Compass 2022-23 Vol. 8 Issue 1

Welcome to Compass, Vol.8 Issue 1 !

THE TEAM

CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Matthew Harris

Edward Meyer Sonin

DESIGN OFFICERS

Dom Dakin

Maja Glavin

HUMAN EDITORS

Georgina Carbery

Izzy Scott

PHYSICAL EDITORS

Bridget Atkin

Maja Glavin

TRAVEL EDITOR

Harri Thomas

Aidan Crowson

INTERVIEW EDITOR

Kia Taylor-Powell

PUBLICITY OFFICER

Amelie Wilson

BLOG EDITORS

Molly Duxbury

Charlotte Boggon

Taybah Khan-Lodhi

OUTREACH OFFICER

Anaïs Bash-Taqi

Our first publication of the year aims to show the diverse nature of geography and engage with some of the contemporary directions in the discipline. We are proud to show the range of pieces produced from students in the department. As well as the many thought-provoking pieces in this collection, we present an interview with the new Director of Undergraduate Studies in Geography, Alex Jeffrey.

It would be remiss not to mention the defining international events of the end of 2022: the Biodiversity and Climate Conferences in Montreal and Sharm el-Sheikh. Geographers are inherently attuned to the environmental crises occurring today, and four pieces consider the multiple dimensions of these crises. We explore technology for mitigating methane emissions, the risk of climate tipping points, and the bias towards ‘cute’ species in conservation. An interview with Liam Saddington highlights some research into the geopolitical imaginaries of low-lying states in a changing climate.

Beyond the environment, the rest of our pieces show just how broad geography can be. Over five years on from the Grenfell tragedy, Georgina reflects on the urgent role of government responsibility in the context of a political climate of neoliberalism and austerity. Pieces on the ‘landscapes of Lenin’ and the affective atmosphere of urban skating highlight the every-day ways that past and present politics permeates our experience of space. Other pieces discuss the nuances of Tik Tok tourism and how the geographies of sexuality are performed through the popular music of Prince. In another interview highlighting the Department’s research, Matthew Gandy tells us about his research in urban ecology.

As always, we thank CUGS and the Geography Department for their support that make this magazine possible. To all the contributors and the Compass team, thank you for producing a diverse issue of Compass. We hope everyone enjoys this collection, and we look forward to working on the next issue of compass.

Edward and Matthew Co-Editors-In-Chief

cambridgecompassmagazine.wordpress.com

compass@cugs.org.uk

cugscompass

compass_cugs

Front and Back Cover

Olive Trees burn during a Wildfire in Greece

Sourced from Milos Bicanski, Climate Visuals

Inside Front Cover

Sourced from Maddie Angwin, winner of the Department Photo Competiton

4 7 9 12 16 20 24 26 30 34 38

Interview with Alex Jeffrey Grenfell Tower: Should the UK government take more responsibility?

TikTok Tourism: Hidden gems, or harmful trends?

Hi there, Lenin Methane, Water and Climate Change: Technological solutions

Cute enough for conservation? Unpacking conservation bias

Changing Climate, Tipping Earth

Sinking Islands: An interview with Liam Saddington

Nature in the City: An interview with Matthew Gandy

Temporary, yet intense: Affective Atmospheres of Junction’s temporary ‘Jam’

Prince, Gender and Sonic Futurity

An Interview with Alex Jeffrey Interviewed by Kia Taylor-Powell

What is your favourite aspect of the role as Undergraduate Director?

It’s fantastic to have a sense of overview of the tripos. It’s great to confront with students some of the challenges that we face and think about the big questions that shape the tripos. Like any geography teaching programme, it’s shaped by the world that we live in. Great challenges that the world faces are reflected in the tripos teaching. This is something I really relish.

What are your plans for undergraduate geography studies at Cambridge?

It can be covered by the phrase, a healthy and welcoming tripos that is relevant to the world in which we live. It’s a privilege to follow on from Harriet and the work that she did on the tripos. I don’t envisage, at the moment, revolution, but more thinking through what opportunities exist and how to make sure that the struggle is inclusive, and the workload is healthy and manageable. It shouldn’t be a test of endurance but something that everyone can engage in. The welcoming part is thinking

about accessibility. One aspect that drew me to Cambridge was the college system. The college system allows us to think about admissions and how we manage admissions, and how we reach out to communities that haven’t historically participated as much in the tripos. How can this be encouraged and developed through direct action, policies, and initiatives. I’ve been really struck by the good work that is going on, as well as the opportunities that Cambridge has as a wealthy and historic institution to innovate and take risks, thinking about what more can be done.

Alex Jeffrey is the current Director of Undergraduate Studies in Geography at Cambridge. He studied Geography at Edinburgh University, before pursuing a Master’s, PhD and postdoc research at Durham University.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in academia?

I think the biggest challenge that anyone faces working in a research-intensive university is balancing between different parts of the role. One contradictory force that exists within our role is that we are expected to produce world leading research whilst also teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and taking on roles like director of the undergraduate programme. Balancing all of that can be difficult when they have different timelines and pressure points.

More importantly they have the same pressure points and things can all happen at once. Just as students have an essay crisis, I can promise that never ends for academics as well.

Why geography as opposed to any other discipline?

I would encourage all students to push back when they are told that their dissertation isn’t geography. Geography is everywhere. A lot of the work I do is located within the edges of other disciplines like criminology, legal studies, or international relations. The easy response is that geography is a discipline which is comfortable with interdisciplinarity. It is happy to accommodate different paradigms, positions, methodologies, and approaches. That’s on account of the diversity of topics and issues we see within the geographical disciplines. It is comfortable with its lack of rigidity, focus, and interdisciplinarity which is attractive to me, it’s a good thing.

Geography itself is an interesting and exciting place to be intellectually. It is a discipline that’s always been interested in the world, going out, experiencing and understanding the world around us. We see this in the way that geography as a discipline is embracing and thinking about feminist methodologies, decolonial perspectives, the breadth of approaches to situating knowledge. It is thinking about where the ideas come from and how those ideas are privileged over others, with what consequences. That’s attractive to me because it is at the forefront of understanding how processes occur in the world around us. I’ve always been drawn to that

theoretical breadth, political ambition, and the desire for empiricism. It’s gaining understanding from people’s own world view, rather than speculating, sitting at our desks.

Do you think there is a difference between humans and nature?

No. I do think that separation has been profoundly problematic to how the environment has been treated, understood, and conceptualised. The way the world is organised and arranged is anthropocentric, but that illusory separation has contributed to a lot of the challenges that we face today. The responsibility for and entanglement with many of these ecological issues has been denied.

What is your biggest achievement outside of academia?

Undoubtedly my kids! I’ve got two kids; Rufus, who’s 14, and Clemens, who is 11 and they’re brilliant. It’s my family. I’m married to my wife, Laura, and that’s the achievement, that’s really what it’s all about. I can’t think of anything more or above that!

If you had to live on one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Putting sustainability to one side for a moment, there’s a recipe by Rick Stein called Lemongrass Plaice. It is white fish with a lemongrass and coriander sauce with coconut rice. It is unbelievably good. If anyone ever makes it they will see his other dishes because it is incredible.

If you had a free weekend to go anywhere in the whole world (money no object), where would you go and what would you do?

I would go to Shropshire. We would go walking as a family in the Shropshire Hills, maybe the Long Mind or church Stretton. We would have some nice pub lunches, and I quite enjoy running, so I would do some running as well. It’s somewhere from my childhood that whenever I return to it gives me a good feeling, and a good perspective on life.

What is a fun fact about you that not many people know or expect?

I’ve got a metal hip… Be careful around corners in Cambridge on your bike.

What is one thing you think that (tripos) geographers need to hear today?

Stay excited about geography and do not lose your own distinctive approach. One of my worries about the tripos is that there’s an imagination that there’s one way of doing it. There isn’t one way of doing

it, what we want is people’s distinct and diverse approach - their novelty. That’s what got you excited about geography, so to retain it would be my advice.

Could you give us a cultural recommendation? This could be anything from a book, film, song to an experience.

The book that had a huge impression on me is called The Site of Death by T.J. Clark, the art critic and art historian. It’s a brilliant book of looking at two paintings. He visited the same art gallery for a year and looked at two paintings by Nicholas Poussin. Carefully he thinks about what these paintings are doing to him, and it is an exploration of his own change. It is a reflection and exploration of what these pictures are trying to show, the artistic style and the actual representation of what is in the pictures. The reason it had an effect on me is that it’s not only an exploration of art and representation, but of the methods –how do we see the world and how does the world see us. I have recommended it ever since. It’s unusual, not the standard geographical book. environment and development.

View of Corndon Hill from the Stiperstones, Shropshire Imagesourcedfrommfarr,Shutterstock

Grenfell Tower: Should the UK government take more responsibility?

Georgina Carbery

14 June 2022 marked five years since the horrendous Grenfell Tower fire, an atrocity which shocked the whole of the United Kingdom and ultimately claimed 72 lives within the North Kensington highrise flats. This atrocity was quickly captured by the media, provoking almost immediate responses from politicians and civilians alike, demanding justice for survivors as well as those who lost their lives. While on a surface level, the response seemed a sincere, frank, and heartfelt apology, suggesting remorse from the UK government that it was even physically possible to begin with, the harsh truth became clear in the following five years. I discuss Grenfell with others

on my university course evoking a universal feeling of sadness, alongside clear feelings of contempt and anger for the lack of change that has occurred since.

The fire began due to a refrigerator electrical failure on the building’s fourth floor, which rapidly spread up the building’s exterior. The spread was intensified by the ‘chimney effect’, allowed by the cavity between the combustible cladding and the wall of the building, pulling hot air up the building. Not all cladding is combustible; in fact, many buildings with cladding similar in appearance to that on Grenfell are completely incombustible; the reason for Grenfell not

having this cladding is simple: cost. Incombustible cladding costs roughly £2 a panel more than that of the combustible cladding, and while it was first used on Grenfell in the 70s, close to when it was initially built, it had recently been refurbished through the period of 2012 to 2016. Had it not, or had it been replaced with a (slightly) more expensive alternative, the tragedy could have possibly been avoided. Or perhaps, a sprinkler system could have been fitted, similar to what most modern buildings have today. It seems the estimated two-hundred thousand pound cost of such a system was too great for Kensington and Chelsea Council’s usable £274 million in reserves during the year of the fire.

In the days following the fire, Britain’s then prime minister Theresa May visited the site, appalled, yet uninterested in meeting any of the survivors of the fire – a response she has subsequently branded ‘not good enough’. On 21 June 2017, the government announced the securing of its first tranche of permanent new homes for survivors of Grenfell – in 2020, seven households were still waiting for permanent accommodation.

“...in 2020, seven households were still waiting for permanent accommodation”

Grenfell Tower on 28 June 2017

Image sourced from John Gomez, Shutterstock

For some of the previous residents no considerations of disabilities or special requirements were made when providing replacement accommodation, leaving some without wheelchair accessible bathrooms. In September the same year, May launched a formal inquiry, promising there would be ‘no stone left unturned’, the purpose being to thoroughly investigate the tragedy, ultimately determining who was responsible for the 72 lives lost. Despite the promise of ‘no stone being left unturned’, it was accepted early on that the investigation would not include an examination of social housing policy, or the role played by both local and central government. Five years on, no one has been held accountable, and the

inquiry is still ongoing. May consistently missed her deadlines to house those affected by the fire in Grenfell, however congratulated herself for such failures during her resignation speech. In 2018, the UK government announced full funding for removal and replacement of unsafe cladding at a cost of £400 million – and yet, there are over 300 high rises in Manchester and London alone with such cladding; some publicly owned, others private.

The changes (or lack thereof) since the fire in Grenfell Tower over 5 years ago have been less than adequate. As the inquiry continues throughout the rest of 2022 and likely concludes in 2023, it is incredibly important to recognise that a huge reason as to why the Grenfell Tower fire was so catastrophic is due to systemic, top-down, regulatory and funding failures that span much further than the building’s combustible cladding. Austerity measures by the UK government from 2010 to 2019 saw cuts to the welfare state, local government funds, social services, and spending for emergency services, with the plan to reduce national debt as a percentage of GDP.

Subsequent cuts of over £30 billion over this period delivered bleak results; the primary goal of reducing national debt as a percentage of GDP saw a rise from 56.6% in 2009 to 90% in 2013. Consequently, this led to increased national unemployment, stagnating wages, and a cost-of-living crisis. The lack of regulation toward social housing coming from the government meant that the Grenfell flats, and their occupants, were essentially neglected: there was no push for retrofitting in the case of a fire, and no drive to local councils to ensure safety was prioritised over money.

“...there are over 300 high rises in Manchester and London alone with such cladding...”

Thousands march in Westminster to demand justice for victims, 16 June 2018

ImagesourcedfromAjitWick,Shutterstock

TikTok Tourism: hidden gems, or harmful trends?

Aidan Crowson

Since its astronomical growth over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok has given rise to a vast array of trends, ranging from dance challenges to comedy skits. As the world has emerged from the pandemic and countries have started to open back up to tourism, one content category that has rapidly grown in popularity is travel. Videos range from ‘top 10s’ to ‘what I spend in a day’, to recommendations of ‘off the beaten track’ destinations and attractions. Whilst this content can be helpful for stimulating visitor numbers and recovery of tourism industries, it begs the question – does this mass exposure of certain places lead to unwanted attention, and harmful tourism trends?

During a trip to Bali, Indonesia this summer, a friend and I found ourselves frequently turning to TikTok for recommendations on activities to do or places to eat. Up-to-date, easy-to-access content from users of a similar demographic to ourselves was often more appealing than reading dated, prepandemic travel guides. And we were not alone in feeling this: according to data by Statista, in January 2022, ‘explore’ was one of the top 15 most-used hashtags on TikTok worldwide with 245.5 billion views, which has since grown to 500.6 billion views in November 2022. The ubiquity of TikTok as a tool for young travellers means that destinations can experience sudden surges in popularity after being shared on social media. In a paper in March 2022, Wengel et al. described this as the ‘overnight fame’ effect. For instance, in February 2021, after a TikTok – known as Douyin in China – went viral for displaying a mountain viewpoint in Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, China, the national park unexpectedly received a sudden growth in visitors, rising from 50 to 500 visitors in less than a month. This put sudden pressure on the park’s existing

tourist infrastructure, leading to traffic congestion, crowding and pollution.

The problem with TikTok compared to other social media platforms is that its algorithm popularises content based on user interactions as opposed to follower count, meaning it is harder to predict sudden interest in a destination. Responding to the ‘overnight fame’ effect requires a new form of destination management – one that monitors potential issues of overcrowding and features a rapid response framework to provide additional

TikTok search results for ‘Bali’ on 1 November 2022 BackgroundimagesourcedfromNiklasTinner,Unsplash

Klingking beach, Bali, Indonesia

Image sourced from felfin, Unsplash

infrastructure such as parking, catering, bins and toilets in the event of sudden popularity. Issues of social media-related overtourism have been observed for several years, but this has been largely in the context of Instagram. As TikTok is still a relatively new platform, it remains to be seen as to whether the increased interest in destinations promoted through TikTok will last. For Hollie Marie, a 26-year-old travel content creator (@thatbalibitch), the effects of TikTok are palpable in Bali. Hollie has been living in Bali for 2 years, and making travel TikToks since September 2021. During this time she has witnessed Bali’s dramatic recovery from the pandemic, but also the potentially negative effects of increasing tourism. In an interview in October 2022, Hollie highlighted how tourism growth in Bali does not seem to be stopping, and is stretching across all areas of the island. She stated that Bali is “becoming massively gentrified by the minute”, with beach clubs and chain hotels being “chucked up” to meet visitor demand. Hollie has observed how some of her TikToks have stimikattractions, hotels or Airbnbs she has recommended – “I pushed all my favourite places and now I don’t go to them because they’re so busy”. She highlights the example of Kanto Lampo waterfall in Ubud, Bali, an attraction which has become drastically overcrowded as a result of numerous TikToks promoting it.

Whilst not all Bali’s tourist growth can be attributed to social media, Hollie suggests that it plays a large part as nowadays many tourists only go to certain destinations or attractions to get photos. A 2019 study by Hook Research found that 40% of UK millennials now take into consideration how ‘Instagrammable’ a location is when

planning a holiday. Instagram, TikTok and other forms of social media often present highly selective, curated views of destinations, which can distort perceptions of a place and lead tourists to only want to visit places they have seen online. Whilst travelling to a place for its aesthetic appeal is not necessarily a new idea, social media has exacerbated this by directing more people to specific places and viewpoints. This can generate unsustainable forms of tourism, as visitors may care less about respecting and supporting local cultures and economies. Cultural disrespect and appropriation by tourists are recurrent issues across Southeast Asia – in Bali, it is common for temple visitors to take part in bathing rituals solely for the purpose of creating content for social media. Whilst some visitors do engage in these rituals due to a genuine interest in learning more about Bali’s Hindu culture, during our trip we were wary and chose to not participate in such activities in order to avoid becoming ‘part of the problem’.

Another impact of travelling ‘for the Gram’ in Bali is motorbike accidents involving tourists, which are becoming increasingly common – just a few months ago in June 2022, a young British couple was put into intensive care after being involved in a moped crash in Bali. This can be linked to the tourist desire to create aesthetic content, as motorbiking is an activity often displayed in TikToks and other social media posts of Bali.

Despite many of these issues, TikTok may not necessarily be a completely negative force in the travel industry. A key message that Hollie, as well as many other travel influencers, try to promote in their TikToks is encouraging people to be more respectful and responsible when travelling. Hollie is keen to emphasise to her viewers the importance of wearing motorbike helmets, disposing of rubbish correctly and respecting cultural norms and behaviours. This can help to mitigate against the harmful effects of overtourism generated by the ‘overnight fame’ phenomenon. Trends on travel TikTok such as ‘expectation vs reality’ can help to dismantle generalist perceptions and present destinations in a more unfiltered way compared to the singular viewpoint of an Instagram photo.

Furthermore, travel companies and national travel boards are becoming increasingly aware of the value of TikTok in marketing. Many are beginning to leverage the platform to draw visitors away from the most popular places, as well as communicate how they can engage in more responsible and sustainable tourism.

It is clear that TikTok can propagate harmful overtourism effects, but increasing awareness of these issues on the platform provides hope that it can be used for good. TikTok’s popularity shows no sign of slowing down, so where will ‘TikTok tourism’ go next?

References:

Hook, 2019. Overtourism: the future of Instagrammable hotspots? [online] HookResearch.co.uk. Available at: <https://www. hookresearch.co.uk/overtourism-the-future-of-instagramable-hotspots/> [Accessed 6 November 2022].

Statista, 2022. Most-used hashtags on TikTok worldwide in August 2021, by monthly unique users growth. [online] Statista.com. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/1257691/tiktok-top-hashtagsby-users-growth/> [Accessed 6 November 2022].

Wengel, Y., Ma, L., Ma, Y., Apollo, M., Maciuk, K., and Suwaree Ashton, A., 2022. The TikTok effect on destination development: Famous overnight, now what? Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 37(100458).

A relatively ‘undiscovered’ waterfall in Bali Author’simage

Hi there, Lenin

Zsófi Balogh

Having prepared myself to start my studies in Cambridge (in the so-called “West”), the last thing I imagined happening was being welcomed by tovarish Lenin on my first night-out. Here, he occupies a place for leisure; however, my parents, having grown up in socialist Hungary, used to watch his image every day for twelve years while sitting in the classroom. In that time, his images decorated the walls of schools and numerous other public buildings.

Throughout the last hundred years, Lenin’s physical representations – portraits, statues and street names – have been present all over the world, from the USSR to Antarctica and Las Vegas. Whilst he was still alive, a cult following developed around him. After his death in 1924, a public mausoleum was built to exhibit his embalmed corpse; ever since, Lenin’s visual representations were inseparable from the USSR’s official state ideology. Public spaces such as parks, streets, cities and public buildings came to accommodate Lenin’s images. Later, countries that adopted the Soviet ideology underwent a similar process: public statues were erected in places like Ethiopia, Cuba and Eastern Europe; streets and cities were named after Lenin. Even in Western Europe, notably in France, a considerable number of streets hold his name to the present day. This is, however, not the case for most Eastern European countries. With the dissolution of socialist state systems, they oversaw a process of de-Leninization to some extent, removing sculptures and renaming streets. Some of the removed Lenin statues embarked on an adventurous journey, such as one from Czechoslovakia which was bought by an American teacher as a historical relic. After the death of its new owner, it became a public attraction in the Fremont neighbourhood of Seattle where it is still exhibited.

Although statues of Lenin in public spaces are relatively uncommon in the United States, you often bump into him upon entering various Russian or communist-themed private spaces such as bars or clubs. His statue would greet you at the entrance of Red Square, a restaurant in Las Vegas. Thanks to the profitability of the so-called communist chic – using symbols, images, and aesthetics of communism to sell products and services – Lenin’s visual representations appear all over the private spaces of the world. Places in the former Eastern Bloc particularly capitalise on the communist chic’s potential to attract tourists. Large pop-art Lenin portraits can be found in the Red Ruin Pub in Budapest, Hungary or in the Goodbye Lenin Hostel in Zakopane, Poland. Funnily enough, the removal of communist chic Lenins is quite frequent as well, but the motives here are economic, not political. The Las Vegas Lenin statue fell victim to market forces as well: it disappeared when the Red Square restaurant closed in 2019. The wide variety of Lenin’s visual representations are an integral part of the cultural landscape in different contexts.

The landscape serves to naturalise the hegemony of the dominant class and to hide ongoing struggle (Mitchell, 2003); similarly, the emergence and disappearance of Lenin’s image is usually an exercise of control. Who decides to depict Lenin in a certain

Lenin’s portrait in Revs, Cambridge Author’simage

place? Why do they choose to place his portrait here? In state-socialist regimes, it was usually the state or municipality bodies who ensured his wide public presence. Appealing to Lenin serve d as the measure for the one-party system to maintain its hegemony and to justify political violence and the USSR’s influence on satellite states. Symbols of Lenin perpetuated the idea that the working class is holding power in socialist countries – this, however, hid the fact that discontent among the workers was high and workers’ protests were repressed (Pittaway in Gyáni and Rainer, 2007). Similarly, huge Lenin portraits on the wall of pubs and clubs might hide the fact that workers in the very same club are exposed to sexual harassment (Kondratyuk, 2015) or may work under unsafe conditions. Moreover, the cultural landscape of communist chic can work as a form of control. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher argues that anti-capitalist aesthetics in fact reinforce capitalism, as they no longer present a real alternative and are only consumed individually (Fisher, 2009). Even though people might enjoy a club night next to Lenin’s face, the possibility to overcome capitalism seems in their eyes further than ever before.

Lenin is represented not only as a ‘cool revolutionary’ or as a legitimisation of Soviet state power, but in a wide variety of other ways. Stamps with the face of Lenin can be found in the drawers of plenty of Eastern European elderly as a form of ostalgie: a nostalgia for socialist times. History textbooks depict him as a historical figure and promise to give an objective account on his life (if that’s possible at all). The end of socialism in Eastern Europe saw a museumisation of objects and artwork of the socialist era (Pyzik, 2014): posters of Lenin are now depicted in the DDR-Museum in Berlin, and public busts and

statues in Lithuania were taken to Grutas Park, a socialist-realist museum near Vilnius. Lenin’s presence in classrooms raises interesting questions – did his portraits hanging in the classroom perpetuate official state ideology to pupils? Could it be that little girls also concluded that you need to be male if you want to be a high-ranking party official?

However, thinking of the cultural landscapes of Lenin as purely control and hegemony would be reductionist. The image of Lenin as an anti-capitalist revolutionary has been used by groups who do challenge the hegemony of dominant classes, such as workers’ movements. Nowadays, some neo-leftist organisations in the post-socialist context reclaim Lenin’s representations from the Soviet-type understandings. The St Petersburg group of artists and intellectuals chose Chto Delat as a name (both Lenin’s book Chto Delat and this group were named after Chernyshevsky’s book What is to be done?). Note that they are not advocating for Soviet-style policies, but rather deal with the unfulfilled promises of the capitalist turn (Pyzik, 2014). Overall, multiple meanings are inherent in Lenin’s image, occurring in landscapes of control, nostalgia, memory, and revolt. As part of the landscape, it signifies different things depending on the wider context and on the receiver.

Defining what Lenin represents implies dividing space into places that can and cannot accommodate Lenin. As we have seen, these definitions are ambiguous and contestable – “battles between different versions of the past’’ (Czepczyński, 2008, p. 137) – therefore, those who hold the power to define or redefine will have the power to shape and reshape space as well (Anderson, 2015). For example, the mayor of Győr, Hungary, defined the remaining representations of Lenin

in the city as memories of a cruel and false ideology that must go. He then removed an old street-name board that marked ‘Lenin Street’ from the wall of a house with his own hands, demonstrating the close relationship between discourse and space. His definition may be contrasted with other ideas which condemn actions of the socialist state but highlight the importance of not eradicating all relics of the past – favouring museumisation over complete erasure. However, state definitions can be redefined by protesters, like during the Euromaidan events in Ukraine in 2014. Even though originally the Kharkiv Lenin monument was registered as an immovable landmark, for protesters it signified the ongoing Russian dominance in the region –so they destroyed it against the will of the state.1 Again, in this case, changing meanings change the delineations of space for Lenin.

What is the difference between having Lenin’s portrait in Revs or having a Lenin statue just 300 metres away, right at the centre of Christ’s pieces? Would people problematise and protest the statue, but happily order espresso martinis with Lenin smiling at them? The differences arise from their place and ownership. Whilst a portrait in the club is deemed as something fun and rebellious, a public statue depicts something that the city is proud of. For a public statue, residents would feel a need to raise their voice and protest a potentially unwanted landmark. Many stakeholders, including the city council, the university, local NGOs, and residents would be involved in the decision-making. General visitors of Revs have less power to change a private space’s interior design. More importantly, they would be less likely to feel obligated to do so, given that they are only temporary consumers. The context in which meanings are attached to the two types of Lenin representa-

tion, and the actors who attach these meanings, are utterly different. Here, we see again the division of space into ‘yes-Lenin’ and ‘no-Lenin’ in line with discourses and social relations.

Hopefully this article prompts the reader to question the implicit assumptions we make about spaces and places. This article sheds light on the various social relations – state control, political violence, exploitation, nostalgia, revolutionary potential – that make landscapes of Lenin. I also demonstrated that the power to define who Lenin was delineates the places where Lenin lived, where Lenin lives, and where Lenin will go on living.

References:

Anderson, J., 2015. Understanding cultural geography : places and traces / Jon Anderson., Second edition. ed. London : Routledge, 2015.

Czepczyński, M., 2008. Cultural landscapes of post-socialist cities: representation of powers and needs, Re-materialising cultural geography. Ashgate, Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT.

Fisher, M., 2009. Capitalist realism : is there no alternative? / Mark Fisher. Alresford, Hampshire : Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2008.

Gyáni, G., Rainer, M.J. (Eds.), 2007. Ezerkilencszázötvenhat az újabb történeti irodalomban: tanulmányok. 1956-os Intézet, Budapest.

Kondratyuk, K., 2015. Sexual Harassment in Las Vegas Nightclub Industry. https://doi. org/10.34917/8349574

Mitchell, D., 2003. Cultural geography : a critical introduction / Don Mitchell. Oxford : Blackwell, 2000 (2003 printing), Oxford.

Pyzik, A., 2014. Poor but sexy: culture clashes in Europe East and West. Zero Books, Winchester.

1 Note however that the controversial Azov Battalion took an active role in these protests

ImagesourcedfromNatalyaLetunova,Unsplash

Bridget Atkin

Of the 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere annually, 6% is methane released from water. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide, tonne for tonne, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the first 20 years after release (CPI, 2022). Reservoirs, wastewater, rice paddies, groundwater and lakes are the main water sources responsible for these methane emissions. Bluemethane, an international climate tech start-up company founded in 2021, is on a mission to capture a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) from water. Beginning with hydropower reservoirs, Bluemethane plans to globally implement methane capturing technology, to capture methane from water, reduce emissions and harness a new source of bioenergy. I spoke to Louise Parlons Bentata, CEO and co-founder of Bluemethane, and University of Cambridge Geography graduate (matriculated 1997, Emmanuel College), about their work to tackle climate change.

Methane is produced in reservoirs when organic matter from either the pre-flooded environment, aquatic primary producers or deposition from tributaries, is decomposed under anoxic conditions. It is then released into the atmosphere via diffusion, ebullition, or degassing. Whilst diffusion accounts for as little as 7% of this flux, ebullition accounts for an estimated 38% of methane emissions from reservoirs (Harrison et al., 2021). Ebullition occurs when sedimentary gas bubbles are created by an increase in total dissolved gas pressure in sediment pore water due to methane production (Beaulieu et al., 2016). These bubbles are released from the sediments and gradually dissolve as they rise through the water column, eventually releasing any residual methane into the atmosphere (Ibid.). It is degassing, however, which is of most interest to Bluemethane, accounting for an estimated 55% of methane emissions from reservoirs (Harrison et al., 2021). Degassing occurs during the rapid depressurization and/or aeration of water as it passes through turbines and spillways, allowing dissolved gases to escape (Deemer et al., 2016).

“When people think about methane, they usually think about cows or oil and gas. But what people almost never realise is that there’s this other source of methane, methane from water that’s being emitted from water bodies across the world, almost unnoticed. ... It’s like a secret nobody knew.”

– Louise Parlons Bentata, Bluemethane CEO

“The story of methane from reservoirs is a story of outliers. Less than a quarter of hydropower reservoirs are emitting methane emissions greater than 100g CO2-e/ kWh, which is the recognised threshold for green energy, so most of them are sustainable ... we believe we can help those outliers become even more sustainable.”

– Louise Parlons Bentata, Bluemethane CEO

Despite what a glance at the literature on methane emissions from reservoirs might suggest, hydroelectricity is indeed an exceptionally clean source of energy.

The technology being developed by Bluemethane relies on the low solubility of methane, which allows it to rise and escape from water more easily than other dissolved gases. The separation of methane from water is achieved by increasing turbulence, like shaking a bottle of sparkling water. The gas can then be captured, purified, and used as a combustible source of energy. Bluemethane are not the first to remove methane from water. However, existing technology is very expensive because it is high maintenance, more suitable for smaller volumes of water and requires large inputs of energy. Therefore, it would not be feasible to use this technology on larger volumes of water with lower methane concentrations, such as hydroelectric reservoirs. Bluemethane’s technology, however, can process water from these sources with greater energy efficiency and at a lower cost.

When can we expect Bluemethane’s technology to be implemented? Their first prototype, tested this year in the Netherlands, successfully demonstrated that their concept could lead to the separation of

methane from water. Following an industrial pilot projected to take place in Poland in 2024, the first commercial deployment of their methane capture technology is likely to be in 2025. The company are also hoping to implement novel financial instruments to encourage investment in methane capture technologies. Louise considers technological and financial innovation to be of equal importance for tackling climate change. A recent report by the Climate Policy Initiative, published in July 2022, revealed that less than 2% of investment into climate change mitigation is targeted at methane abatement measures, despite methane emissions causing nearly half of all observed global warming whilst only representing a fraction of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (CPI, 2022). With at least a ten-fold increase in methane abatement finance required to minimise global warming to 2°C (Ibid.), Bluemethane’s new financial innovation “separates the ownership of the technology from the benefits of using it. It is the first ever methane capture as a service” (Louise Parlons Bentata). If financial barriers to methane abatement could be overcome through increased investment and novel financial instruments, the United Nations Environmental Program estimates a 45% reduction in anthropogenic methane emissions could be achieved by 2030 (Ibid.).

Disclaimer:

Compass did not receive financial gain for the publication of this article.

References:

Acknowledgements: We thank Louise Parlons Bentata, CEO at Bluemethane, for her inputs to this article and for reviewing the draft.

Beaulieu, J.J., McManus, M.G. and Nietch, C.T., 2016. Estimates of reservoir methane emissions based on a spatially balanced probabilistic‐survey. Limnology and Oceanography, 61(S1), pp.S27-S40.

CPI, 2022. The Landscape of Methane Abatement Finance [Paul Rosane, Baysa Naran, Angela Ortega Pastor, Jake Connolly, Dharshan Wignarajah]. Climate Policy Initiative. Deemer, B.R., Harrison, J.A., Li, S., Beaulieu, J.J., DelSontro, T., Barros, N., Bezerra-Neto, J.F., Powers, S.M., Dos Santos, M.A. and Vonk, J.A., 2016. Greenhouse gas emissions from reservoir water surfaces: a new global synthesis. BioScience, 66(11), pp.949-964. Harrison, J.A., Prairie, Y.T., Mercier‐Blais, S. and Soued, C., 2021. Year‐2020 Global Distribution and Pathways of Reservoir Methane and Carbon Dioxide Emissions According to the Greenhouse Gas From Reservoirs (G‐res) Model. Global biogeochemical cycles, 35(6), p.e2020GB006888.

Cute enough for conservation?

Unpacking conservation bias

By Maja Glavin

Human population growth and urban development have caused a shocking decline in biodiversity, leading to the devastating sixth mass extinction. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) reports that 40% of land globally has been converted for agriculture, drastically altering the habitats of numerous species. At the recent Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was agreed, including a target to halt the extinction of ‘known threatened species’. However, research and conservation efforts do not treat all species with equal concern or scientific interest. A small number of species, particularly mammals, are often focused on, while other species at a higher risk of extinction are neglected.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies species based on their level of threat, from least concern to extinct. As of 2022, 37,480 species have been identified as being at risk of extinction. The groups with the highest number of threatened species include fish, amphibians, insects, and molluscs. However, there is a significant bias in public attention, research, and conservation efforts towards a small percentage (0.2%) of animal species - mammals - despite the greater number of threatened species in other groups.

Our tendency to attribute human-like intentions, beliefs, and emotions to certain nonhuman species that resemble humans in appearance and behaviour, known as “interpretative anthropomorphism,” also plays a role in our concern for these species. Species that are thought to be aware and capable of experiencing emotions, especially the ability to feel pleasure and pain, are more likely to be given moral rights. As a result, the worthiness of a species’ concern and protection is often based on their resemblance to humans.

Aesthetics and the perceived “cuteness” of an animal can also influence our bias towards certain vertebrate species. Physical characteristics such as big eyes and soft features can trigger human parental instincts, making us more inclined to support conservation efforts for these species. Charismatic vertebrates like elephants, lions, giant pandas, penguins, and polar bears are often used as “flagship” species and act as conservation tools to promote the protection of their ecosystems. However, this preference for certain species can result in the neglect of others that may not be as appealing to the public, even if they are more endangered.

Our concern for the safety and welfare of differ ent species is not always based on their ecological importance or level of endangerment, but rather on how we perceive them. Human preference for animals that are more similar to us is likely one of the main reasons for the disconnect between evidence and action in conservation efforts.

Studies have shown that people tend to give more money to conservation efforts for species that are more closely related to humans, possibly because we believe that these animals have the cognitive complexity and awareness that merit higher moral consideration.

In a study on the perception of invertebrates, it was found that people often express negative emotions, such as fear and disgust, towards these animals. However, attitudes towards invertebrates may be more positive if they are perceived as attractive or useful, such as butterflies and shrimp. Despite making up approximately 98% of all animals on the planet, there are few regulations regarding the welfare and treatment of invertebrates, with the exception of those that have been proven to be sentient, such as octopuses. The sentience of other invertebrates has yet to be established. While there are approximately 60,000 known vertebrate species on the planet, there are over 1.2 million known invertebrates, with many more still undiscovered and yet to be formally described. It is clear that the scientific community also has a bias towards certain species, often prioritizing those that are large, attractive, or economically significant. This can lead to an emphasis on certain groups of animals, such as mammals and birds, while others, such as insects and invertebrates, are overlooked.

The IUCN has made significant progress in evaluating the threat status of known species, but

“A small number of species, particularly mammals, are often focused on, while other species at a higher risk of extinction are neglected”.

“South African Penguin” , Image sourced from Yeliz Atici, Unsplash

there is still a long way to go when it comes to invertebrates. While 91% of mammal species and 100% of bird species have been evaluated, the same cannot be said for insects and molluscs, with just 1.1% and 11% coverage, respectively. In fact, for most invertebrate groups, there isn’t even enough data to estimate the percentage of threatened species. This lack of focus on invertebrates is reflected in the research published in leading conservation journals. From 1987 to 2001, 69% of articles in Conservation Biology and Biological Conservation focused on vertebrates, with only 11% dedicated to invertebrates. Even within the vertebrate category, there was a clear taxonomic bias, with more papers on mammals than on fish, reptiles, and amphibians combined.

One major contributor to this bias within the scientific community is the availability of funding. Researchers are often more likely to receive funding for studying well-known or economically important species. This can lead to a lack of research on lesser-known or less economically valuable species, even if they are just as deserving of study. Another factor is the desire to study and work on species that are considered appealing or interesting to the general public. It’s no secret that scientific research can be a tough field to break into, and media attention can be a valuable asset for researchers looking to advance their careers. Studying species that capture the public’s imagination can lead to more media coverage and, in turn, more funding opportunities.

The bias towards certain animals, particularly those with cute or humanlike features, has led to a disproportionate focus on a small percentage of species, particularly mammals, in conservation efforts. This is often driven by our perception of these animals, including their cognitive complexity, perceived emotions, and aesthetic appeal. This bias can lead to the neglect of other species, particularly invertebrates, which make up a vast majority of known animal species but often receive little attention in terms of conservation. We must recognize the value of all species and work to protect them in a fair and evidence-based manner, rather than being swayed by emotional or personal attachments.

By addressing conservation bias and conserving a diverse range of species, we can promote the health and stability of ecosystems and ensure the longterm. survival of all species, whether they are cute or not.

Changing Climate, Tipping Earth

By Matthew Harris

Image sourced from Peter Burdon on Unsplash (flipped)

Every year we hear more about how the climate is changing, and we learn more about the dynamics of the Earth System. In 2021 and 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report was released. It stated more clearly than ever before that anthropogenic actions have and are changing the climate, and that rapid action is needed. With COP27 over, however, it seems that this rapid change is unlikely. It is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security over the seemingly-slow effects of climate change. However, the gradual changes to the climate that we have experienced so far are unlikely to continue forever: there are tipping points in the Earth System, where a small change in drivers can lead to a rapid and significant change in the system’s state.

Timothy Lenton and colleagues provided a formal definition of climate tipping points in their 2008 paper. Tipping points occur when a critical threshold is crossed (such as a certain air temperature), after which the system changes suddenly and sometimes irreversibly (such as ice sheet collapse). Tipping points can occur across the Earth System, from forest dieback to sudden ocean current shifts.

These tipping points do not exist in isolation. The tipping of one element can lead to the tipping of another due to feedback mechanisms in the Earth System, leading to a tipping cascade. For example, dieback of the Amazon rainforest could cause changes in the Earth’s climate system through climate and hydrological feedbacks. Additionally, collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet could trigger changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC).

In 2022, David Armstrong Mckay and colleagues (including Timothy Lenton) conducted a reassessment of the tipping elements identified in the 2008 paper.They found that even at 1.5ºC-2ºC of global warming (the goal of the Paris Agreement), multiple elements in the Earth System are at a greater risk of tipping, including the collapse of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the abrupt thaw of boreal permafrost. These significant risks of rapid environmental change highlight the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5º through rapid action.

One limitation of the 2022 paper is that it only evaluates the temperature thresholds for passing these tipping points. However, there are other factors that could cause Earth System elements to tip. For example, due to a combination of climate change and deforestation, significant evidence suggests that the Amazon rainforest is reaching its tipping point. This has global implications due to the significant role the Amazon plays in regional and global circulation patterns and water recycling. Furthermore, the risk of tipping cascades is not evaluated within their temperature thresholds. For example, although they estimated that AMOC will collapse at a temperature increase of 4ºC, feedback mechanisms involving the Greenland ice sheet (which has a much lower threshold) could lead to an earlier collapse.

Although our knowledge of the Earth System and it’s tipping points has progressed, there are still many uncertainties. While some of these tipping points could be crossed at higher temperature increases than predicted, others could be reached at lower thresholds. Our understanding of the interactions between tipping points is limited, and some tipping points have not been quantified due to significant uncertainties. These uncertainties must not prevent anthropogenic action to mitigate climate change. Indeed, they should encourage urgent action.

“...there are tipping points in the Earth System, where a small change in drivers can lead to a rapid and significant change in the system’s state”.

Sinking Islands: Researching Climate Migration in a Changing Pacific

- An interview with Liam Saddington

By Edward Meyer S.

All images sourced from Liam Saddington

Your research examines how space and time shape different understandings of climate change. Could you elaborate with the example of Tuvalu and Kiribati?

At the heart of my research is this question of how geopolitics is changing because of climate change, specifically focusing on islands whose entire territory is at or just above sea level where rising sea levels is potentially an existential threat.

The imaginary of the sinking island as spaces that are at risk of inundation dominates how these islands are understood globally and how domestically politicians engage with climate change, adaptation and negotiation to construct these island states as having a finite future. There is a particular politics to that temporality undermining contemporary efforts for adaptation. It also can undermine efforts to attract foreign direct investment into businesses. There’s a very strong political resistance to that. The Pacific Climate Warriors are an activist group that has emerged from the Pacific who are trying to push back against these discourses that remove agency from Pacific Islanders.

At the heart of my research then is what if sea levels are rising and there is a risk of these islands being inundated? What happens to the relationship between territory, sovereignty and statehood if an island state is entirely inundated? Can you still function as a state? Does it maintain a seat at the United Nations?

Until 2016, Kiribati was following a program known as Migration with Dignity. The idea was that you could upskill the population by increasing their access to education and training, so they would have the social capital to migrate to Australia, to the US, to New Zealand and increase the diaspora. But this was resisted and actually Taneti Maamau is the current president who very strongly spoke out against this. Instead, there’s been a focus on land reclamation, on hard engineering projects. For example, the Tuvalu and Coastal Adaptation Project - a seven year land reclamation project to reclaim 800 metres of the coastline and elevate that above future sea levels so that the population will not have to move.

What role do the Tuvaluan youth, memory and mental health play in Tuvaluan climate geopolitics?

The youth are very much at the forefront of Tuvaluan climate diplomacy. And one of the things I look at in my research is how youth bodies are used sometimes. Often there will be youth delegates that are taken along and will give very passionate speeches. At the Pacific Island Forum in 2019, 2 youth opened the ceremony with a strong focus on the necessity of climate action for future generations.

But youth bodies are also used in quite creative ways by the Tuvalu government. Mental health is a significant issue when it comes to climate change. Within Polynesian culture, the family members are buried even next to or kind of within the family home, so they are still part of everyday life. In 2015, Tuvalu was struck by Tropical Cyclone Pam and it washed away a number of these graves on the outer islands. And that is like losing your parents, your family for a second time. So I spoke to a nurse, specialising in climate change, and she said this particularly affected men on the outer islands. So there are many complex ways in which climate and sea level rise have impacts on mental health in these communities.

How did it feel to carry out fieldwork in a place like Tuvalu where the positionality of yourself is implicit with the issues you’re researching?

There is a long history of extractive research practices in the South Pacific. So I’ve been a visiting research fellow of the University of the South Pacific and work very closely with Pacific partners during my research giving public talks or lectures at the University of the South Pacific, but it’s also listening to the ways in which, as a researcher, I can contribute to that research community and ensure that this is one of partnership and not extraction. I’ve done writing and funding workshops and very much listening to what colleagues are saying as well as building ongoing relationships. The research I do has material benefits for the communities that I work with. So, one thing is working with local academics, collaborating on papers together. I specifically in my research, focus on elites, on diplomats, on climate change consultants, on a particular subsection of the kind of knowledge production around climate change.

So over the summer I was doing archival research in New Zealand, tracing the history of British imperialism and colonialism around environmental narratives in the region and actually going into the archives and seeking to bring to light these untold stories, but also actually reflecting on how many of these contemporary environmental narratives are shaped by Britain’s colonial actions in the region, which is sometimes missing from contemporary discussions and will support a colleague’s work in Fiji. So I, think it’s that question of partnership. I think that’s a question of informed consent and trust to the research community that you’re working with of ensuring that there are material benefits for the research you generate with a colleague.

A kind of collective package of being constantly reflecting on your positionality and thinking, why am I doing this research? Who is going to benefit from this research?

A key aspect of this is thinking about spaces of diplomacy, it is looking also at spaces beyond COP; the Pacific Island Forum is a really important space for building Pacific solidarity on climate issues. Thinking about what happens at the G7, what happens at the EU? It’s important to recognise COP is not the only space in which climate diplomacy takes place.

images sourced from Liam Saddington

Nature in the City: An interview with Matthew Gandy

For people who don’t know, what’s your research centered around?

There are three main areas that I look at in my work. One is landscape, the second is infrastructure, and the third is biodiversity. I am primarily a cultural, urban and environmental geographer.

Having grown up in Islington, surrounded by change and gentrification, the place that inspired Ruth Glass to coin the term, did that influence your your career as a geographer now?

Certainly, this part of London had many wastelands and spaces of nature that I remember as a child. They were spaces of play and memory within the city. As you gain greater knowledge of the area you grow up in, you become aware of other processes like gentrification. Ruth Glass’s term ‘gentrification’ comes from her own research in Islington in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and this area has played an important role in the wider development of urban theory.

My undergraduate dissertation at Cambridge was on the changing politics of Islington from the late 1950s to the late 1980s and focused on how changes in the borough were reflected in shifting voting patterns and political culture.

In your new book about urban nature, you write about being interested in wastelands. In an urban context these types of spaces are often overlooked. What drew you into thinking that this was something special to study?

A turning point for me was in the early 2000s when I had a research fellowship at the Humboldt University in Berlin. I became very interested in the marginal spaces of nature in Berlin. By visiting these sites and talking to people I became more aware of urban ecological themes. My recent work is a natural development from that opportunity. I also have a personal interest in ecology and natural history, which I’ve kept going as much as I can. So at a certain level my current research is bringing these different spheres together.

Interviewed by Edward (Ted) Sonin

Matthew Gandy is a Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Cambridge, and his work focuses on landscape, infrastructure and biodiversity within the fields of cultural, urban and environmental geography.

Having studied in Berlin, could you tell us how the urban revolutionized the study of ecology? Though these two things are seemingly separate, how are they intertwined and benefit each other?

Historically, and in a lot of the literature, cities have been seen as the opposite of nature or a threat to nature. There’s a very interesting counter position to thinking about cities as not only important spaces of nature, but also spaces where we can find unusual ecologies or unexpected kinds of landscapes. A city can be a space of creativity and discovery, including scientific discovery.

Part of your documentary film on Berlin discusses the language used to describe different forms of nature. Is there a politics to that? Was there a reason why some plants were considered invasive, whilst others were celebrated and naturalised in the landscape – more than in just a physical sense but also in the minds of people?

Within conservation, biology and ecology, there’s a long standing tension between different conceptions of socio-ecological assemblages. Questioning what is natural or unnatural, what should or should not be allowed, can get caught up in a wider ideological discourse of invasiveness.

The recognition of ‘cosmopolitan ecologies’ in an urban environment always lies in tension with narrowly nativist readings of landscape and nature. Urban nature is always a complex, dynamic mix with traces of nature from all over the world. The vast majority of what are considered non-native plants, for example, are completely harmless. You can read urban landscapes, street by street, to get a feel for a global ecology and a global history that is all around us.

The documentary shows how urban space is ever-changing. Nature and culture come together to form urban ecology. Does the language used in urban ecology such as “invasive” and “noninvasive” hold parallels with aspects of social marginalization?

Absolutely. The documentary highlights the way scientific metaphors can be abused within a social and political context. More neutral language such as “adventive” is preferable because it simply notes that these species have arrived and there isn’t a form of judgment about whether they should or should not be there. It highlights the importance of language when we’re talking about nature and culture. Science, and ecological science in particular, is never neutral, and always reflects a particular cultural or political context.

Has your passion for ecology and more-than-human relationships molded your study of urban concepts?

A lot of the literature talks about ‘more-than-human’ geographies. I tend to use the expression ‘other-than-human’ geographies because it implies a more nuanced conception of historical agency. In trying to conceptualize these questions, we must hold on to what’s distinctive about human subjectivity and consciousness. That’s not to say that we can’t articulate some kind of “ecological pluriverse” which is more open and sensitive to the full range of organisms that inhabit urban space. I’m interested in arguments that seek to identify what is important and how to protect fragments of urban nature. Ecological indices like “red lists”, for example, can be used in an urban context. In some of my research in North London I looked at a very rare fly (Pocota personata) and what happens when we find a rare species in the middle of a city. Does it mean that we should protect this site? Do regulatory agencies have the scientific capacity to understand the significance of this discovery? Are regulatory agencies willing to get involved in the politics of urban land use? All of these questions come to the fore.

That reminds me of the protests that began to protect the bracken. Do you think there is still a culture like that today in urban spaces? Or have we lost that connection to these types of spaces?

Up until, broadly speaking, the 1980s and 1990s, many cities which had gone through a process of deindustrialization and population decline had a lot of empty or deserted spaces that became ecologically important. In recent years, however, because of the recapitalization of urban areas the pressures on land and land values have grown greatly. Recently, it has become much more difficult and complicated to protect marginal spaces which were previously islands cut adrift from capitalist urbanisation. These spaces represent a kind of oases or refugia for biodiversity that lie outside of the dominant urban structures and processes.

It is predicted that around 60% of the global population will soon live in cities or at least highly urbanized regions. If we don’t have a vibrant ecological discourse in relation to cities and metropolitan life I don’t see how you can instill an awareness or consciousness for the protection of nature more generally. Nature can’t just be something abstract that we associate with distant places or passively encounter via media representations. Nature has to be something tactile and multisensory that we can have contact with in our everyday lives.

Do you feel there is a way we can rejuvenate urban ecology without, say, creating a botanical garden, or actively carving out spaces in a city designated to biodiversity?

Yes, there are some very innovative approaches to landscape design which try to combine the spontaneous dynamics of urban nature with designed features. Examples include the French landscape designer Gilles Clément and a number of new parks in Berlin that combine fragments of spontaneous nature with more familiar aspects of public space such as the recently created Park am Gleisdreieck. This prize-winning park has a very sophisticated design that combines science and aesthetics in new ways.

I think there is a tension, though, that any wasteland if simply left alone does not stay the same. It is a dynamic space. Over fifteen to twenty years most of these spaces will begin to transform themselves into wild urban woodland, which is very different from the aesthetic ideal of a flower rich urban meadow alongside a railway track. There are sometimes difficult discussions to be had about the temporalities of urban ecology and how the desire for biodiversity relates to design and public culture.

Do you know where you want your research to lead you in the future?

For me, I think I have too many different ideas and things I want to do! I’m sketching ideas for a new book under the working title “Urban Refugia,” taking some of these arguments forward. I would like to do further research in the global South, and especially in Chennai in southern India. There are interesting debates about the protection of urban wetlands and migratory birds in Chennai and other coastal cities. Emerging themes for me include ‘zoonotic urbanization’ and how we can create healthy spaces of urban biodiversity without creating new habitats for pathogens such as disease-carrying mosquitoes. I am also interested in developing my interest in walking methdodologies, acoustic geographies, and film-making. I would certainly be interested in making another urban documentary film, probably in Chennai, if I got the opportunity. film, probably in Chennai, if I got the opportunity.

WastelandintheChausseestrasse,Berlin(2007).

Photo:MatthewGandy

Temporary, yet intense:

Affective Atmospheres of Junction’s Temporary

‘Jam’ in the Cambridge Skatescape

By Edward Meyer Sonin [ed. Zuhri James]

“The Cam skate night was a special experience, it brought together all walks of life that shared the same love for skateboarding under one roof.”

- Matt O’Niell, Owner of Courts Skateshop (first Cambridge based skate brand in a long, long time and local skate legend).

The framing of ‘Courts’ nominally alludes to the grassy landscapes that span across Cambridge colleges. Though in the context of skating, courts takes on a new form and meanings that hint at the politics of inclusion/exclusion operative across these college courts of potential skate-spaces.

Disappearing as winter approaches, the seasonal Cambridge Skatescape and its skaters retreat into hibernation. The two local outdoor parks are too wet to skate in the fleeting moments of daytime sunlight. The sun set marks the skatescape’s daily rest, a 4pm cut off point for the affective atmospheres that envelop the local city ‘skate spots’. The council’s persistent attempts to delay the installation of flood lights by Jesus Green and Trumpington emblematise the underlying tension between external state duress and insurgent state communities that undercuts the practice of urban skating.

“I haven’t been skating for the past three weeks because of the weather and how dark it is so it’s really nice to have a space to skate with lots of people.. A good atmosphere with good obstacles…”

- Voice interview by Paul Elbro

Without any official ‘invited spaces of citizenship’ created by the city municipalities for Cambridge’s skate culture, a growing countercultural movement (“Cam Skate”) has resorted to a DIY-ethos, inventing their own spaces. Junction, a site for music and party culture was temporarily transmuted into a space for a different embodied lifestyle: skateboarding. Working with the venue, Cam Skate set up a charity skate session to create a winter refuge for the Cambridge skatescape on November 24th 2022. Each ten pounds entry fee funded the new Donkey Common Skatepark, another contentious space within the Cambridge Skatescape of urban ruination, coun-

cil neglect and skater despair. With rain and darkness prevailing outside, skaters forged their own space and atmosphere out of an empty music venue.

So, how was this space transformed into a skate-friendly space? What sort of ethical imperatives underpinned this recreation of a room into a skatepark? The ground becoming a dancefloor, yet staging a different embodied movement from the usual skank and dance. Junction’s surface temporarily the canvas for the art of a ‘backside flip’ over the white DIY barrier and the performativity of a 50-50 grind across the rail that severed the space’s normality. Skater’s danced their identity and ontology into space, inscribing their lifeworld into the surroundings. Junction’s atmosphere, transformed by a fleeting dance of the Cambridge skatescape; the dances of skateboarding an ontology of being and an entire ethos for life. There is an emptiness in the venue, lacking any inherent affectivities of skating itself. Even after the ‘skate spots’ were arranged, assembled and physically inscribed in the space, the sterile atmosphere remained. Still just a room, yet now with a quarter-pipe, a bump and a few rails and ledges. A space now with the potential to be skated, yet fundamentally lacking the atmosphere of skating. Junction a space with latent potential, only activated once bodies start to skate through space. The environment holding a potential later realised through physicalities and sensualities of moving bodies.

Even with the arrival of the first set of skaters – the first moving bodies to interact with the skate-space – I did not feel or sense the skatesphere I’m so used to and addicted to. As time passed and more skaters arrived, the space shrank as bodies and boards began to occupy every corner, obstacle and surface space. The atmosphere rose, temporarily enveloping Junction, surrounding the skaters, spectators, obstacles and space with an emotional sphere of skateboarding: indescribable yet sensually palpable; invisible yet intense; physical in appearance, yet immaterial in ‘feeling’; a ‘junction’ in space and time. It is a space temporarily transformed into a skatopia; a heterotopic space for Cambridge’s subaltern counterpublic.

The soundscape of grinds, laughter, collisions and ‘hype’ steadily amplified. My ears attune to these unusual sounds that make all skaters feel so comfortable. The soundscape that makes me forget the ordinary issues of late-capitalist modernity, an

invitation to an addiction that powerfully makes me forget the vices of the everyday. Skating away from the everyday, mundane violences of ordinary life, I’m distracted through sounds of this self-imposed, voluntarily embodied vulnerability. A sonic ecology of skateboarding sociality, a collective aesthetic of phono-materiality that underpins the psychogeography of this temporary space.

Skating through space. Sounding their movement. A collective melody for their dance of escape. Skating a path to liberation, an escape of solidarity and identity. A space animated by sounds and feels of bodies, wheels and boards.

The affective intensity of the skate jam, inherently physical and corporeal, yet equally emotional, sensual and subjective. The sounds of boards snapping the slippery surface (a constant feature of complaint across the night) rippled across the room. The surface transformed into a stage directing everyone’s attention to the ‘centre-stage’ performance around the DIY bump and white barrier.

Skate-etiquette, one of the few codes of conduct, unknown to those outside our language game and culture, was central to this fleeting, yet intense ‘feel’ of the room. An informal line forming, determin-

ing who gets to perform next. Who gets to try their trick over the white barrier. A competition naturally arose, yet of intense communitarianism and mutual respect rather than jealously, greed and individuality. The skate jam’s atmosphere a product of entangled individuality, performances necessarily co-produced with other bodies moving in space. The skater’s individuality momentarily expressed during their ‘turn’ to traverse the space, yet simultaneously enveloped into the communal affective economy of the crowd and jam. Any trick landed by an individual celebrated as an achievement for the group. The individual becomes communal: the collective self created between the entanglement of moving bodies and the agency of surfaces. Skate culture situated within a state of disorientation - a hyper affective and mobile way of moving through space to offer personal freedom within a close community of kinship. The atmosphere generates a collective self that moves in, through and with space. The space affectively became one of and for solidarity transformed by a competitive sociality between bodies.

This affective ‘Junction’ in the skatesphere cannot be reduced to any one object, surface or aspect of space. The inter-being of skaters and their space, objects, boards and bodies inseparable; an assemblage of moving bodies extending through their boards into

the surface. A physical, sonic and social entanglement affectively producing this temporary ‘Junction’ of atmosphere in the skatescape. An imagined space of and for skateboarding movement and citizenship, an inherently disorientating spatial practice that rejects normativity whilst asserting communality. A network of human actors and non-human objects that allow energy to flow and skate through the space.

As quickly as it was set up, the obstacles were removed and skaters returned back to hibernation. The atmosphere dissipated as the sounds, bodies and objects moved out into the streets. Only the surface and the room itself remain, a blank slate ready for its next inscription and performance. A fleeting atmosphere forming and deforming, appearing and disappearing, graspable only for a moment (or night).

Each skater and obstacle carry with them the affective hauntings of the skate jam in their memory. The junction surface, forever a living memory of this skatespheric movement. The scratches, marks and physical traces a permanent ruination and feel of the Cambridge skatescape. An unexpected space sporadically transmutes into a site for skater culture, identity and belonging.

The affect of skaters spatially inscribed into this space between 7 and 9pm. A moment living on only in physical, emotional and digital memory. The entanglement within this human-non-human assemblage produces a temporary, yet intense ‘Junction’ of refuge for the Cambridge Skatescape agents. For two hours a definitively skater-space, yet any time outside this frame the space retreats to its empty state. By morning the material norm returned as the memories of emotions and affect remain forever a ghostly presence of the skater’s performative moment in this space.

The jam temporal in physical reality, yet permanent in memory and feeling. Skaters and their sounds, feelings and emotions of movement assembled this transience and ephemeral atmosphere. Bruises mark the space’s surfaces, of bodies, floors, rails and ledges; emotional traces of skater’s affectivity in Junction.

A physical, emotional and affective pop-up in space. A performative moment forever in my memory.

from Edward Meyer Sonin

Prince, Gender and Sonic Futurity

By Zuhri James

‘If you can hear, this music will make you think of a lot of weird and wonderful things. You might even become one of them’ (Jones, 2010: 66)

It has been almost seven years since Prince’s death, but the allure surrounding his music still endures. As the pioneer of the Minneapolis Sound, an eclectic mix of funk, synth-pop, new wave and punk, Prince and his influence on the contemporary music landscape – be it within the sounds of Silk Sonic, or the queer aesthetics of Lil Nas X – is undeniable. Across a body of work that spans 48 studio albums, and a speculated thousands of unreleased songs, Prince constantly unsettled conventional understandings of race and gender. I look to map his resistance towards and reconceptualisations of these intersecting identities within the song ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’.

Kodwo Eshun is one of the key interlocutors who has established the sonic as a primary means by which Black diasporic musics’ speculative capacities can be thought through. In his extraordinary book “More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction’’, Eshun (2018) proposed that something of an epistemological break occurred within Black music during the 1970s, as it began to move away from its embodied social imperatives towards radical experimentations with what the very term ‘Blackness’ embodied (Jones, 2022). Reverberating through machine mythologies, conceptechnics and computer rhythms, these complex techno-assemblages were symbolic of a move away from the Black soulful era toward a new post-soulful age, one which began to speculate on the posthuman potentialities of what he called the Futurhythmachine.

‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ can be situated within Eshun’s (2018) framework of the Futurhythmachine and posthuman potentiality. Within the song, Prince channels Camille –an androgynous alter-ego – which, through technologically distorted, higher pitched vocals, evokes a sonic intensity unconfined to the male or female. The suppressed funk buried within the song feels peculiar yet strangely familiar, embedded somewhere between (and yet also radically outside of) the feminine, masculine, and technological. At first, the title implies a female identity, yet as the song develops, we realise Prince is a heterosexual

male playing a role, imagining the possibilities of a more emotionally intimate relationship with his lover, an emotional intensity that up until that point, had only been reserved for women (Thorne and De Abaitua, 2011). Whether it’s picking his girlfriend’s clothes before they go out or imagining going to the movies and crying together, Prince aligns himself within this liminal space of vulnerability that is neither masculine nor feminine, an ambiguous space which, as Clifford (2020) rightly points out, also works through racial dimensions by resisting the historical hyper-sexualisation of Black men. Through the alter-ego of Camille, Prince defies identifiability, knowability and classification into heteronormative systems by reconfiguring the Black heterosexual expectations that underpin modernity.

But perhaps there is more at work within ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’. Saldanha (2018) speculates on another possible reading: suggesting that with the alter-ego, Camille, there may also be something non-human, perhaps even supra-human going on. If the technological mediation of the human voice takes us beyond the masculine/feminine binary, beyond the human into something that is neither wholly human nor wholly technological, one might speculate the voice is also tinged with elements of the demonic and angelic. This supra-human reading of Camille not only prompts a rethinking of heteronormativity but also radically questions what humankind is about, what music is, and how humans relate to one another through music. This ties back into Eshun’s (2018) idea of the Futurhythmachine that moves beyond embedded social imperatives toward an experimentation of Blackness which ventures into the posthuman, the cyborg, the cosmic, and the alien. Or as Fisher (2017) might say, venturing into the weird.

‘The weird is a particular kind of perturbation. It involves a sense of wrongness: a weird entity or object is so strange that it makes us feel that it should not exist, or at least it should not exist here. Yet if the entity or object is here, then the categories which we have up until now used to make sense of the world cannot be valid’ (Fisher, 2017: 15)

‘The weird thing is not wrong, after all: it is our conceptions that must be inadequate’ (Fisher, 2017: 15)

Amiri Baraka’s theory of The Changing Same is a particularly useful conceptual tool to think about when reflecting on these different readings of Prince. Baraka (1971) argued that whenever we get what appears to be innovation in Black diasporic music, those conditions of innovation always rely upon fragments of the past and fragments of memory. Black music for Baraka then, situated itself within a temporal loop, a state of temporal nonlinearity within which there was no such thing as ‘total newness’. Such an understanding encourages us to think more relationally about Prince’s music. Prince and his androgynous persona, Camille, do not unsettle heteronormative conceptualisations of Black men within an isolated vacuum. His thinking is not cut off from other modes of speculative thought flowing through the Black diaspora. There is far more at stake. Prince builds on queer Black artists that came before him (e.g. Little Richard and Betty Davis), while also working in constant dialogue with artists that came after him (e.g. Andre 3000, Lil Nas X and Janelle Monae). His use of an androgynous alter ego (as an experimental tactic which speculates on Black queerness) flows through a larger Black consciousness spanning the Afrodiasporic experience. A Black consciousness that throughout history (and in the future), has always reverberated with a particular force and intensity both of this world, and yet strangely beyond it.

Image sourced from Jimmy Steinfeldt