Paper Short Abstract:

This paper addresses the creation of new narratives on more-than-human relations in the unstable, fluid landscape of the river Waal, the Netherlands. Through ‘unwriting dominant water discourses’, using arts-based and sensory methods, we seek to give expression to the unwritten affect and attachment to the city’s central body of water.

Paper Abstract:

Our paper addresses the creation of new narratives on more-than-human relations in the unstable, fluid landscape of the river Waal in the Netherlands. The Waal is one of the country’s largest rivers, flowing from Germany to the North Sea. It is vital for shipping and global capitalist economy yet unstable in terms of its seasonal waterflow and its response to climate change. In reaction to dominant anthropocentric hydraulic discourses that build on detached measuring and engineering to secure shipping and industry as well as human habitation and recreation, we search for alternative forms of human-river relatedness and ways of ‘unwriting’ and storying them, ways that also incorporate the volatility of climate change. We focus on citizens of Nijmegen, a riverine city along the Waal.

The paper presents a first sediment of our current study on how Nijmegen citizens interact with the Waal. What do these interactions tell us about the ways the river is part of their lives, and, in particular, meaningful in constructing their place-belongingness? How can we give expression to the unwritten affect and attachment to the city’s central body of water? Key in our approach is a joint ‘unwriting of dominant narratives’, which will be done by using arts-based methods like poetry and song writing, employing sensory methods in the river landscape, and through an interactive artistic installation in the city center. We present the collected new ways of storytelling that reveal the unsung dimensions of living with the river and its entangled landscape.