Wharfage : Sharjah Creek 2008-2009 / compiled Tarek Abou el Fetouh ; edited by Shaina Anand, Nida Ghouse and Ashok Sukumaran.

"Wharfage is part of the 'Past of the Coming Days' programme, curated by Tarek Abou el Fetouh." on T. verso page.

"Wharfage is a two-part project by CAMP for the 9th Sharjah Biennial"

This arrow of trade (in which Foucault's heterotopic ship is not an escape from but an entry into the space of conflict) became our subject. It offers an opportunity to think about how the "business of business" in this context may be better than the business of war, and how a "free port" created in Somalia by the lack of a customs regime, mirrored by Sharjahs' "cheap port", produces a "free trade" not governed by the WTO. With conflict up ahead and economic crisis at its tail (and pirates in the middle), this movement of goods and their sailors may trace old trade routes, but maps out something new: a contemporary landscape of new and used objects, labour, charcoal (the only bulk item on the return journey), Asian and African diasporas, and giant wooden ships being built in Salaya, Gujarat.

The project consists of two parallel pieces: Wharfage, a book containing two years of port records related to the Somali trade;
and Radio Meena, four evenings of radio transmissions from the port in Sharjah, which broadcast in a 5+ kilometre radius songs, commentary, phone and ship radio conversations with ships in Salaya, in Bossaso and enroute, accounts from Gujarati sailors, loaders from Dera Gazi Khan and NWFP in Pakistan, Sikh truckers, Iranian shopkeepers, Somali trading agents. All of whom spoke hindustani (hindi+urdu) as a common language of the port.