8 October 2024
DocTalks x MoMA
Session 8
DocTalks x MoMA
Session 8
On the border: A story of river commons
STEFANO TORNIERI
Luleå University of Technology
Respondent: Elise Hunchuck, Columbia University

Synchronic Collage of Fishing Landscape in Kukkola, Sweden. Collage by S.Tornieri.
The impact of contemporary megasystems and heavy resource extractions on extreme and marginalized territories can indeed have significant social, economic, and environmental consequences, often disproportionately affecting small communities. Are we losing those stories? Are we losing an essential way of life?
Throughout history, small village communities in the Arctic have developed several strategies to ensure their survival. Along the Torne River, on the border between Sweden and Finland, some fishing communities have produced specific architectures, landscapes, and social strategies to support their communities and survive for centuries. In the villages of Kukkola and Korpikylä, communities developed a distinct fishing system, which became known as dipnetting. Characterized by a single person fishing from the shore or off of specially constructed piers, dipnetting is a traditional, resource-sparse technique. Environmentally-friendly techniques have developed on the spot and remained unchanged for long, as described since the 20th century by the Finnish ethnologist T. Sirelius (Sirelius, 1906) who documented the fishing activity and the construction of several wooden piers at specific points of the riverbanks called Krenkku. This temporary structure is human-buildable and demountable, made from local wood and constructed every fishing season by the old builders. During the fishing season, the locals organize activities related to fishing such as building wooden piers, maintaining and repairing traditional village buildings, organizing fishing rounds and organizing the sharing events each evening during the whitefish season. During the whitefish season, from June to mid-September, the shift between fishermen during the day is organized by an informal meeting that occurs every day at 6PM near the river. During this event, considered a daily ceremony, the catch from the past 24 hours is shared between farmers. The community is still present today but depopulation, aging, climate change, and the expansion of the extraction industry are threatening these villages.
***
Yam Economies and Settler Improvement across Whadjuk Noongar Country
SEAN THOMAS TYLER
Estonian Academy of Arts
Respondent: Isabel Rodríguez de la Rosa, Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid

Part of the west coast of Australia, surveyed by the officers of H.M.S. Beagle [cartographic material] : with Captn. J. Lort Stokes' route into the interior Decr. 1841 / J. Arrowsmith
.
Today, stretching over 160 kilometres of Whadjuk Noongar Country in South-Western Australia, is the self-proclaimed longest city in the world, Perth. Single family homes and British pastoral parks are jutted up and down an ever-expanding peripheral urbanisation, where highly biodiverse and endemic ‘wild nature’ is ‘improved’ on through subdivision, clearing, fencing, and the construction of profit-oriented low density housing. This article draws on a specific history of colonisation and suburbanisation premised on land improvement, that has fundamentally reshaped relationships between society and land, first in Britain and then as these ideas travelled to Whadjuk Noongar Country. By tracing a history of first-nation warran (yam) economies buried within colonial and capitalist structures, the article aims to provide a lens through which to contest the inadequacies of prevailing orders and values towards land, to serve as a starting point in delivering truly inclusive and collective futures.