Paper Short Abstract:

'Estuary / Artery' is a written ethnography and multimedia documentary combining a meshwork of data collected walking along the Thames estuary. Using mapping and sensory methods, the landscape is explored through and beyond the voices of its human and more-than-human 'dwellers'.

Paper Abstract:

'Estuary / Artery' is a written thesis and experimental ethnographic documentary accumulated over 3 months of fieldwork walking the Thames estuary. Combining a meshwork of audiovisual data collection, this thesis approaches the ethnographic fieldsite of the estuary as produced through and beyond the socio-cultural and ecological imaginaries of its 'dwellers'. Rooted in embodied and theoretical reference to the site's spatial configurations as urban edgelands, this thesis reflects on the physical and virtual experience of moving through an in-between landscape - discussing how the estuary has been produced as a speculative frontier for redevelopment and the growing impact of climate change. Delving into the fieldwork process using mapping and sensory methodologies, ethnographic encounters with humans and non-humans along the estuary are discussed with close reference to the film. Considering the estuary as an 'urban wasteland' and ecological brownfield site, the potentiality of sensory attunement - with an emphasis on sound - is explored, asking how embodied practices can be utilised to bring us closer to imagining multi-species entanglement on this planet in late capitalism.