PhD | Meanders of memory: The media archaeological study of environmental remembrance and transnationality along the river Oder

PhD | Meanders of memory: The media archaeological study of environmental remembrance and transnationality along the river Oder
PhD candidate: Bogna Bochinska
Institute: University of Amsterdam
Supervisors: Prof. Patricia Pisters, Dr. Leoni Schmidt

This project proposes to understand the complexities of human and non-human relationships through the environment of the Oder River basin as a place of encounters and migrations of objects, peoples, and cultures across both time and space. Within the context of West Polish territories post World War 2, where the Oder River is a significant border-forming geographical entity, this research project examines ways in which the ecologies of the river embody the fluidity of borders and flows of migration and become a vital site for transnational memory making. Today’s Oder is very present in European environmental discourse. After it was proclaimed a partially dead ecosystem after the 2022 golden algae contamination, scholars and activists now engage with the river’s natural habitat and advocate for its rights. The urgency of the environmental crisis prompts questions of human positioning within said environments. By drawing parallels between matters of memory/identity formation and the river for their constant flow, fluidity, and erosion/accumulation processes, the outlook on environmental memory can be expanded from the human memory of the environment, onto the environment’s active memory-making. The main objective of this research is to explore the possibility of viewing the river as a multifaceted entity capable of bridging the human and non-human sites of memory and seeing them as arenas for engagement with the past and future imaginations. I aim to follow the stream of the river and conduct a media-archaeological research of the Oder-oriented cultural texts and artifacts from the 20th and 21st Centuries, reflective of the complexity of the Oder- bound communities founded on displacement. This particular case study is an attempt to present a wider possibility for a river-oriented practice of researching border environments and transnationality.