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Paper short abstract

Scary Monster and Super Creeps. On Storytelling in Campaigns Designated to Reduce Alien Invasive Species.

Paper long abstract

This paper aims to investigate storytelling within the management of alien invasive species in a Swedish context. As starting point, I will use a campaign supported by Swedish Authorities called Our unwelcome guests (Våra ovälkomna gäster). The campaign was characterized by a playfulness and designed as an exhibition with images, texts and activities, highlighting various species, both plants and animals, perceived as alien and invasive. The depicted species worked as assemblages containing facts as well as metaphorical images and popular stories visualizing alien invasive species as characters with certain uncanny features.

The invasive species carries monstrous characteristics, being described as threatening, boundless and elusive while at the same time articulating contemporary fears of environmental changes. Individual species may arouse discomfort through their appearance., though it often seems to be more a question of how they act as they spread, take over and change landscapes. At the same time, some species, like Garden Lupines, can be described as beautiful, while others are acknowledged for their fantastic survival ability, in short Super Creeps.

The storytelling of invasive species and invasiveness raises questions. How are environmental reconfigurations portrayed? Where lies the danger of invasive species? What is perceived as threatening? Is it the natural environment, the invasive species themselves or the changes in nature that are frightening? How is this expressed in the stories of the information campaign? How are these threats and dangers portrayed? How do words, images and objects interact? Where, when, and how is the monstrous?