The tissue of memory against the elements

- Water is constantly in motion, slips out, and that is why it is so fascinating – expressed her conviction Prof. Anna Barcz, specializing in ecocritical historiography, author of numerous works and translations, as well as the book Realizm ekologiczny. Od ekokrytyki do zookrytyki w literaturze polskiej [Ecological Realism. From Ecocriticism to Zoocriticism in Polish Literature] (2016). Currently, the researcher is implementing the grant Monstrous Rivers: Investigating the Environmental History of Modern European Floods through Literary Sources. Another methodological perspective – cultural studies and art research – was represented by Prof. Marianna Michałowska, whose book published in 2024 Materia(ł) fotografii. Obrazy środowiska przyrodniczego we współczesnych praktykach wizualnych”  [The Matter(s) of Photography: Images of the Natural Environment in Contemporary Visual Practices] (https://www.universitas.com.pl/pl/ksiazki/2221-material-fotografii.html) was briefly discussed at the beginning by Prof. Justyna Tabaszewska.

 The discussion began with a general introduction to the topic of ecocriticism and its relationship with aquacriticism. While the concept of ecocriticism no longer sounds foreign, especially in the academic circuit, the concepts of aquacriticism or aquapoetics may still be new.

"Why I went with the flow with Aquacriticism" (Anna Barcz)

As Anna Barcz said, the separation of aquacriticism is a certain phase in her research work. – I have been dealing with ecocriticism for quite a long time and it seemed to me that I was doing it systematically, drawing from the trend that came to us from the Anglo-American academy, mainly from the literary studies community.

From the very beginning, something in the theoretical and literary approach to ecocriticism has intrigued me – when we launch different discourses (ranging from structuralism to feminism), it interestingly illuminates what we see in literature. Literature combined with philosophy asks us questions about our relations with the broadly understood natural environment. Literature, with its artistic means, allows for the smuggling of what literary theory calls the representation of non-human actors (we can also call this agency or subjectivity). Aquacriticism is a subset here, in which all actors have “something watery.”

In the field of ecocriticism, aquacriticism has become independent, it has turned out that the watery is one of its directions, allowing us to enter the deepest structures of culture, as well as language and literature, which serves as our guide. At the level of studying deep structures, the prefix "aqua-" would mean that something is happening to the way water works today in these very deep structures, as floods historically change their nature, for example due to global warming.

Blue humanities (Marianna Michałowska)

From a different methodological angle – namely, cultural studies and art research – the same issue was presented by Prof. Marianna Michałowska. The term “aquacriticism” has reached her over the last 10 years through the language of the media and in research on classical photography, memory photography and identity issues. The scholar also talked about her cooperation with researchers from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Gdańsk University of Technology and the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot. As she mentioned, her thinking about water is more related to what they call ocean literacy: the competence of knowledge about seas and oceans. Her research reaches for various types of metaphors and stories, the postcolonial thread, the anthropocene exploitation of seas and oceans. The artists whose work she analyses operate in an extremely practical manner, they are more interested in cooperation with scientists in the field of cultural studies than in the field of literary studies. That is why they cooperate, among others, with the Gdańsk centre of Grzegorz Klaman, with which they accompany artists. – We operate not so much within the framework of strictly understood aquacriticism, but rather within the more activistically understood blue humanities. An extremely interesting issue related to the interpretations of visual works in this context was published a few years ago by the journal “Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”. (Issue 2 (48) 2021).

For Prof. Michałowska, water is extraordinary because it allows us to build interdisciplinary fields. – What comes to the fore is how we see water, how we experience it, how we act on its behalf (here the activist attitude of blue humanism is particularly important). It is more about creating a common experience for all of us than about interpreting the motifs that Anna started to talk about, although a metaphorical or symbolic layer appears in the works about water.

Professor Tabaszewska, the host of the meeting, proposed a discussion about the relationship between aquacriticism and engaged humanities.

Since Marianna Michałowska, as a researcher dealing with visual studies and art, would most like to invite the participants of the seminar to an exhibition discussing ecocritical topics, during the meeting she used a presentation and drew attention to three main fields of realization of this subject:

1. a discussion of natural processes within ocean literacy, or a deeper awareness of how pollution functions globally (most of the works here are devoted to plastic),

2. an area that is itself a literary and cultural metaphor, the Arctic and Antarctic,

3. an area that directs us from globalism towards locality.

The presentation was opened by the work of Thóra Pétursdóttir, an archaeologist and artist who studies the Arctic, Iceland and unpopulated areas, tracking waste in areas uninhabited by people. Kelly Jazvac is also interested in collecting waste that has a human-inhuman, natural-cultural character, plastiglomerates (mineral substances created as a result of burning bonfires on beaches), whose works were displayed in Poland in 2019 at the collective exhibition Bezludzka ziemia [Unmanned Earth]. In turn, the models' outfits made of waste found on beaches, oceans (another topic discussed by Prof. Michałowska), which Fabrice Monteiro immortalizes in his photographs as part of fashion campaigns, are moving, but they become part of the industrial discourse, and therefore dominant, at the same time inscribing themselves in the language of major corporations. According to the researcher, this is a topic that should be addressed as part of the discussion on environmental engagement and greenwashing practices.

Another artist who is able to translate collecting and participation in the art world into ethical and activist discourse is Pam Longobardi, who builds installations from waste found on the coasts, objects that help in everyday life. She indicates that the ocean is also a source of income, a source of sustenance for people. Her work dedicated to refugees in the Mediterranean, Drifters project (2016), created on Lesbos, shows abandoned life jackets and rafts cut up by smugglers to prevent refugees from returning. Social discourse resonates very strongly here. Her project of launching local communities for an annual garbage collection on the island of Cephalonia comes from a decade ago, where residents, together with the artist, took part in expeditions to the caves and coastal grottos on the island to purify the water. So we have here an extremely practical, specific activity, which also translates into making the general public aware of certain changes that are taking place and encouraging them to be active.

Why Spitsbergen?

The theme of the works is also the “trampling” of Arctic areas by tourists. It can take various forms, including myth-making, aestheticizing discourse. An example is the work of Paul Nicklen – a photographer for “National Geographic”, immortalizing magnificent animals in hunting gestures, but also Kuba Bąkowski, a Polish visual artist, who went to Spitsbergen as part of an artistic residency at the research station in Hornsund. What he did was, on the one hand, very strange for the scientists he worked with, on the other – moving. The work Polaris. Summer was created, which was a staging of a figure of one of the researchers dressed in work clothes, but with the head of a polar bear from Krupówki, borrowed by Bąkowski from Zakopane and transported to Spitzbergen. The work was about searching for the polar star, and the project had an extremely symbolic and metaphorical scope. Spitsbergen represented the end of the world. Part of the installation was also documentation of miners in the Bobrek mine, where the lights form the shape of the Ursa Minor constellation. We have a world of imagination being built, a departure from what environmental art is supposed to be, but also a story about culture and people who experience a certain kind of experience.

The researcher also presented the work of Julian Charrière, showing the figure of a researcher on an iceberg. The creator refers here to the old, romantic figure of a traveler exploring the world and examining reality.

One may ask why Spitsbergen is so interesting for artists and researchers? For artists – because it presents a world that is inhuman, inaccessible, beyond the field of vision, for scientists – because changes take place there the fastest, so we can observe what was previously elusive. Currently, within one generation we can see changes that are well described and studied, but still neglected. They are particularly relevant in Alaska and Greenland, where we have a somewhat colonial sense of inhumanity, but these are inhabited areas where people must adapt to changes in order to survive.

More and more often, artists are dealing with what is closest to us in terms of the subject of rivers, which is obvious on the one hand, but on the other hand is being pushed out of the field of social interest. Prof. Michałowska discussed the project of Waldemar Śliwczyński, who took a walk along the Warta River (808.2 km, from its mouth to the Oder) and using very classic means of landscape photography, presented relationships with people living by the river in small towns, where it plays a fundamental role in their lives. The second project presented, extremely interesting, is the walk across the Baltic Sea by a Warsaw researcher, artist involved in photography, Wojciech Sternak. He documented the process of crossing the causeway in the Bay of Gdańsk between Oksywie and Hel. Justyna Streichsbier, a participant in the #ODRA project, invented by the Sputnik collective, presents rivers and reflections on them in yet another way. The theme is a journey, the goal of which was to bring a boat important to the artist, to the city where she lives: Kostrzyn nad Odrą. The artist chose a personal perspective, traveling with her family after the disaster in 2023 and exploring the feminist perspective, family and maternal experience. In one of the interviews about the project, she used the term "boat mothers". It is also worth mentioning the projects of women's collectives identifying with individual rivers, including Cecylia Malik. It is necessary to emphasize this diversity of perspectives from which artists try to face the topic of water, with what people do with water.

Reading and translating water

As Anna Barcz noticed, a lot is happening on the subject of rivers, new interesting publications are being released, e.g. Rzeki, niech nie ma [Rivers, that are not there] by Maciej Robert, or reissues, such as Dunaj [Danube] by Claudio Magris. Andrzej Stasiuk [Rzeka dziecka (The River of Childhood)] is also returning to the river. There are also people who receive grants for research on water humanities. The researcher shared the impression that our culture is very responsive: when water takes on the form of an element, changes also occur in us.

Reading requires competence, regardless of whether it is the reading of water by a hydrologist or a literary scholar. Each of them must reach beyond their traditional methods of work. – I had to go beyond my discipline very quickly and expand my knowledge, then return to my field of literary studies and translate this knowledge – stated Anna Barcz. – I happen to be a translator in the common sense of the word, but I am also an eco-translator, due to the fact that I do not focus exclusively on my discipline, but work in environmental humanities. Translation is a type of engagement, improving communication, which we also conduct with society.

In connection with recurring floods, also in Poland, the concept of "nature won" is coming back to us. The elements for postmodern people are something that has no place in everyday life, but in situations of disasters, e.g. floods, a very deep language of culture is activated. The sense of controlling rivers has reached a certain peak, which did not mean that there were fewer disasters. The sprawling cities of modernity were described in a catastrophic way during historical natural disasters, but in a culture and language that would help understand the return and a certain repetition of how we read water, which we do not understand at the same time and which is dependent on environmental factors (such as a warming climate), pre-modern language returns. This is a very interesting thread in the blue humanities or in environmental humanities, but in the heart of modernist and constantly modernizing Europe we do not have such great warning texts about the power of the elements. However, Algernon Blackwood, a British author of horror novels and a representative of the so-called weird fiction, refers to floods, showing the incredible fear of floods, as well as the monstrosity, the monstrosity of the element of the river that floods. His text (The Willows, Polish translation by Krzysztof Grudnik published by Wydawnictwo IX as Wierzby in 2024) is strongly connected to visuality, firmly entering the era that combined cognition with imagination in an extremely transgressive way. - Blackwood showed with exceptional insight that what concerns misunderstanding, whether it be a flood or the mysterious bottom of the ocean, concerns something that can be called a pattern - says Anna Barcz. - Water has its own pattern, which is not ready and which it stubbornly reminds us of when it floods. That is why she is an inspiring “other being”, a remedy that can lead us out of the crisis. Hence my involvement in her research.

Prof. Michałowska pointed out the term literacy, reading, which we owe to literary studies and structuralism, when we started to “read everything in culture”. – We also started reading oceans, which is extremely important and interesting, because reading oceans is a term used in scientific practice, which deals with the study of various types of organisms, tides. Scientists use the term ocean literacy in reference to expanding competences and knowledge about seas and oceans. There were even several European programs that were to use artistic tools in connection with scientific tools precisely in order to conduct various educational campaigns related to seeing water.

Sometimes we have such water blindness (analogous to plant blindness), we stop seeing how important it is. That is why the ability to read water, water literacy is so important. – Also because water in contemporary culture is undergoing something that I would call the mass mediatization of water – added Marianna Michałowska. The threat has been exploited by popular culture and mass media, and the flooded areas have become a tourist attraction, in various dimensions: on the one hand, they are a terrible attraction in a journalistic version (which could be useful, but which also showed how easy it is to turn a tragedy into an image). The disaster has been aestheticized. The process of its popularization began at the end of the 19th century, when controversial postcards showing floods in cities began to be published. At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain collector assessed this phenomenon in such a way that it allowed one to follow images of floods while sitting comfortably in an armchair. That is why a wise educational discourse is so important.

- "Aqua-" is also about finding alternative orders of knowledge that will indicate that what we know is insufficient in relation to what is in our textbooks, what we learn – added Anna Barcz. – For me, aquacriticism is looking through water, observing what is changing in the past and today. Collaboration with hydrologists and historians who are proficient in hydro-infrastructure, hydro-technics, and economic and economic contexts helps me. I have learned a lot from the methodology used in history. I have to systematically check whether the alphabet I use in my research is sufficient to answer two main questions: how do we know this? And what does it change?

Similarly, engaged humanities could push for changing educational content, checking its importance and relevance for us today. Literature and art can also play a reminder role here. Something disturbing is happening to the tissue of memory, because past disasters and crises have not caused any lasting changes in human consciousness. Maybe it would be worth contributing some knowledge about the deep testimonies of culture to the elements, especially during periods of flooding, in order to change the language of thinking and talking about water, and thus also the attitude towards it?

 We also encourage you to deepen your knowledge of the topic and recommend reading/listening to:

• the book by Prof. Marianny Michałowskiej Materia(ł) fotografii. Obrazy środowiska przyrodniczego we współczesnych praktykach wizualnych (https://www.universitas.com.pl/pl/ksiazki/2221-material-fotografii.html)
• the issue of „Przegląd Kulturoznawczy” [ 2 (48)/2021] Błękitna humanistyka (https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/przeglad-kulturoznawczy/numer/numer-2-48-blekitna-humanistyka),
• the issue of „Teksty Drugie” [4/2022] Akwapoetyka i inne krytyki antropocenu (https://tekstydrugie.pl/pl/biblio/akwapoetyka-i-inne-krytyki-antropocenu/),
• the episode of the Pulsar podcast: Podkast 87. Anna Barcz: Mamy obcego w sobie – Pulsar (Anna Barcz as a translator of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence by Timothy Morton),
• the recording of a lecture from the series STAN CZUWANIA (ASP Katowice) with Anną Barcz concerning Rzeki w antropocenie, https://youtu.be/oU-tfvQYU-M?si=9jDeiqdmiyBq67yS (what folk beliefs about rivers, wetlands, marshes and swamps can contribute to the debate on the Anthropocene in terms of producing ecological knowledge),
• the article by A. Berlińska, Ekskursje: Węzeł na Spitsbergenie. Rozmowa z Kubą Bąkowskim, „Dwutygodnik” 2013 nr 113, https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/4684-ekskursje-wezel-na-spitsbergenie.html,
• the article by M. Soporowska, Matka – łódka. Rozmowa z Justyna Streichsbier o projekcie #ODRA, Muzeum Herstorii Sztuki, 1.04.2023, https://muzeumherstoriisztuki.org/2023/04/11/matka-lodka-rozmowa-z-justyna-streichsbier-o-projekcie-odra/,
• the book Estetyka czterech żywiołów, ed. by K. Wilkoszewska, Universitas, Kraków 2002,
• the article by S. Schoedinger, F. Cava, C. Strang, P. Tuddenham, Ocean literacy through science standards, results of October 2004 workshop on ocean literacy, 2005, s. 1–5, DOI:10.1109/OCEANS.2005.1639840,
• and Akwakrytycznego Atlasu Rzeki Wisły (w jęz. ang.), link (Zenodo): Aquacritical Atlas of the River Vistula.

The article was created as part of the project „Polonistyka wobec wyzwań współczesnego świata ", co-financed from the state budget under the program of the Minister of Education and Science called " Nauka dla Społeczeństwa II " (project number: NdS-II/SP/0264/2024/01).