Reimagining river relations: Fluss Bad Berlin

Two photographs were contributed to the Australian National University event "Unruly Edges: Beyond the Human - An Anthropology Photo Exhibition"

Contribution abstract:
Sulphates, fertilisers, wastewater, rubbish, cigarette butts and even bicycles swirl and stagnate in the Spree River water of central Berlin, Germany.1 Circling the city’s ‘Museum Island’ – a historic UNESCO protected site – the Spree’s water is an unruly edge of socio-political activism to reclaim, reconnect and reimagine human-river relations by reactivating the right to swim. These images were taken during a public talk by Fluss Bad Berlin (English translation, River Bath Berlin), an organisation advocating to repurpose the polluted river as a public swimming pool and, in doing so, bring all sorts of bodies back into river relations right in the heart of Berlin. Through introducing natural (reed-gravel) and technical (UV) filters, its members hope to clean the canal to levels deemed safe for human submersion and, in doing so, overturn an almost century-old swimming ban. River, bath and body politics lurk amongst the murky, watery edges of city planning about what, with whom and how human-river relations could and should (not) immerse.