Feral Trade

Kate Rich's Feral Trade is a trade network that piggybacks on people's existing travel plans to move stuff. Instead of a direct 'efficient' cargo system, it's more like a hitchhiking journey for goods. Whilst the journey takes many detours – with tea looping from China to New York via a handful of stops – it is super-efficient.

The project emphasises the physicality of traded goods. At one level, it engages participants in manual activities, showing the unseen manual labour of the goods and specifically food we buy. At another level, by bringing global trade to a human-level, it comments on the sheer mass of objects moving around our world.

In the space between the logistics, are moments of social interaction. The network brings together strangers and friends-of-friends-of-friends in moments of handover.

The journey of the transported goods are captured in the waybill. The waybills track each object's journey, blending logistics with memories, photos, and personal data, sketching a unique map of global channels, trade and infrastructures.