Dear wasteland, I bet you are no wasted land

The type of ending indicates the kind of story. By having victory as the culmination of the story (for example the landing on the moon), it implies that the story is that of tragedy.  

If we look back to pickers and carriers as in contrast to hunters, according to U. K. Le Guin, we find a story without a victory, even an end. Instead – a story of continuum, of process. 

By calling it a wasteland – waste land, I assume that the story I tell is one of value or worth. What other stories does it carry if I find another name?

Dear wasteland,

I bet you are no wasted land.  You are no landscape either. In a way you are what happens after the landscape. Perhaps your name is Happened-land? Before I find your name, I will try to find you. Your language is very curious, with sounds of silence and sentences of absence. I like the ending of your story, it feels like a beginning too. 

To give you voice, I will try to translate your words. 

Dictionary of wastelands

OWNERSHIP

What kind of entities claim ownership over you? 

Private individuals; private companies; NGOs; public authorities – the city, the region; everyone – no one.

multiplicity // singularity of ownerships

STATUS (QUO)

The unclear speculative future, development plans and subject to administrative status of zoning policies juxtaposed by the present state – lack of defined “function”, abandoned. 

undetermined // regulated

INVISIBILITY

Usually hidden behind walls, fenced off, seemingly someone’s, signed to keep off, banned from entering. Subject to economic activities that are not self-evident. 

physical // mental barriers

FAILURESHIP 

What makes one abandon you?

/ privatization, the lost sense of responsibility, broken collective memory of belonging

/ saturation of function, contamination, no longer possible to use, high expenses of cleaning and restoring the nutritional value

/ cease or change of ownership, e.g. due to bankruptcy of a company  

/ unforeseen conditions during construction site, e.g.  archeological uncovering or penetration of watertable that render proceeding to be economically unviable

Situated within a healthy social climate, you prove wrong the capitalistic notion of waste. Different entities and systems of organism find shelter within you and expand the urban milieu. Learning from Brussels, I can no longer call you wasteland. I can only ask myself – what feels like a wasteland though pretends not to be one?

Secretly wasteland

If one thinks about wastelands as a product of acceleration and efficiency/profit driven urban development, the notion goes beyond material terms. The development of more efficient infrastructure like highways and high-speed train connections, not to mention the flights, casts a shadow of influence not only on its surroundings, but also on its own history. During my trip to Japan, in particular the journey to and through the island Shikoku, I met an abundance of ghosts of efficiency. The ferry port in Tokyo, once ready to host masses of people, gets to greet no more than ten passengers per route. In the meantime, empty chairs remain waiting.

Already in the 13^th century, Opicinus de Canistris, a mystic and a priest, in attempt to document and hence to understand the world invoked layers of mythology and cosmology to fill in the gaps of empirical knowledge. Within the technocracy our milieu is embedded, we struggle to open up to the imaginary to recognize things that go beyond our immediate reality. 

Accordingly, the concept of a wasteland constitutes physical geographies that go behind the collective imaginary. (non-) Places that are ‘forgotten’, mostly due to urbanization processes that render these areas to logistical and extraction hinterlands. 

In this sense, the Baltic Sea, subject to heavy water urbanism, is a perfect example of how a part of (cultural) landscape is erased from the mind and becomes only a backdrop to resort culture, touristic destination for vacations. It is territory that belongs to everyone and therefore to no one. “The sea is a shared materiality, an infrastructural site, and a persistent realm of connectivity.”¹ Even though this waterbody serves as the biggest common the countries around it share, it is not treated as one. “As is the case with terrestrial planning, maritime planning involves both the public and a series of institutions. Unlike the land, the sea is publicly owned, which means that the public have greater opportunities to influence decisions that relate to the management of the sea.”² To help to do so, I raise a question – what if we treated the sea as land and land as the sea?

1.  Couling Nancy, “Nine Principles of Urbanization in the Baltic Sea” in “the Baltic Atlas” (Sternberg Press, 2016), pp. 172-180.
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2. Ušča Jānis, “The Baltic Sea: Our Collective Resource” in “the Baltic Atlas” (Sternberg Press, 2016), pp. 156-159. ↩︎

When it comes to international waters, the legislation that applies is only provisional, therefore largely ignored by companies and governments, turning the seascape into a negative common and potentially into an actual ecological wasteland. To what extent is the Baltic Sea already a mental wasteland and what are the actors/activities that bring the relation to this water body further away from the public imaginary? Who are the ghosts that inhabit the Baltic waters?