An Earthly Writing of Space

Subject An Earthly Writing of Space – Exploring a more-than-human Perspective on the Upper Rhine Plain, ongoing PhD research at the Institute for Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) at ETH Zürich. Supervision: Professor Teresa Galí-Izard and Professor Dr Philip Ursprung.

Abstract (05.07.2023) From the beginning of the 19th century, humans have heavily transformed the Upper Rhine Plain: In 1809, the engineer J. G. Tulla initiated straightening the Rhine's meander zone that stretches along the French-German border. The extensive changes reflected the scientific spirit of the time and paved the way for continuing extractive practices. Today, the region epitomizes complex multispecies relations with highly modified ecologies of the Anthropocene: Flooded gravel pits, polders, and fields substitute former wilderness. This transformation was both represented and enabled by numerous 19th-century maps and drawings of the area. In contrast to earlier depictions of a vital landscape, they helped create a disconnect from the land and encouraged spatial interventions by abstracting and objectifying the unpredictable river. Following Bruno Latour's call for earthly sciences, the research explores an earthly approach to spatial practice. It probes how humans live with and against non-human others and tests ways of bringing complexity and vitality into spatial representations. The research follows three animals that are indivisibly linked with the area – Atlantic salmon (Rheinsalm), floodwater mosquito (Rheinschnake) and sand martin (Rheinschwalbe) – through close observation and support by local guides to gain a more-than-human lens on spatial, ecological, and social conditions. The notion of a vital milieu serves as a starting point to describe and visualize an inhabited, living terrain. Recent writings by ecofeminists and scholars from multispecies studies help develop a situated practice; work by pre-Enlightenment naturalists helps show complexity. Foregrounding a multiplicity of vital relations and exploring new ways of representing the region through writing and drawing, the study hopes to foster more sustainable and inclusive spatial practices.

Publications

Just, J. (2023) ‘Nature in Change: Exploring the Ecological Conditions of a flooded Gravel Pit in the Upper Rhine Plain’, ARQ (Santiago) [online], 113, pp. 32–45. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0717-69962023000100032.

Just, J. (2022) ‘Drawing as situated practice’, L’Atelier Magazine, (20), pp. 97–105.

Just, J. (2022) ‘Cultivating more-than-human care: Exploring bird watching as a landscaping practice on the example of sand martins and flooded gravel pits’, Frontiers of Architectural Research, 11(6), pp. 1205–1213. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2022.04.007.