Tracking Wild Bathtubs in the west of Ireland

Tracking

Wild Bathtubs in the west of Ireland

Bathtub Stories Badkarsberättelser

©

Michael Walsh

Kilconnell, County Clare. 2019

Welcome to the world of wild bathtubs The exhibition Bathtub Stories at Himmelsberga is inspired by the explorations of Experimental Heritage Network member Michael Walsh. This booklet is a summary of his fascinating research into the evolution of bathtubs as both objects and actors. Öland also has many wild bathtubs - examples of which are exhibited at Himmelsberga juxtaposed with extra-large prints of Irish tubs. This gathering of bathtubs draws our attention to possible stories behind those everyday objects, their agency and mystery.

We invite you to share your own bathtub images and stories as a community research project. The aim is to publish the results in our recently launched Experimental Heritage Journal available open access via Linnaeus University. You will find contact information at the back of this booklet.

Enjoy the bathtub experience!

Bodil Petersson, Linnaeus University & Experimental Heritage Network

From portable bathtub to a permanent bathroom In the early to mid-1800s the bathtub was typically freestanding, often in a bedroom with water carried from the kitchen. It was only with the introduction of municipal waterworks and indoor plumbing that a particular room was dedicated to the bath and sink.

During the historical development of bathtub design it took many years to overcome technical, structural and materials problems so as to make a sturdy, long-lasting tub. In the end it turned out that bringing an enamelled cattle watering trough into the house led to the solution.

The bathtub is a relatively new item in our culture, illustrated by the graph below which shows the introduction of the word ‘bathtub’ in the mid-1800s and growth in the frequency of its usage within the Google database of over 5 million English language books.

Usage of the word ‘Bathtub’ from 1800 to 2019 0.000,140% 0.000,120% 0.000,100% 0.000,080% 0.000,060% 0.000,040% 0.000,040% 0 1800

1820

1840

1860

1880

1900

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer. (Charts frequency of word usage per year in sources printed between 1500 and 2019) Background: Vintage illustration of imperial porcelain baththub, 1888, J.L. Mott Iron Works. License CC BY 2.0

Front cover photo: Ballynalacken, County Clare. 2018

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From watering trough to bathtub and back again The bathtub design which solved all of the shortcomings of previous versions was the introduction of the cast iron enamelled bathtub.

When a process for bonding porcelain enamel to cast iron was invented, the Kohler Company of Wisconsin took their pig scalder/ watering trough product, applied enamel and created their first plumbing product. In 1883 it was advertised beside agricultural equipment with a footnote that when “furnished with Legs can be used as a bathing tub”.1 At first bathtubs were intended as freestanding and were given their own dedicated room - the bathroom. From the 1920s, the shape of cast-iron bathtubs began changing and soon the majority of bathtubs sold were intended to be built into the floor and walls. Rather than being portable or freestanding, bathtubs became such completely built-in units that their outer appearance was now irrelevant and only the inverted, inside space was important.

Prior to 1883, what was a cattle watering trough, had within just a few decades become a standard household fixture. The domestication strategy of the dog or the cat was ingenious.

The bathtub too seems to have some strategy for domestication which allowed it to proliferate in houses to such an extent that some of the surplus would be returned back to an agricultural setting.

1 Kohler advertisment 1883. Available from: https://www.kohlercompany.com/who-weare/our-history/ [accessed 20 December 2019].

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When bathtubs entered the homes of Ireland Between the middle and late 20th century the bathtub had entered most homes in Ireland. Societal attitudes changed, national governments ensured a supply of hot water, and economic forces all conspired to bring the bathtub into the home.

From the 1960s when the basic conditions of running water and electricity were increasingly being met, the bathtub rapidly entered the Irish homes, spurred by improving economic conditions and increased urbanisation. Bathing at home, which was once for the privileged few, now became a ubiquitous and essential practice.

Bathroom remodelling takes place every 18 years on average, yet the intended useful life of a bathtub is found to be more than 50 years. A bathtub can be expected to remain in position during the first, and possibly the second or third bathroom remodelling, but after 50 years it would likely be replaced.

50 year lag from bathtubs entering homes to entering fields.

1,000,000

Housing Units

800,000 600,000

with bath or shower

400,000

Bathtubs in fields

200,000 0

cast iron

Farm Dwellings 1951 †

1961 †

1971

1981

1991

Data source: Census data, Central Statistics Office, Ireland. †Estimate, census data not available.

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2001

2011

2021

2031

Carrownacleary, County Clare. 2019

When bathtubs entered the fields of Ireland Since the 1970s tubs have been used as cattle watering troughs in Ireland. The practice seems to have peaked in the first decade of the new millennium. Dominance of new acrylic tubs since the 1970s means the pool of metal tubs being removed from houses has declined.

The peak of cast iron tubs being sent out to the fields may have passed, while we can expect for some time a continued increase in the disposal, and possible release into the wild of steel tubs.

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Tartu, Estonia. 2020

Brittle inertia Bulky tubs are difficult to remove from a house - breaking them with a sledgehammer is the fastest method. Cast iron tubs weigh from 120 to 160 kg. Some are conscientiously removed intact but unless they find a new host they can end up at a metal dump where typically they are either destroyed by crushing, or dropping from a height.

Irving Wohlfarth (1986) may as well have been thinking of dejected, unwashed and homeless bathtubs when he wrote that “it is precisely when they no longer circulate, as well-behaved commodities should, that things begin to give signs of a more subversive potential ... it takes an unsalvageable existence to salvage the unsalvageable”.2 2 Wohlfarth, I, The Historian as Chiffonnier, New German Critique, #39, Fall 1986, pp.144,148

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Ennistymon, County Clare. 2022

Endurance and escape Durable build requirements determine the form of this monomaterial object. While design style betrays its age, the uniform deterioration preserves much of the original youth of this persistent thing.

Function follows well beyond envisioned life allowing for ‘upcycling’ in many guises - just one of which is as cattle watering troughs.

Tubs can easily outlive their previous host and their dwelling. The multiple strategies of the tub design, plus chance, may conceive renewal of often the last salvageable item.

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Area surveyed in County Clare, highlighting areas with many ‘wild’ bathtubs. May 2020 Area of interest, County Clare Area surveyed 2019 – 2020 Areas with many ‘wild’ bathtubs Area of detailed survey

10 km

Ireland, showing area of enlargement

Watering trough again It was a surprise for me to discover that the first cast iron bathtubs made were in fact modifications of a cattle watering trough, and were advertised by Kohler in 1883 as a “horse trough/hog scalder”.

I realised that by releasing used bathtubs to the fields, their original purpose has come full circle – perhaps an inevitable journey for a bathtub. Not many other man-made objects have behaved in this way.

It should be noted that my research took place in the Burren region of Clare which has many similar landscape characteristics to the karst-limestone landscape of the island of Öland in Sweden. Both areas also farming landscapes many wild bathtubs.

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Google Earth view of detailed survey area

Tubs and 2 km radius of Moanreel North, County Clare, and visibility from road. 2020

Area of survey Photos were taken as part of the methodological survey of “wild bathtubs” in North Clare, Ireland and were used to illustrate my academic paper on the topic.3 As I delved into the factors influencing how wild bathtubs have emerged in the landscape, I became aware of how bathtubs seem to interact with farmers, farmyards, fields, cattle and water. Even though repurposed and decontextualized out of the bathroom, the tubs seem to have “agency” or an agenda to fulfil a version of a purpose originally given. That agency of “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act”4 of the wild bathtubs was a successful strategy for continuance and avoiding destruction.

3 Walsh, M, Chasing the Wild Bathtub. Experimental Heritage Journal, Volume 1. 2022.

4 Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and Agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137

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Cloonlaheen, County Clare. 2020

Urban tubs in rural fields The vast majority of bathtubs first came to urban households, and later to rural farm dwellings. Rural decline and abandoned houses are the source of some wild tubs, but most are previously urban.

This urban-rural translocation is evidence of the agility of the tub to have itself moved in surprising directions.

The many tubs which moved to the fields of County Clare tend to be fairly anonymous, reluctant to clearly state their origin or age.

Whatever their exact origin, a large number of heavy, metal items that were intended for private, personal domestic use are now on outdoor public display, scattered around the fields for an alternative use by a different genus – subfamilies Bovinae and Equus. Few other man-made objects have achieved this.

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Doonagore, County Clare. 2021

There are possibly several hundred bathtub-watering-troughs in rural County Clare, either isolated in the field or close to, or adjacent to, the farm building. The distribution of modern cattle waterers and upcycled bathtubs as cattle waterers directly follows the distribution of active, or recently active, pasture fields with grazing cattle, and also fields where horses or donkeys are kept. It is unusual to find bathtubs in fields used for grazing sheep or in arable fields which are ploughed or used for crops.

I have decided to call these wild bathtubs, and while they are in a rural, agricultural landscape which is not fully wild, the term clearly contrasts them with the more usual indoor “domestic” bathtub.

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Moonanagh, County Clare. 2020

Often wild bathtubs are positioned near a wall or hedges which provide shelter for cattle against prevailing westerly gales, but many also can be found located out in the open field. Wild bathtubs are generally found isolated and distant from other wild tubs, and only sometimes in pairs and very rarely in groups.

A collective noun for a group of bathtubs does not seem to exist.

I propose a plash of bathtubs to be a suitable collective noun, with ‘plash’ meaning ‘a pool or puddle’ or ‘a gentle splash’. All European languages with grammatical genders for nouns consider ‘bathtub’ as feminine, except for Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

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Glendine North, County Clare. 2019

In Ireland the upcycling of bathtubs seems to be a more likely practice on smaller farm holdings compared to the larger, more industrial agricultural type farms where purpose-built cattle waterers are more often used. My research finds that bathtub watering troughs tend to be found in highland areas and fields where cattle do not have direct access to streams or natural watering holes.

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6 x County Clare, Ireland. 1 x Tartumaa, Estonia. 2 x Öland, Sweden.

Typology of “wild bathtubs” Only metal bathtubs are suitable as watering troughs. Fibreglass and acrylic tubs are not strong enough as cattle tend to break them, and may injure themselves. Observations confirm that the majority are built-in or drop-in style steel tubs, with some freestanding cast iron tubs used in the field. Nearly all are of the “French style” angled at one end, the other end more vertical near the taps and outflow.

There are so many wild bathtubs that a typology emerges of a graduation between “farmyard bathtub”, and “freestanding wild bathtub”. My classifications of bathtubs also lend human, animal or nautical characteristics to these special objects.

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Kineilty, County Clare. 2019

Farmyard bathtubs The availability of water supply is also a factor influencing distribution. Sometimes tubs are positioned adjacent to farm buildings where they can be kept supplied with rainwater via a drainpipe linkage from the roof. Such “farmyard bathtubs” which are close to farm buildings, or inside farmyards, might not be considered to be fully “wild”, as they are situated in direct relationship to the house, still part of the domestic sphere immediately adjacent to the farmhouse.

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Muckinish West, County Clare. 2020

Wild piped bathtubs A less domesticated tub variety is the wild piped bathtub which is fed via a plastic pipe from a public or private water supply. Piped water tubs can be identified as usually having a ball-cock water level mechanism installed to regulate the renewal of water supply.

The distribution of such wild piped tubs is directly influenced by proximity to a water connection, normally indicating a nearby farmhouse or close to the route of public water pipes.

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Aghawinnaun, County Clare. 2019

Freestanding wild bathtubs The true freestanding wild bathtub is more feral in its post-domestic incarnation. It does not rely on a dedicated piped water supply and has fully severed the connection with its domestic origins, perhaps only having scarce interaction with humans. Natural rainfall catchment by the tub itself may be enough to keep a water supply for cattle for most of the year – in times of drought (infrequent in Ireland) then it may be refilled as needed.

As such, a tub may remain stubbornly as a freestanding persistent object in the same position for many years. Yet the tub structure itself deteriorates very slowly and tends to retain its essential function.

Unused tubs tend to be moved to a new site for continued service.

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Knockdrumagh South, County Clare. 2019

Bi-pastural wild bathtubs There are many cases of wild bathtubs that are built into walls, with each end providing water to different fields. Modern plastic or concrete cattle waterers are also available with this design feature, with the water regulation source located in the centre so that a single trough can be positioned to be used on either side of a boundary fence.

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Cloonee, County Clare. 2021

Roaming wild bathtubs While these wild tubs may be conceived of as fully inert objects which have been dumped by humans, my research shows that this is not fully the case: many wild tubs are things that can suddenly seemingly disappear from one field and by some mechanism reappear in another field.

Clearly, such roaming wild bathtubs are simply moved from point-to-point by the farmer; because of changes in land usage, rotating cattle between fields allowing for grass consumption and regeneration, or they could be moved seasonally according to the needs of cattle.

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Carran, County Clare. 2020

Wild bathtubs with legs Nearly all wild bathtubs are footless. I have only found some rare examples of where the legs remain attached, or “articulated” to use the archeological term. Google Street View shows that this cast iron tub has been lying capsized since at least 2009, its job now taken over by a modern plastic cattle waterer nearby.

This is ironic. Only when the cattle watering trough was given legs in 1883 were they able to enter houses – and now, when being released back into the fields, the legs are nearly always removed.

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Gragan East, County Clare. 2019

Abandoned bathtubs In my research to date, it is rare to find a fully abandoned, damaged tub. Generally, they are in use by somebody (or at least on land owned by somebody) and, if the tubs are in sound body with their essential functions intact, they retain a useful upcycled value on the farm. Even if a tub is clearly unused and unattended to at the moment, it may be kept in waiting for possible future use.

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Lemenagh, County Clare. March 2019, January 2020, May 2020, January 2022

Unsettled wild bathtubs Tubs also seem to readjust their position on site, presumably either due to cattle scratching themselves against the tub when the water level is low, or by the cattle disturbing the mounting supports, sometimes causing the tub to list on its side. It seems to me that most wild bathtubs no longer have a formal owner – they have a custodian. While the landowner may use the bathtub, the bathtub has its own long-term agenda and is just resting on its way to wherever next.

In 2018 a tub placed on a damaged concrete and brick watering trough actively moved. It seems that the weight of water in the tub, combined with the wedge shape of the tub, has forced the concrete and brick structure to collapse within the space of one year.

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Killeany, Kilconry, Drumcarna, Monreel North, County Clare. 2020

Coloured bathtubs Coloured tubs, which once were considered desirable, especially in the late 1960s until the late 1970s, are now recognised as fashion victims. A survey of home buyers by the Daily Mail found that nearly “two-thirds of would-be homeowners cannot stand the lurid green baths and washbasins”.5 The fibreglass tub on the lower right is dated “29.6.76” in handwriting on the side. This unusual red herring tub appeared in a field on 15 April 2020 near a house being refurbished ... and disappeared a few weeks later. I expect that there are more of these exotic tubs to be released into the wild over the coming years.

5 Gillman, O./MailOnline. (7 Junes 2015). Want to make money in property? Buy a house with an avocado bathroom and Artex ceilings and you can quadruple your investment.

Available from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3114485/Want-make-money-property-Buy-house-avocado-bathroom-Artex-ceilings-quadruple-investment.html [Accessed 9 June 2020].

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Clouna, County Clare. 2020

Ballyvraneen, County Clare. 2019

Commensal nature and agency It can be observed that the episodic migration of the tubs is because they follow the cattle. It is not quite a mutually symbiotic relationship between the cattle and the tub as there is no obvious benefit for the bathtub. It would be better described as a commensal relationship between the bathtub and cattle (“commensal”, meaning “eating at the same table”) in which the commensal animals benefit while the bathtub receives little benefit or harm. In a commensal relationship the species that benefits from the association “may obtain nutrients, shelter, support, or locomotion from the host species, which is substantially unaffected”.6 Mans’ best friend, the dog, is known as a classic example of how an animal survived and thrived by following a commensal pathway into domestication to a human host. In our case the bathtub is the host who has used this as a method to survive after being released from domestication. Notice too that similar strategies have been used previously by cast iron bathtubs as they evolved legs to be brought in from the field and enter into domestic homes.

6 Henkel, M. (2015). 21st Century Homestead: Sustainable Agriculture II: Farming and Natural Resources. p.382 Available from: https://books.google.ee/books?id=jmHxCQAAQBAJ [accessed 12 December 2019].

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Moher, County Clare. 2016

Caherkinallia, County Clare. 2019

Zoomorphed posthuman bath Visually, the bathtub form itself seems to naturally invite the mind to consider an animisitic perspective. The addition of four claw feet is perhaps the most widespread implementation of this tendency.

The clawfoot tub, which reached the apex of its popularity in the late 19th century, had its origins in the mid 18th century when wooden furniture leg design often used the ball and claw design, possibly artistically inspired by the Chinese motif of a dragon holding a precious stone.

Interestingly, the bathtubs became quadrupeds just about the same time they became immobile fixtures as a result of connection to household plumbing. However, few wild bathtubs are found with their original feet, but sometimes feet are added.

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Knockdrumagh South, County Clare. 2019

Clouna, County Clare. 2019

Liberated descendant A wild bathtub typically presents itself as a remnant of a domestic, built environment even if surrounded by a rural landscape, perhaps close to a stone wall or other evidence of previous human activity making it look like a possible ruin environment with archaeological potential. Yet it is only through the chance of hearing a possible oral history of that transient tub by which we may gain any significant information of its past location or recent trajectory The home from which the tub left may well now be a ruin and it may be one of the few surviving objects from that home interior, or that house may still be inhabited with only a decaying thread of personal knowledge as to where that tub may have gone. Chances of its history ever being recorded are remote, so the tubs have become anonymised. None of this is now relevant to the surviving tub itself – it has been liberated to a post-human existence. The wild tub has been persistent so far, and as long as it can remain relevant in the present, then it is likely to emerge in some future role. These tubs freed from built-in, closeted, domesticity now can thrive in a commensal existence with another genus – subfamilies Bovinae and Equus.

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Lackamore, County Clare. 2019

Kilfaboy, County Clare. 2019

Locus of personal memory During my research in Kilshanny, County Clare, a lady told me the story of how she gave birth to her daughter in their bathtub.

Upon selling the house, she took the tub with her when the family moved to a rented house where the tub spent a few years in the back garden. Tub restored, they built a new home around those special memories. A man told me how he recovered his father’s bathtub from a field, brought it back into his own house and enjoys using it in its unrestored form.

Given that a bathtub in a house could be there for 50 years or more, so generations of one particular family may have been using the same tub for decades. In rural Ireland, with the tradition of the family home being passed on within the family, then that usage could span several generations. The vast majority of the tub users would have been immediate family, or close relatives. With the frequency of use, the intimacy of prolonged private contemplation in the bath, multiplied by generations of that same family over decades, this would make a bathtub a vessel which has accumulated memories and a custodian of some kind of spirit, aura, charisma or ghosts.

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Aghawinnaun, County Clare. 2019

Clahane, County Clare. 2019

Decontextualized selves The identity of the cast-off bathtub in nature is still well held even if the principal users have changed and it is decontextualized by its location. We know well that any wild bath we see has previously been the site for not just somebody, but many related naked somebodies.

Now while the identity of those bodies has physically gone, their inverted, disembodied space persists in the frame of that vessel now located in some place that few could have predicted. Again this is an example of how a tub appears as a very unintentional monument, anonymised and disregarded.

Somehow wild bathtubs are on public display as a result of a fairly randomised process without regard to aesthetics or selection process other than a judgement condition that it should still be in more or less working order to carry out the function of holding water.

This is an unwitting sampling, uncoordinated yet representative exhibition of a fragment of middle to late Irish 20th-century domestic heritage which as of 2020 was evident throughout the landscape of North Clare.

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Moanreel North, County Clare. 2019

About the author I have always had a strong interest in art, architecture and built heritage as a way of understanding cultural history and past lifeways. Meeting like-minded people through Karum-Creevagh (the Swedish-Irish Experimental Heritage Explorations group) has provided fascinating insights into the origins of contemporary society. Exposure to the concept of “experimental heritage” provoked me to think of how future archaeologists may interpret the exponential changes of our early Information Age. Exploring the back roads of County Clare, I noticed many bathtubs which are being used as cattle watering troughs in fields. During Covid lockdown I mapped and photographed these and carried out internet research including open-source academic articles to produce an article “Chasing the Wild Bathtub” with the assistance of Bodil Petersson.

My research sharing is very much in the spirit of copy-left* and I welcome others to take ideas and content from here to use for their own purposes.

Michael Walsh michael.declan.walsh@gmail.com * Copy-left: freely modify and redistribute but also pass along with the copyleft stipulation.

Text and photos © Michael Walsh 2022

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Members of Karum-Creevagh on Knockloon Hill barrow, Leamaneh, County Clare. 2019

Experimental heritage – between science, art and culture Cultural heritage is composed by a diversity of tangible and intangible traces of human lives and activities through all times, traces to which we attribute meaning. The understanding of cultural heritage is always changing. To work with cultural heritage is therefore to work with interpretations that are constantly moving. Heritage is both a reflection of the past and of our own times since the present is always included in our interpretations of the past.

Through Experimental Heritage, we interpret cultural heritage at the intersection of academic research and explorations through artistic practice: through visual art, contemporary art, performance art, sound art, handicraft, film, music and dance. By relating experimentally to the traces of the past, we explore new ways of understanding the meanings of cultural heritage for us today, and we constantly find new and unexpected ways to understand and engage with the past.

To show the ambiguity of cultural heritage and get as rich a picture as possible of the significance of the past in our own time, we gather artists who represent different 30

ideas of art and artistic expression and researchers, cultural workers and cultural heritage workers who represent a multifaceted approach to the theme. We thereby create an experimental field that is in constant motion, where we combine different perspectives and approaches. In this way, we create a multidisciplinary open forum and contribute with enriching conversations and activities through public expressions such as performances and exhibitions. In a spirit of combined academic and artistic research and collaboration across cultures and traditions, we wish to bridge academic research, art, culture, and society that engage with cultural heritage.

The activities we carry out and present the results of are often based in the landscape that surrounds us. It may be the natural landscape that we sometimes perceive as untouched by humans, but which on closer inspection does not turn out to be so. It can be the rural landscape, where traces of past times are preserved and fully visible side by side with the present. It can be the town landscape with all its layers of time both below and above ground, cultural layers of earth, architecture and street networks, traces of demolition and construction. It can also be the industrial landscapes of yesterday and today, strongly influenced by modernity and thus a kind of landscape many of us are familiar with and even have a relationship with.

The basis of our work in relation to landscape is that we relate to human surroundings and the traces of time that are created where people move and live their lives. The landscape is an inexhaustible and varied source of knowledge to be able to understand the human condition over time, in different times and in different places.

Bodil Petersson, Linnaeus University & Experimental Heritage Network

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Bathtub Stories Badkarsberättelser

The exhibition Badkarsberättelser / Bathtub Stories at Ölands Museum Himmelsberga in 2022 and online is produced in a collaboration between Michael Walsh, Linnaeus University, Ölands Museum Himmelsberga and Föreningen Experimentellt Kulturarv.

Find out more about: Experimental Heritage collaborations and activities ...

English experimentalheritage.com Swedish experimentelltkulturarv.se Online exhibition experimentalheritageexhibition.com Facebook & Instagram Experimental Heritage Please share your own bathtub stories, photos and films in social media ... hashtags #experimentalheritage #bathtubstories Experimentellt Kulturarv EXPERIMENTAL HERITAGE