Duncan, Ifor. 2021. Hydrology of the Powerless. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/29967/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] HYDROLOGY OF THE POWERLESS Ifor Duncan Submitted To Goldsmiths, University Of London As Required For The Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy Centre for Research Architecture Department of Visual Cultures Date: 30 September 2019 1 Declaration of Authorship I ____Ifor Duncan_______ hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented is largely my own but also contains research co-produced with colleague Stefanos Levidis, PhD Candidate (CRA). This is restricted to Part I: Fluvial Frontier. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ________ ______________ Date: 30/09/2019 2 Acknowledgements Firstly, I want to thank my supervisors Susan Schuppli and Ayesha Hameed for their continued support and insight, and for the inspiration I take from their research and profound practices. I would also like to thank Astrid Schmetterling, with whom I started this process, for her generosity and kindness. I would also like to thank the staff of Visual Cultures and CRA for all of their help and guidance over the years, as well my upgrade examiners Shela Sheikh and Richard Crownshaw. Outside Goldsmiths I would like to thank Astrida Neimanis for the rich and productive conversation we were able to have in October 2018 during the Round Table I organised on Submergence, and Carolina Caycedo for the inspirational conversation we had in 2019 and for your courageous activist practice. My friends and colleagues at the Centre for Research Architecture have been an invaluable and ongoing source of support and motivation. I thank you for sharing your own brave and innovative work: João Prates Ruivo, Hannah Meszaros Martin, Helene Kazan, Mirna Pedalo, Ariel Caine, Dele Adeyemo, Lorenzo Pezzani, Henry Bradley, Sophie Dyer, Solveig Suess, Blanca Pujals, Ariadna Serrahima, Elena Solis, Riccardo Badano and many many more. I couldn’t think of a better person to share all of those bleary-eyed morning coffees in the final stages of write up than David Burns. I want to reserve special thanks to Daniel Mann for his valued insight and conversation, and to Sofia and Stefanos for those Halcyon days in the field in Greece and hopefully more still to come. In Visual Cultures I thank Aimar Arriola and Sarah Charalambides for… well, being the cavalry when it was needed. Elsewhere at Goldsmiths: Sasha Litvintseva (for the animal videos), Annie Goh, Sandra Kazlauskaitė, Alex Coupe, Roberto Mozzachiodi and Peter Rees. Beyond Goldsmiths, I want to thank Geronimo Sarmiento Cruz and Nathaniel Barron, and all my other wonderful and joyous friends at home and abroad. I also want to thank Nile Davies for his ongoing care. This research would not have been possible without the rivers I have lived in, above and with. So, I want to acknowledge the Thames, and the waters of the buried Effra, above which I was born and grew up, and have made their way into my dreams. I also want to thank the aquatic road names of Brixton partly responsible for my fascination with present and absent waters: Atlantic, Walcott, Electric, Coldharbour. Likewise, the lyrical rivers of west Wales have greatly influenced my thinking, especially, the Cych where I have spent so much time, and is said to harbor an entrance to the underworld. These acknowledgements would not be complete, however, without giving appreciation to the Evros / Meriç / Maritsa; the Cauca; and the Wisła, Soła, and Przemsza rivers and the communities who live with them, and those lost within their flows. May you flow in fairer times. I want reserve special thanks for my family: Stephen, Marilyn, Bobby and Gabby. Without their love and unconditional support none of this would be possible (I also want to acknowledge the remarkable Snowy Bachgen who at 18 has seen me this far). This is dedicated to my grandmother Beata Duncan (née Rehfisch), or just “Lala,” who we lost at the beginning of this process but who will always be with me in everything I do. Finally, this is also to Lilli, Toni, Paul & Eve-Marie Stadthagen, whom I will always remember. 3 Abstract This PhD project identifies the complex imbrications of political and environmental violence resulting in patterns of human bodies and remains washing up on the shores of three rivers. It seeks to demonstrate that, contrary to common abstractions and universalisations of water as empty and neutral, the materiality and fluvial processes of rivers are highly engineered and even weaponised. Part I, co-researched with colleague Stefanos Levidis (CRA), considers the Evros / Meriç / Maritsa river between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria as a Fluvial Frontier weighted with riverine crossings and systematic illegal pushbacks at the border of the EU. Part II explores the condition of Fluvial Terror on the Cauca river in Colombia, where the dispossessions of local communities, through extractive processes, are further compounded by the obfuscation of paramilitary violence within the reservoir of the Hidroituango megadam. Part III reads the mobilisation of the confluence of the Wisła, Soła and Przemsza rivers, Poland, as a technology in the obfuscation of traces from the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and IG Farben chemical factory, as well as contemporary anthropogenic pollutants. In each case power organises, and is organised around, specific fluvial processes and hydrologic properties to disperse the causal agencies of violence enacted against subjugated and disempowered communities. Incorporating visual culture, testimony, field notes and hydrophonic soundings I employ a methodology that reads rivers across a multi-scalar spectrum from flood to drought, and from entire river catchments to the particulate scale of processes of saltation, accretion and erosion. This thesis, consequently, offers an alternative conceptualisation of rivers as complex and dynamic archives that resist attempts to erase acts of state and non-state violence, and instead continue to narrate and mediate the stories and traces of those who have been lost. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 TRIBUTARIES 6 INTRODUCTION 12 PART I: FLUVIAL FRONTIER: THE EVROS / MERIÇ / MARITSA 50 RIVER BORDER REGIME I.i Arcifinious: ‘Fit To Keep The Enemy Out’ Or De‘Natural’ising Borders 64 I.ii Sounding The Border in Becoming: A Practice Note 86 I.iii Transboundary Waters 95 I.iv Accretion & Avulsion 106 PART II: FLUVIAL TERROR: THE HIDROITUANGO MEGADAM 117 AND THE CAUCA RIVER II.i Waterborne Terror / Necro-Hydrology 129 II.ii Funerary Hydrology 135 II.iii Extracting the “Alimientos Para La Vida” 146 PART III: FLUVIAL TRACE: THE WISŁA, SOŁA, PRZEMSZA 166 RIVERS AS SOLVENT TRACE III.i Ash And Sediment 179 III.ii They Are Also In The Rivers 196 III.iii Heavy Rivers 206 THESIS CONCLUSION 223 APPENDIX I : Evros fieldwork. 246 APPENDIX II : Evros field recordings and photography 263 APPENDIX III : Image relating part II & fieldwork from part III. 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 272 5 TRIBUTARIES CASE STUDY 1: EVROS / MERIÇ / MARITSA Figure 1 The Graveyard at Sidiro (Ifor Duncan and Stefanos Levidis). It was early evening when we1 arrived at the “Cemetery for Illegal Aliens”2: a fenced area overlooking the village of Sidiro. The cemetery is no longer in use due to claims that unidentified people seeking asylum have been buried in mass graves here. On the day of our visit in February 2019 six empty graves were still flooded by winter rainwater. Border crossings increase between April when the Evros / Meriç / Maritsa’s spring floods recede and November when temperatures drop to between 7 and -1°c.3 After the floods bodies of border crossers re-emerge from the river amongst the sediment banks and islands of the delta, where the Evros / Meriç / Maritsa empties into the Aegean. The still water in the empty graves at Sidiro contributes to a mournful atmosphere and remain as unintentional memorials to those 1 “We” refers to myself and my collaborator Stefanos Levidis, PhD candidate (CRA), with whom Part I of this thesis is co-researched. Sidiro is 20 km drive west from the old silk town of Soufli in Evros prefecture. 2 “Illegal aliens” is a loose translation of the term lathrometanastes, a derogatory term used by xenophobic discourse to describe illegalized migrants. The use of the term was banned by law in 2018 but is still used widely, including from state officials. 3 Andreas Matzarakis, ‘Climate And Bioclimate Information For Tourism – The Example Of Evros Prefecture,’ in A. Matzarakis, C. R. de Freitas, D. Scott (eds.) Developments in Tourism Climatology (Commission on Climate, Tourism and Recreation, International Society of Biometeorology, 2007), p.14. 6 buried close by, those still submerged and yet to surface, and those continuing to cross the turbulent currents of the river. Contemplating these currents at the border I tape my hydrophones to a Y-shaped branch and place them into the still and silent water (see Figure 12). (See USB key appendix. Also available at: https://soundcloud.com/ifor-duncan/sidiro-grave- hydrophone-recording/s-HcL4f) 7 CASE STUDY 2: CAUCA Figure 2 Water Hyacinth growth (between February and July) on the surface of the Hidroituango reservoir near the town of Sabanalarga, Antioquia province, Colombia. Landsat 8 (band combination: 4-3-2) (17/07/2019) (Ifor Duncan).