home.
According to film theorist Kyle Stine, who wrote about Logistics for the September 2021 issue of October, the route the filmmakers followed was based on “proof of journey” data provided by DHL. Stine recounts the extraordinary technical and logistical challenges of filming in HD continuously for the entire 37-day journey, which began in late June, 2011. The trip coincided with a strike at a Spanish port, and political tensions in Egypt over the Arab Spring protests—and the fixed camera captured them only durationally, as days of delay added to the schedule. At the last minute Maersk lawyers worried about piracy required the filmmakers to get off the ship between Cairo and Hong Kong, forcing them to quickly devise an automated system that could film HD non-stop for fourteen days.
Last year Amy Wren wrote a review of Logistics after renting it for three months on Vimeo. She notes the almost total absence of humans in the film until Shenzhen, and being startled by the sudden appearance of a sailor to clean the camera.
I love every thing about this, but I am baffled by the narrative flow of the film, literally the pedometer’s path in reverse, a path no pedometer has ever actually taken. Indeed, what are we actually seeing? What is even in the containers we follow from central Sweden, through multiple European ports, and onto that last boat to China? Anything? Taking cargo on a return trip is known as backhauling, and it is crucial to the profitability of shipping companies and the efficiency of logistics networks. But all this, too, is invisible in the film.
[next morning update]: It comes back to answering the question, “Where does this come from?” by retracing the route. The impetus of exploration, like finding the source of the Nile, not following the water—or even a boat on it—as it flows along to the sea.
But besides not being geographic features but human constructs, Logistics’ systems are not rivers, but networks. There’s an internet protocol command called traceroute that creates a list of servers data will pass through on its way to a given destination. But rather than “proof of journey” for data that’s been sent, traceroute actually sends its own signal, and reports back its own server path. It’s likely, even probable, that other data will follow that path, but not certain.
If you were to follow a pedometer from factory to store, would the next pedometer take the same route, hopping around the same five European ports? Would it optimize for the moment, rerouting around a port strike, or a coup, or a ship stuck in the Suez Canal? Or would it just optimize for price? Would filmmakers have sufficient time to arrange their permissions, their corporate collabs, and install their HD deck and dashcams? Maybe the determinative logistics in Logistics were the filmmakers’ own.
Magnussen and Andersson ask where “the sort of anonymous clutter that fills our lives” came from, but what we really want to know is, “Where’s my stuff and when will it get here?”
TRACK PACKAGE is how most of us conceive the “almost inconceivable global logistics” we’re hooked on. Getting an email when a planeful of new iPhones leaves the factory. The Domino’s app telling me my pizza went into the oven. The little animated UPS truck circling my neighborhood. AirTags in my luggage. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before track package come with a live HD feed. Amazon’s already installed cameras in their delivery trucks; will the feed be available to Prime Video members? A double bill of Logistics and the raw footage of the guy who makes glitter bombs for porch pirates videos.
Logistics —full movie [youtube via @dylanschenker.com]