Fig.1 Helmet, Scobie (2023)

How could artists bring the nonhuman witness into discussions about the environmental crisis facing The Wash, Norfolk?

Jane Scobie MA Art and Science, November 2023

Introduction

In this essay I briefly discuss the impact that continuing to view humans as separate to nature is having on earth and The Wash in particular, and why considering humans and nonhumans as having agency is helpful. (Williams 1980, Berry 2006, Morton 2021 and TJ Demos 2016). I discuss the nonhuman witness in relation to The Wash¹, through an analysis of Shela Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) comprehensive paper on witnessing, The Future of the Witness: Nature, Race and More-than-Human Environmental Publics, which explores different theories of witness and methods of witnessing. I explore the role of witness as carer and the rights of the nonhuman (Sheikh 2018) in conjunction with Donna Haraway’s ideas of ‘multi-species environmental justice’ (Haraway 2016 ) and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (Kimmerer 2013) concept of ‘biocentrism’, which offers a framework of reciprocity between humans and nonhumans. I examine the problematics of conferring human attributes of voice and rights on nonhuman actors (Sheikh 2018) and consider the ways to transcend this and allow nonhumans to engage on their own terms through artists interventions drawing on Schuppli’s (Schuppli 2018) concept of the ‘material witness’ and Professor Gabrys (Gabrys 2018) term ‘environmental subject’. Through an examination of the work of two. artists’, Susan Schuppli Cold Rights (2022), Cooking Sections, Climavore Tidal Zone (2016) and my own work, Jane Scobie The Wash (2023) I identify ways artists could bring the nonhuman witness into discussions about the environmental crisis facing The Wash which I use as a site of enquiry for my own practice. The paper draws on knowledge shared by subject experts with deep local knowledge, during ‘walking meetings’ on location during August 2023, as part of the authors residency with Groundwork Gallery, Kings Lynn, on ‘Extraction’. These include Nick Acheson, Norfolk Wild Life Trust Ambassador, Robert Smith, Harbour Master Wells Port and Harry Buscall, owner of Wild Ken Hill Farm. Archival research was also undertaken at Trues Yard, Fisherfolk Museum and the Eastern Sea fisheries Archive in Kings Lynn, as well as relevant literature reviews and participation in Landscapes Decisions Programme Conference 2023, 6-7 September, at The Royal Society.

Fig. 2. Holme beach, Scobie (2023) Still life photograph of Starfish, Horn Wrack and Sea Urchin.

Recognition of the nonhuman

“A communion of subjects not a collection of objects” (Berry 2006 p.17)

The quote above, from the theologian and ecologist Thomas Berry (Berry 2006 p.17) encapsulates the idea of equality between humans and nonhumans and a change in mindset that enables us to see other species as deserving of the same benefits and rights as humans. It also emphasises reciprocity and belonging and conjures up a new way of living within the earths’ ecological resources. The perception that nature is something separate to humankind, a resource to take and manipulate, has put other species and the earth itself at risk. (Williams 1980, Guttari 1989, Latour 2012, Morton 2021). This view has shaped biology, geography, and language. (Moore 2016) argues that the concept of nature was invented by capitalism to control land and indigenous people. This approach to nature is very stark in my site of enquiry The Wash in Norfolk, a land of barriers and embankments. Sea walls, ditches and dikes have continually been built and rebuilt in an attempt to confine, control and channel water and create land for human cultivation and consumption. The Romans were the first to invade The Wash and divert the Great River Ouse for economic gain, in the fifth and sixth centuries the Dutch colonised the land and introduced drainage channels and later wind and steam pumps to turn more salt-water marsh into arable land. (Dymond 1985) Today the whole area between Kings Lynn and Cambridge would be under water were it not for constant engineering interventions which are unrealistic to maintain in the face of predicted sea level rises, new solutions need to be found.

Fig. 3. Map of East Anglia, Climatecentral.org. Areas in red are expected to be under the annual flood level by 2050. Much of this land is at or below sea level already, and will be increasingly difficult to defend.

In Decolonizing Nature (Demos 2016: p.8) TJ Demos argues that “The way we regard nature impacts on how we organise society , assign responsibility for environmental change and assess social impact.” Today, The Wash is still presented as an empty landscape that could be further developed for profit. For example the most recent proposal for a barrage across The Wash is an “11-mile (18km) link between Norfolk and Lincolnshire that would include a road, railway line, hydroelectric power plant and offshore container port.” (BBC 2023), the developers claim that this could be achieved while “preserving the natural habitat” (Center Port 2023), a claim has been challenged by local wildlife organisations.

Like Berry (2006), in Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway (2016) offers a method of expanding our thought processes beyond the human centric view of man. Haraway revels in constant change and evolution, that is not static or stuck in taxonomic structures, but demands that we move freely in thought between species and times. Applying this thinking to The Wash there is a need to find ways to live with the incoming tide and rising sea levels rather than to barricade against it, to ‘live with the trouble’ as Haraway proposes (Haraway 2016). In The Wash this could be achieved by recognising the agency of the sea and its right to expand by returning fresh water grazing marsh to saltmarsh instead of building higher sea walls. Or by implementing Kimmerer’s (Kimmerer 2013) ideas of reciprocity between species, and extending the existing system of shell fish licensing in The Wash that ensures humans don’t extract so much shellfish that they cannot spawn a new generation and that there is plenty available for migratory birds that visit The Wash in the hundreds of thousands each season. “Making odd kin” as Haraway (Haraway 2016, p.2) suggests is a way of moving towards multi species environmental justice – including “justice for all people not only the privileged minority” (Haraway 2016). The post human lens recognises nonhuman agency and the opportunity for humans to learn from and communicate with other species. Timothy Morton (Morton 2021) argues for the possibility of better communication between species and, philosopher Emmanuale Cocci (Cocci 2020) suggests that it is mutual assistance which has enabled all species to evolve, rather than competition between species. How evidence from nonhuman and human species can come together is explored below.

The Wash as a Witness

There is a strong theoretical tradition of witnessing which Sheila Sheikh explores in her paper The future of the Witness: Nature, Race and More-than-human Environmental Publics. (Sheikh 2018). Sheikh begins by exploring Lesley Green’s 2014 paper Ecology, Race, and the Making of Environmental Publics: A Dialogue with Silent Spring in South Africa’ (Green 2014) which identifies the need to create diverse ‘environmental publics’ in post-apartheid South Africa, Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) points out that this need is global as there are many instances where “environmental violence is enacted both against racialised human bodies and against nature” (Sheikh 2018 P.145), thereby entangling human and nonhuman rights. Sheikh describes how invariably “nature is treated as an object, as a resource without voice or rights.” (Sheikh 2018 p146). This resonates with the treatment of The Wash, where years of engineering, has restricted the life of nonhumans, including the sea and species living in it.

Green (Green 2014) notes that in South Africa there is acknowledgement that the environment needs protection but also an unwritten understanding that only a certain type of human can protect it. As Sheikh points out (Sheikh 2018) this situation occurs in many other situations. In The Wash, public access to marshes is stealthily being restricted by conservation organisations for example by taking down or failing to repair foot bridges or sign posts on the marsh and by landowners erecting fences, in the name of protecting nature.²  Voices that are considered un-informed or unscientific are often ignored and the voice of non-humans is almost entirely absent i.e. ‘missing’. Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) uses Greens (Green 2014) analysis to think through “the ‘missing figure’: that of the witness, albeit in an expanded sense, and on a global scale” P. 147. Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) unpacks the term witness taking us on a journey from the witness as a ‘survivor’ or ‘onlooker’ concerned with giving evidence about a single event in the past to “witnessing as an ongoing process that entails the simultaneous witnessing of experiences and representation”. (Sheikh 2018 p.147) Sheikh suggests that ‘environmental publics’ should include both human and nonhuman witnesses, “active witnesses, across the human/nonhuman divide, to present both unfolding environmental degradation and possible more live-able futures.” (Sheikh 2018 P.148).

I have interviewed³ a range of experts; geologists, fishermen, conservationists, farmers etc. with a deep knowledge of The Wash and it is apparent that as human witnesses they draw on and respect the experiential knowledge of the nonhuman actors they engage with, including the tide and other species. For example the harbour master at Wells talks about the sea being ‘trapped in the harbour by the wind causing tidal surges’, the naturalist can describe the new species that now breed in The Wash such as the Egret as a result of climate change and the impact storm damage has on beach erosion ‘the wind scours the embryo dune’. The regenerative farmer discusses the devasting impact of increasing wildfires on fragile habitats ‘home to Turtle Dove and Grasshopper Warbler’. These examples illustrate how the collective action of human and nonhuman witnesses working in the ‘sphere of public opinion’ (Sheikh 2018) is possible and could help grow an ‘environmental public’ capable of imagining alternative ways of responding to the impending rise in sea water, increase in tidal surges and flooding The Wash faces in the near future.

Sheikh explores the role of the witness as carer, drawing on Giovani’s The Care of the Witness (Giovani 2006 in Sheikh 2018) which studies the work of the Non-Governmental Organisation, Medican Sans Frontier. Giovani argues that the witness in humanitarian disasters, registers what is happening, calls powers to account and offers care. Around The Wash this role is assumed by Wildlife Trusts and regenerative farmers and the huge numbers of volunteers that support them. There is the opportunity to increase this caring relationship to other landowners, shifting them to become ‘stewards’ of the land for future generations. The government is moving towards a strategy of ‘managed retreat’ alongside structural sea defences, (Environment Agency 2022) and land owners could revert fresh water marsh to salt water marsh, if they are paid to do so. (Godfray 2023). Salt marsh provides the strongest sea defence to flooding as it slows down the water and removes the energy of the surge. (Crowther et al 2022). Where this has been achieved the relationship between humans and nonhumans has flourished with increased habitats and biodiversity. For example grazing marsh has been turned into freshwater marsh at Wild Ken Hill, a rewilding and regenerative farm on the coast of The Wash. By managing grass heights and water levels, the numbers of nesting Lapwing, Oyster Catcher, Red Shank and Avocet have been increased. The owner (Buscall 2023) recognises that the sea level is rising. “We need to have a naturalistic approach. Our new fresh water marsh may end up as sea marsh, and we might have a fresh water marsh higher up.” “It will be better to let the sea water in slowly so that you can have a slow period of accretion, if you dam it and let it all in at once or it breaches during a surge there will be no biodiversity, just flooding”. (Buscall 2023).

The writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, in The Democracy of the Species (2013) Kimmerer suggests that all species have rights and that recognising the mutual dependency and relationships between humans and other species leads to the protection of shared ecosystems. Noticing and naming other species is an essential form of care (Kimmerer 2013). Haraway (Haraway 2016) makes a similar proposition and argues that by considering kinship relationships, it is easier to visualise the impact that human action, i.e. fishing, dredging and draining has on the ocean and species living in it. Kimmerer argues that we should treat water and mountains as alive not static. Using an example from her language, Potawatomi, (Kimmerer 2013) where, people might say ‘The sea was visiting the bay,’ recognises the agency of the sea. The Wash is fed by four rivers but water is rarely imagined as an active subject that can chose where it goes, although it clearly does as the Wiggenhall Wave, the tidal bore⁴ at Kings Lynn and the Harbour Master at Wells testify. Kimmerer proposes a contract between the human and nonhuman that is built on reciprocity and accountability rather than finance and which allows us to sustainably live within the earth’s ecological limits, this Kimmerer refers to as the “honourable harvest” (Kimmerer 2013, p24). In contrast Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) argues that considering nature as an active participant in environmental publics requires us to go beyond the ‘rights of nature approach’ as this is in itself anthropocentric. Kimmerer (Kimmerer 2013) argues that giving voice is ‘biocentric’ and leads to sustainable cohabitation. Both theorists discuss the link between legal frameworks i.e. quotas designed to tackle local sustainability issues as well as global climate change treaties and conclude that witnessing by caring for others alongside legal frameworks could create a new avenue for public action. In The Wash references to laws and quotas controlling fishing go back to the Elizabethan era, 1558-1603, (Harrod H, in Midgley P. 1987). The laws cover pollution, barriers to navigation and the protection of spawn and young fish. Licensing continues today and the quotas now allow for consumption by key bird species i.e. oyster catcher that rely on mussels and shellfish to survive (IFCA 2017) as well maintaining stock.

Another key avenue explored by Sheikh in her paper is the temporal quality of witnessing, drawing on the writing of Nixon (Nixon 2013) who discusses the ‘slow violence’ that is inflicted on the environment, this is often incremental, for example in The Wash, the loss of saltmarsh or beach due to human induced climate change, and the resulting impact this has on nonhuman species including insects, birds and amphibians, requires an expanded understanding of the environmental witness as a community rather than an individual, capable of monitoring an ongoing accumulation of grievances over time. The constantly changing coastline, sand banks and salt marsh have been mapped over time. From Faden’s Map of Norfolk 1797 (Macnair, 2005) you can see the coast from Lynn to Wells was once enveloped by saltmarsh, almost of all of which has now gone, this is evidence of the ‘slow violence’ being inflicted upon The Wash.

Fig. 4. Detail of Faden’s map of Norfolk 1797, redrawn by Macnair (2005)

Finally, Sheikh explores the work of sociologist Gabrys (Gabrys 2018) who challenges the idea of organisms as individuals, arguing that they must be seen as communities – in relation to one and other. Gabrys proposes the term ‘environmental subjects’ that are “informed by their relation to others and engaged in multispecies world making”. (Gabrys 2018). This brings us back full circle to the views of Kimmerer (Kimmerer 2013) and Berry (Berry 2006) that organisms need to be seen as subjects with different perspectives and as part of a community.

Introduction to art works

In this section I discuss works by two artists who are part of the new group of ‘research architects’ (Fullerton 2019) that are bringing the nonhuman witness into the public domain: Susan Schuppli Cold Rights (2022) and Cooking Sections, Climavore Tidal Zone (2016). Susan Schuppli is a key proponent of the nonhuman witness and through writing and artworks has been exploring ways ‘nature can represent itself’ (Schuppli 2018). Cooking Sections Climavore Tidal Zone (2016) “investigates how to shift cultural, ecology and economy” and explores the relationship between food systems and the climate emergency. Their work is site responsive and coastal so has relevance to The Wash. The authors project The Wash (2023) is critically situated in relation to these artists.

Susan Schuppli, Cold Rights (2022)

Susan Schuppli’s film Cold Rights (Schuppli 2022) is the latest work produced from a multi-year project researching ice from different human and nonhuman perspectives. The film explores how “practices from ice core science and glaciology to indigenous traditions, local observations, activism, policy, and law engage with the situated material conditions of ice”. (Schuppli 2022). In the film Schuppli not only brings the experience of ice to the fore, showing it melting and changing state over time and being consciously destroyed by ice breaker boats, but also shows how the nonhuman witness can be brought directly into contact with the legal system and the arena of public opinion. Ice is presented as a material witness being fractured by Canadian government boats seeking to establish national sovereignty in the changing landscape, without any thought to the ecologies that might be affected by this process. The right of ice to remain cold was argued in a petition served in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by Sheila Watt-Cloutier and 62 Inuit people, it was dismissed. The film illustrates the havoc that climate change is wreaking on ice forms across the globe, including glaciers, sea ice and mountain ice caps. The narrative argues that the “the changing material state of ice has direct consequences for rights-based thinking and action under the accelerated conditions of global warning and the right to be cold is one such provocation.” (Schuppli 2022, 1.48-2.05) The film clearly demonstrates how artists can bring the nonhuman witness into discussions on environmental crisis.

Fig. 6. Cold Rights (2022) Schuppli HD video, colour with stereo sound, 2022, 13:43 mins

In her theoretical writing Schuppli argues that ‘nature represents itself’ (Schuppli 2019) by acting as a material witness. As Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) noted in her essay on the nonhuman witness, attributing human capacities to nonhumans is one of the pitfalls of witnessing. By qualifying the word witness with material, Schuppli avoids this. Schuppli “examines the capacity of nature to register empirically and express environmental change”. In Cold Rights (2022) Schuppli surfaces the contradiction between “practices of care versus breakages and ruin”, on the one hand the Canadian government purports to care for the Artic while at the same time it is breaking the ice. This echo’s Kimmerer’s (Kimmerer 2013) argument that legal frameworks, enacted without ‘care’ do not protect the earth. Schuppli draws our attention to the ‘right of ice’ vs the ‘right to break ice’ and wonders whether legal prohibitions on other disturbed grounds could provide protocols to protect ice in the Artic. The film illustrates how environmental violence enacted both against racialised human bodies and against nature, as discussed by Green (Green 2014 in Sheikh 2018), has happened in the artic. The film shows how in 1956 Inuit communities were forcibly removed from their land and used as ‘slave labour’ by the Canadian military. This section of the film illustrates graphically how the rights of indigenous peoples, who have no power, are so easily taken away; as are the rights of nature. The film goes on to explore other examples where cold, environmental and social justice come together, including an expose of migrants currently crossing the Alps to escape homelands that have been desecrated by climate change. Here the focus is on the human witness and the ice becomes a backdrop rather than a material witness.

Visually the film feels cold, a feeling enhanced by the sound of biting wind in the background and the blue/white tone. The sound of birds is prominent conjuring up a habitat rather than an empty landscape. The overlay of short texts emphasises key message i.e. ‘COLD POLITICS’, ‘demands a CLIMATIC sense of JUSTICE’ and Schuppli makes a wry play on the words with “it’s just ice” and “justice”. The work is significant because it demonstrates that seascapes, including The Wash, devoid of humans are not empty ‘wastelands’, but are living ecosystems.

The film is supported by a wide range of materials that are in the public domain, a research diary Learning from Ice: Notes from the Field (Schuppli 2022) describes Schuppli’s journeys to the Artic and Nepal and meetings on and offline with eminent scientists working on ice. The website describes the research, and collaborations with indigenous communities living in ice. In the film Listening to ice (Schuppli 2021) hydrophones are set up around glaciers in Nepal, although we don’t actually get to hear the sounds which is disappointing, but rather we watch members of local communities ‘sensing the glacier’ during a workshop designed to bring scientific community and local communities into dialogue, it would be interesting to hear their voice and experience. As Schuppli says it is clear that wide and varied out puts are needed to work across ‘modes of knowledge’ and different ‘scales and registers’ are needed to respond meaningfully to the current climate crisis. (Schuppli 2021)

Cooking Sections’ Climavore on Tidal Zones (2016)

Cooking Section (2016) artists Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual, created Climavore on Tidal Zones, a pop-up restaurant in the inter tidal zone at Bayfield, on the Isle of Skye. It serves around 30 people on 8 tables and is an ongoing project. The tables are 14 made from cages used to breed oysters, red cushions are added at low tide that stand out against the bright green hills and chestnut colours of the water and seaweed. When the tide is out politicians, fishermen, residents and scientists populate the benches, their feet dangling in the icy water of the bay. They are offered a range of locally sourced ocean foods – seaweed, oysters, clams and mussels, referred to as ‘ocean cleaners’ and a good source of nutrition and income for humans.

Fig 7. Climavore on Tidal Zones. Cooking Section. (2016) Installation at Bayfield on Isle of Skye

Cooking Sections premise is to find ways for humans to survive against a back drop of changing climatic conditions. This is an anthropocentric view; the oysters and shell fish are not seen as active participants either as a species with rights as Kimmerer (2013) would argue or as witnesses to climate change. Rather Cooking Section is trialling a system of food production for humans, all be it a sustainable system, that promotes human health – the bivalves are filter feeders and can keep the ‘water clean.’ Cooking Section claim “CLIMAVORE is not only about the origin of ingredients, but also about the agency that those ingredients have in providing spatial and infrastructural responses to man-induced climatic events for a certain period of time” (Cooking Section 2016). However, the agency conferred on the nonhuman shellfish is only explored in relation to human needs. For 15 example how much protein they produce, what the profit margin is for the fisherman and restaurant, their capability to filter the water and keep it clean even, how good they taste and in what combination they can be served to best please the human palette.

Cooking Section (2016) argues that shellfish are cultivated without damaging the environment in the way that local salmon farming does. Climavore Tidal Zones, (2016) as an installation and performance does encourage stakeholders to consider the process behind the food they eat and how our eating habitats should change in response to increasing climatic emergencies i.e. flooding, drought. As Izabella Scott (Scott 2021) writes the “artists expose what the food industry tries to camouflage”. Cooking Section are taking the role of the witness on themselves in the way that Non-Governmental Organisations do. (Giovani 2006 in Sheikh 2018). They are not just witnessing, but speaking truth to power and offering care to the wider environment. (Giovani 2006 in Sheikh 2018)

The Climavore Tidal Zone project includes a cooking apprenticeship scheme and the Collective Coast Project. (Cooking Sections 2016) Which presents archival material on a public platform and invites residents to share their experience of living in the intertidal zone aurally and by writing postcards detailing their memories. The research element of their practice is well documented and informative as to how government bodies, the food and fisheries industry set the agenda for what we eat and how it is produced along the coastline. They use a wide range of evidence, sources and approaches to build human ‘environmental publics’ and imagine new futures in a site responsive setting similar to The Wash and offer an instructive example of a multi-dimensional arts intervention.

Jane Scobie The Wash (2023)

As an artist-researcher my practice explores ways that nonhumans can engage with environmental debates as part of broad ‘environmental publics’ (Green 2014 in Sheikh 2018), using The Wash in Norfolk as a site of enquiry. My methodology involves field work on the beach, walking interviews with subject specialists⁵ and creating works off site as well as historical and geological research. As Haraway says “Alone and separate in our expertise we cannot solve problems, new collaborations are needed between disciplines, cultures and species to find equilibrium” (Haraway 2017). Haraway is suggesting we need to collaborate across disciplines to tackle climate change. Taking The Wash as my site of enquiry I have engaged with others working here, biologists, conservationists, farmers and fishermen and I explore some of the different methodologies use by these professions. For example I have studied the marine invertebrates under a microscope and I bring these findings into my work. I also investigate how The Wash can be a nonhuman or ‘material witness’ to climate change in its own right and how the ‘strandline’ is evidence of ‘nature writing itself’ (Schuppli 2022).

The strandline is the point at which the sea runs out of energy and drops its residue, the species and debris it has been carrying, this is where ‘nature writes itself’, this line is redrawn twice daily as the moon pulls up the tide until the sea retreats, it is sometimes straight but often meanders. There is both urgency and opportunity at the strandline.⁶  It is here where conditions are most abrasive that we can learn from nonhuman witnesses to ‘Stay with the Trouble’ (Haraway 2016) and embrace the change. The beach is also a place where the human inhabitants, families, dogwalkers, birdwatchers, walkers etc. of The Wash congregate to “know the world as a neighbourhood of nonhuman residents” (Kimmerer 2013 P.18). Here people, as beach combers, bird watchers, walkers fishermen are actively paying attention to the ‘entanglements’ between humans and non-humans described by Haraway (Haraway 2016). The beach therefore offer an opportunity build the ‘environmental publics’ (Green 2014), necessary to deliver ‘multi-species climate justice’ (Haraway 2016).

By collecting evidence or ‘depositions’⁷  from the strandline and depositing these in the 17 public domain through my sculptures, my practice is both witnessing change in The Wash and using The Wash as a methodology to make artistic decisions. Both the composition of species and debris, peat iron, shells and so on, on the strandline and the changing position of the strandline, as the coast erodes in some places and accretes or builds in others, offer evidence of sea level and temperature rises. The frequency of storm surges is evidenced by the debris left on the beach, after a storm this could include thousands of starfish or sea urchins, piles of lemony horn wrack, a community of tiny animals that looks like seaweed. The range of residue left at high water mark is witness to the community of nonhumans living in the sea, the changes in composition over time, the increase in jelly fish for example, provide ‘material witness’ or ‘bioindicators’ of storms and temperature rise caused by climate change.⁸

Helmet, Hood, Mask, Jane Scobie (2023)

Fig. 8.  Helmet, Hood, Mask. Scobie (2023). Installation at Ground Work Gallery, Kings Lynn. Ocean species from Holme beach, wire, latex and microscopic detail, of Horn Wrack and Sea Urchin, enlarged and printed on organdie. 220 x 200 x 45 cm

Helmet is constructed from residue found on the strandline at the beach at Holme. It is a biological assemblage, a witness to the community of species living in the sea just beyond the shoreline and a ‘material witness’ to the effects of climate change. The Helmet is lined with fabric printed with enlarged microscopic images of Horn Wrack. In some installations, a sound work Sea Urchin a Life is played inside Helmet which includes a narrative on the sea urchin/human relationship, from the perspective of the urchin, as well as the chorus of sea urchins as they move across the rocks. The aim is to ‘interpret testimony’ (Forensic Architecture 2014 in Sheikh 2018) and imagine the relationship through the lens of the urchin, bringing this into the public realm as Sheikh (Sheikh 2018) notes is arguable better than ‘staying silent’, and including the chorus of the sea urchins allows us to hear their voice.

The two other wearable sculptures present the strandline in other ways, Hood is a still life of three regularly recurring species; Common Starfish, Green Sea Urchin and Horn Wrack. Starfish and Urchins feature in human mythology and folklore, Starfish as symbols of regeneration and Sea Urchins as thunderbolts. Horn Wrack is a reoccurring motif in my work, symbolising a community living within the earth’s ecological boundaries, it looks like seaweed but is actually a Bryozoan, a colony of individual tongue shaped animals known as zooids. These live as a community relying on one another for protection, food and to reproduce. They filter feed on phytoplankton and have special feeding limbs called lophophore covered by a crown of hairy tentacles. As Schuppli (2020) marvels at the beauty and complicated qualities and connections contained in ice, I consider what the mussel or horn wrack can teach us about the relationships we have with nonhumans and how we label other species, for example as invasive, as discussed below.

Mask is a balaclava made from latex casts of species found on The Wash, it envelopes the wearer and references both the idea of ‘invasive species’ in human terms and the violence of human action on The Wash, with a nod to the political resistance and performative work of Guerrilla Girls (Guerrilla Girls 1985). Humans label some species such as sea urchins ‘invasive’, for example when populations explode because of increases in sea temperature and/or a decrease in natural predators, both of which are driven by human action. This is the environmental violence described by Shela Sheikh as ‘slow violence’ that is “uncapturable – an event that spills over into the future, yet to fully run its course” (Sheikh 2018 p155).

Tentacle Jane Scobie (2023)

Fig. 9. Tentacle. Scobie (2023) Organdie, milk casein, sand, wood, recycled wool. 30 x 36 x 110 cm

Tentacle (2023) is made from microscopic images of sea urchin test, collected from the strandline, enlarged and printed onto fabric made from milk casein, an environmentally sustainable fabric. The forms reflect the many different ‘cilia’ or ‘feet’ sea urchins have, each one with a different purpose. (Painleve 1954). The colours are evocative of the nonhuman world and the work aims to be enigmatic and tactile and to manifest sea urchins in the gallery. In a sense this is an interpretation of the agency of urchins, their resilience and extraordinary adaptive ability. Some of Tentacle is filled with sand or painted with latex making them appear slimy. Other parts are stuffed with recycled sheep wool and wood so they stand upright. The works were installed Ground Work Gallery⁹, Kings Lynn (August – December 2023).

Areas for future research and development

Through my research on The Wash and my analysis of the nonhuman witness and some of the artists working with these theories I can see a number of ways that The Wash can represent itself in addition to the strandline. These include investigating the changes in the coastline over time; the historical and legal relationship between shell fish, particularly mussels and people; and sound as a possible bioindicator of ocean health. This work could extend to using ‘material evidence’ to explore ‘environmental peace’ as well as environmental violence. In her Manifesto for Maintance Art, 1969! Mierle Laderman Ukeles (Ukeles 1969) proposes carrying out ‘Earth Maintenance’ in a museum setting – proposing that containers of polluted soil, air, water etc could be purified each day. Referencing this work in her essay Practices of Earth Maintenance against the Deficit of Agency Angela Dimitrakaki (Dimitrakaki 2023) argues that “maintenance is engaged reason that queries irrational development”. This prompts the possibility that nonhuman witnesses can demonstrate climate justice as well as injustice, for example through material evidence of salt marsh or soil health demonstrated for example by increases in biodiversity. Investigating further the relationship between witnessing, co-belonging and gender, could be a proposition for future research.

Conclusion

The theoretical debates discussed above suggest a variety of ways that artists could bring the nonhuman witness into discussions about the environmental crisis facing The Wash. These are summarised below.

Present the nonhuman witness – The nonhuman witness can register changes in 22 environmental conditions which the artist can present. Schuppli (Schuppli 2020) presents the changing state of ice as ‘material witness’, Scobie presents beach residue as ‘material witness’ and offers suggestions including mapping of coastline/high water line and deterioration of saltmarsh as well as sound as areas for future enquiry.

Connect the agency and rights of the nonhuman to legal frameworks– Schuppli, connects the ice witness to legal framework of rights and ‘just ice’. Cooking Sections interventions have engaged with the fishing, restaurant and shell fish industry as well as community organisations. Scobie has explored the mussel/human history and identified entry points in the quota/legal system for multi-species justice.

Create opportunities for co-witnessing between humans and nonhumans to build ‘environmental publics’. Cold Rights (2022) and Climavore Tidal Zones (2016) are part of long-term projects established over a number years, they effectively use research platforms, community engagement and performative installations to engage with a range of stakeholders and these audiences can become new environmental publics. With The Wash (2023) this is an area for development.

Challenge power relationships behind environmental violence i.e. impacts of colonialism, racism, gender and class. Schuppli exposes how environmental violence is enacted both against racialised human bodies and against nature. Both Schuppli and Cooking Section seek to bringing different stakeholders together to find common ground for just transformations in local land use decisions. Excavating the history e.g. of the salt marsh or the mussel could help uncover power relationships in The Wash. Future work around who has the right to join the conversation on environmental responses, exploring multi species engagement and land stewardship in The Wash could also be promising lines of enquiry.

………………………….

Appendix

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my thanks to the following nonhuman and human experts whose knowledge of The Wash enabled me to write this essay. The inhabitants of Holme Beach; Nick Acheson, Norfolk Wild Life Trust Ambassador; Robert Smith, Harbour Master Wells Port; Harry Buscall, owner of Wild Ken Hill Farm. Veronica Sekules, Director Ground Work Gallery, Lindsey Bavin, Trues Yard, Fisherfolk Museum and the Eastern Sea fisheries Archive in Kings Lynn and my tutor Francisco Gallardo for valuable direction and encouragement.

Bibliography

Acheson, N. (2023) The Meaning of Geese.( p.1) London: Chelsea Green

Berry, T. (2006) Evening Thoughts. (p.17). Counterpoint.

Buscall, H. (2023) conversation with Jane Scobie, 18 August

Carson, R. (1951) The Edge of the Sea. (p.xi) Oxford University Press

Centre Port (2023) The World’s first tidal powered deep sea Container Terminal [website] Available at: https://www.centreport.uk/#about (Accessed on September 2 2023)

Coccia, E. (2020) Wooden Life in Formafantasma Cambio, Serpentine Galleries, Koenig books

Cooking Section (2016) Climavore on Tidal Zone [Website] Available at: https://www.climavore.org/seasons/on-tidal-zones/ (Accessed on 5 August 2023)

Crone, B. Nightingale, S. and Stanton, P. (2022) Fieldwork for Future Ecologies Onomatopee 225

Crowther, L. Gilroy, J. Salliss, D. Hawkes, R. Dolman, P. (2022) Biodiversity Audit of the Norfolk Coast, Norwich, University of East Anglia

Demos, TJ. (2016) Decolinizing Nature, Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Berlin: Sternberg Press

Demos, TJ. (2020) Beyond the End of the World Sonic Acts Academy [Lecture] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgPCDYTUOfk (Accessed on: July 20 2023)

Dimitrakaki, A (2023) Practices of Earth Maintenance against the Defecit of Agency in RE/SISTERS (2023) ed. Pardo, A. Barbican London

Dymond, D. (1985) The Norfolk Landscape. London. Hodder and Stoughton

Environment Agency (2022) National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England, Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/920944/023_15482_Environment_agency_digitalAW_Strategy.pdf (Accessed: September 1 2023)

Fullerton, E. (2019) Political, forensic, hi-tech: how ‘research architecture” is redefining art,’ Guardian 6 January Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jan/06/research-architecture redefining-art-goldsmiths-london (Accessed on July 23 2023)

Gabrys, J. (2018) Sensing Lichens: From Ecological Microcosms to Environmental Subjects, Third Text 151, 32, 2, Spring 2018, 350–367.

Givoni, M. (2016). The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crises (Human Rights in History). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Godfray, C. (2023) Multifunctional landscapes: Informing a long-term vision for managing the UK’s land. London, The Royal Society

Green, L. (2014) Ecology, Race, and the Making of Environmental Publics: A Dialogue with Silent Spring in South Africa Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 2014, (Article) Published by University of Nebraska Press

Guerrilla Girls (1985) Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls-6858 (Accessed on 8 November 2023)

Guattari, F. (2000) The Three Ecologies, 1st English edition, translated by Pindar, I and Sutton, P. London: Athlone Press

Haraway D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Durham, Duke University Press

Haraway, D. (2017) Staying with the Trouble [Lecture, San Francisco Art Institute] Available at: https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=AB5stBinQMF1GJE8rAcxNp6224Io4WmHXg:168976 1863124&q=donna+haraway&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ0-y8xZqAAxWCiFwKHe NBxEQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=927&bih=653&dpr=1#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:0df37d9e,vid:GrYA7s MQaBQ (Accessed on July 20 2023)

Harrod, H. (1874) Report on the Deeds and Records of Kings Lynn. Kings Lynn. Thew and Son

Hillen, H. (1907) History of Kings Lynn. Norwich, East of England Newspaper Co.

IFCA (2017) Cockle Fisheries Management Plan. Kings Lynn. Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority

Kimmerer, R. (2013) The Democracy of Species. London: Penguin

Latour, B. (2012) The politics of nature, Harvard University Press

Macnair, A .(2005) Faden’s Map of Norfolk. Available at: http://www.fadensmapofnorfolk.co.uk/index.asp (Accessed:1 July 2023)

Met Office (2023) UKCP18 Factsheet: Sea-level rise and storm surge – supplementary data. Available at: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/research/ukcp/ ukcp18_factsheet_sea_level_rise_storm_surge_supp_data_mar23.pdf (Accessed on: September 10 2023)

Moore, J. (2016) Anthropocene or Capitalocene? [Discussion] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvtdkZhT1yw (Accessed on 15 July 2023)

Morton T. (2010) Ecology without Nature, MA Harvard University Press

Morton T. (2021) All art is ecological [Podcast] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMrrcyNT7Zo (Accessed on: August 13 2023)

Nixon, R. (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor Harvard

Painleve, J. (1954) Sea Urchins on [Film, Science is Fiction], BFI, London

Schuppli, S. (2022) Cold Rights [Film and research platform] Available at: https://susanschuppli.com/COLD-RIGHTS (Accessed on November 1 2023)

Schuppli, S. (2019) Nature Represents Itself Available at: https://susanschuppli.com/NATURE-REPRESENTS-ITSELF (Accessed on 8 November 2023)

Schuppli, S (2021) Listening to Ice [Research Platform] Available at: https://listening-to ice.org/about Accessed on 2 November 2023)

Schuppli, S. (2022) Learning from Ice: Notes from the Field in Crone, B. et al. Fieldwork for Future Ecologies. Onomatapee 225

Scott, I. (2021) Cooking Sections Artforum Vol.59. Iss.8 April, New York.

Sennitt O, Bennett J and & Gordon-Farleigh N. (2023) The Wash: Tidal barrage plans criticised over wildlife impact BBC 6 November 2023. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-67321119 (Accessed on November 8 2023)

Sheikh, Shela. (2018). The Future of the Witness: Nature, Race and More-than-Human Environmental Publics. Kronos

Tapper, J. (2023) Norfolk villagers and National Trust at loggerheads over ‘fairy bridge’ that appeared in the night The Guardian 28 October 2023. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/28/norfolk-marsh-bridge-national-trust (Accessed on November 8 2023)

Ukeles LM, (1969) Manifesto for Maintenace Art 1969! Available at: https://queensmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ukeles-Manifesto-for Maintenance-Art-1969.pdf (Accessed on: 4 November 2023)

Williams, R. (1980), Ideas of Nature in Problems in Materialism and Culture, Verso

………………………..

Walking on the Strandline at Holme

Fig. 9. Scobie (2023) Evidence of nonhumans found at Holme Beach, cast in plaster, porcelain and resin.

Heart Urchin

I find a tiny fragile heart urchin, the size of a hen’s egg, pale grey white and hairy with minute holes where the spines and feet were attached. Fossil heart urchins were treasured by Anglo Saxon warriors, buried in their graves, they were thought to be thunderbolts. Like many invertebrates they spawn only at full moon. I imagine a system of interplanetary ecology going back and forward in time. Twice daily the sea is pulled by the moon up to the strand line, here it loses energy and drops the debris it has been carrying. Luckily today it dropped a heart.

Green Sea Urchin

This afternoon I meet a green sea urchin who told me their story. “We feed at night creating a chorus like fireworks at dusk and dawn, we grind and crunch across the rocks, clicking our spines. Can you hear us? Through my nerve ring I can detect touch, chemicals and light across the whole of my body. As I move my fluids resonate within my exoskeleton creating our song. When I was born, in my larval stage, I floated in the ocean following the chorus of my clan to establish a permanent place to settle. I have five sharp teeth to grind over rocks and fleshy lips to suck up algae. My powerful chewing apparatus can both scrape and engulf and this grabbing device has been extensively copied by humans developing robotics.”

Horn Wrack

Piles of beige Horn Wrack, with papery branches smelling of fresh lemons. It looks like seaweed but is actually a Bryozoan. A colony of individual tongue shaped animals known as zooids. These live as a community relying on one another for protection, food and to reproduce. They filter feed on phytoplankton and have special feeding limbs called lophophore covered by a crown of hairy tentacles. I imagine we could learn from Horn Wrack how to live simply and equitable, reproducing when resources are plentiful and sharing the work needed to thrive.

Fig. 10. Horn Wrack. Scobie (2023). Horn Wrack from Holme beach, stitched onto fabric, microscopic detail enlarged, to 50 and 500 microns.

Starfish

Today the beach is transformed into an earthly milky way. A storm has left a carpet of a thousand starfish on the sand. Historically starfish are an emblem of salvation. In Surrealist art (1920-1960) Starfish often featured as magical, uncanny beings that, evoke dream worlds. (Eileen Agar, Marine Object, 1939, Joan Miro The Reaper, 1937). The power from the ocean and the stars seems to connect, continually re-generating and revitalising.

Flint

I pick up a weighty softly contoured stone with seven nodules, like fingers, covered with a white exterior of chalk. This flint is an ancient sponge that once lived in the shallow tropical sea that covered North Norfolk 60-100 million years ago. The interior is grey, glass-like silica, it chimes when struck and can be knapped to make the intricate shapes and galletes that adorn local churches. The fields are alive with stone age flint arrows and axes. In Tudor times flint was used to ignite gunpowder in muskets. In 2022, wild fires started by a ploughs striking against field flint raged in the area destroying the habitats of animals, plants and humans.

Samphire

Stubby, bright green shoots of glass wort, take hold in the mud. Samphire is the first higher plant to colonise salt marsh and encourage growth of other plants in the middle marsh. It can survive being submerged twice daily in briny sea water. In the middle of the 20th century it was collected as a staple vegetable, today it is sold to smart restaurants in London.

Marron Grass

On shore winds and high tides continually change the beach carrying, rolling, pushing and picking up the sand. Little grows on the beach but where the energy drops sufficiently a few plants take hold creating an embryo dune and just enough stability for Marron grass to take hold. It can grow 30 m through the sand as dunes build. Literally pinning the soil down, it sequesters carbon and holds water. Changing the sand and minerals into organic matter.

…………………………..

1. The Wash is a tidal embayment, 30 miles long and 20 miles wide, a recess in the coastline of East Anglia where fresh and salt water mix. The sediment is constantly moving and the area is highly susceptible to flooding
2. Authors conversation with Harbour Master at Wells (2023) and The Guardian (2023)
3. See Acknowledgements in the Appendices for a list of those interviewed
4. A bore tide is a strong tide that pushes up the river, against the current, in Kings Lynn it can be up to a 1m high and reach the Great River Ouse at Wiggenhall, 11km away.
5. For this project I spent time with the Harbour Master, a naturalist working for Norfolk Wild Life Trust and a regenerative farmer whose land meets the sea at Holme, see acknowledgements for further details.
6. In The Edge of the Sea Rachel Carson, p.xi (1951) describes the strand line as “a world that is as old as the earth itself – the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise, conflict and eternal change,” and goes on to describe the adaption and resilience of species living in the intertidal zone.
7. Deposition – In legal terms depositions are written statements of witnesses taken before a magistrate or other judicial authority, in geography a deposition is the laying down of sediment carried by wind, flowing water, the sea or ice.
8. See Appendix ‘Walking on the Strandline” for description of what you might find at Holme, Norfolk
9. Ground Work gallery dedicated to art and environment. It shows the work of contemporary artists who care about how we see the world. Exhibitions and creative programmes explore how art can enable us to respond to the changing environment and imagine how we can shape its future. https://www.groundworkgallery.com/about/

……………………………………………..

Art, Creativity, Ecology, Environment, Nature