Geheugen Collectief at Den Argentin
There you are. In an old warehouse by the Port of Antwerp, a heavy cargo hook in your hands, and beside you a sturdy retired docker showing you how it is done one last time. “Right then, hook it on.”
Hook it on?
For Geheugen Collectief, a historical project agency that usually works its way through archives, libraries and interviews, this is a rather unusual form of fieldwork. Their work typically results in exhibitions, publications and other public-facing projects. Learning by doing, and immersing themselves in the world of Antwerp’s dock workers, is new ground for them.
New ground, though not without precedent. The collaboration with The Phoebus Foundation began in 2023, with the commission to write the story of the Boerentoren. Thousands of archival documents later, this resulted in The Farmers’ Tower: Story of an Icon. Since the summer of 2025, that collaboration has continued, this time turning its attention to the rich history of the Port of Antwerp, beginning with the foundation’s maritime and logistics heritage collection.
At the heart of the project are the stories of dock workers, along with the objects and machinery that shaped their daily labour. To uncover them, the team from Geheugen Collectief regularly visits Den Argentin, a former warehouse where the Maritime and Logistics Heritage collection of The Phoebus Foundation is housed and cared for. What at first glance seem to be silent objects acquire a name, a purpose and a past there: ‘ne piet’, ‘een mussebekske’, ‘een kreng’.
Thanks to the knowledge and enthusiasm of the volunteers, a world that is seldom told begins to unfold layer by layer. Object by object, story by story, a vivid and deeply human portrait emerges of the lives and work of dock labourers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The final result will take a little while longer. More soon, here and in our newsletter.