Values for survival: Vanishing homelands Bangladesh and Venice

I first became aware of the presence of climate refugees from Bangladesh in Venice, Italy, through a remark, Amitav Ghosh made in his book “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable” from 2016. There the Indian-US-American novelist notes that Bengali was the second most heard langauge in Venice, due to the many merchants and shop clerks originally from Bangladesh and other Indian regions.

Why Venice? Ghosh suspects that “coastal people” seek refuge in other coastal towns, making the lagoon city Venice a preferable destination for Bangladeshis in Europe. While this seems like a convincing argument, and makes for a poetic story within the overall climate narrative of his book, I am a bit skeptical of this observation. While it is certainly true that the Bangladeshi community ranges among the ten largest migrant communities in Italy – with numbers anywhere between 146.000 and 400.000 – I have not found any indication that Bangladeshis were more likely to settle in Venice than other major cities like Rome or Milan. Venice has a long history of migration and currently an estimated 15% migrant citizens. Whether Ghosh’s observation is accurate or not, it is clear that the inhabitants of both places, Bangladesh and Venice, have a shared history and possibly understanding and knowledge of floodings.

image by H. Mamataz from “Vanishing Homelands”

The Oral History project “Vanishing Homelands”, that was realized by journalist and documentary film maker George Kurian, migration acitvist Hasna Hena Mamataz and architect Marco Moretto for the 17. Biennale di Venezia, brings the two communities together: native Venetians and migrated Bangladeshis. I find the project to be a great example of comparative urbanism and a very fine piece of climate journalism. The three authors practice the same approach, I am pursuing with this project: to connect communities challenged by climate change in different parts of the globe through shared experiences and biographical and cultural backgrounds. I am very thankful to their work, as it shows quite lively, how – to use George Kurian’s words – we can try to “meet each other respectfully as equals, and how can we interact meaningfully, to find values for survival?”

Image by V. Rossi and G. Moretto from “Vanishing Homelands”

Their text focuses on biographical reports and the immediate experience of flooding, economic hardship and flight, omiting any furtherer analysis or speculation, how this shared experience can create political solidarity and emancipation. This seems like the natural next step, to formulate a supra-national alliance of front line communities like the Bangladeshi and the Venetians based on and building on journalistic work like the one by Kurian, Mamataz and Moretto.

The full text of Vanishing Homelands is available here. All images are from the text.

Rich men’s flood myths: Batem and Yann’s comic “Fordlandia”

In a comic book from the Belgian comic series Marsupilami the artists Batem and Yann create a satire on megalomania pipe dreams of the super rich and the fascination of the flood myth.

Set in the South-American Amazon basin, the plot is based on the true stoy of Henry Ford’s „Fordlandia“ project, a business venture the us-American automobile entrepreneur conducted in the 1920‘s in the region to secure rubber supply for the booming car industry. In the comic book a fictitious billionaire follows Ford’s footsteps into the jungle to pick up the ruinous business. But he is obsessed with the idea of a second deluge and devotes all his time – and money – into catching animals to cage on his arch. Like a true business man he does not build the arch himself but buys a mega-flying boat off another billionaire, Howard Hughes. Like Fordlandia, the legendary „H-4 Hercules“ was a massive fail too; the only one of these planes ever produced had one flight only in 1947.

The images are from my german edition of the book:

The story was published in 1991 but one can’t help think of today’s grant rescue schemes of the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s a common feature of today’s climate debate, that billionaires seek and succesfully generate public attention to techno-utopian elitist projects. The nice twist in Batem and Yann’s story is that this rescue project is completely built on the past failures of similar minded men.

In addition to these megalomania schemes and failures, the story also references environmental destruction and authoritarian development projects in developing countries: When the deluge does eventually come, it is not a universal one but just the massive tidal wave from a bust reservoir dam, that was finished just before by the authoritarian regime of Palumbia, the fictitious state the adventures of the Marsupilami are set in.

Time and Tide Bells

Since 2008 artist and bell-maker Marcus Vergette has been developing the multi-site installation series Time and Tide Bells in various coastal spots across the UK. The installations consist of two bells, one upside down on top of the other, set up in tidal zones so that the waves ring the lower bell during high tide. The work references the many legends of sunken cities of which the church bells can allegedly be heard ringing on the coast on certain sundays. (see also the post here)

In 2010 the project installed also a bell in London. Meanwhile there are seven other “Time and Tide Bells”installed across the island. You can check for the locations here.

The first Bell on the coast of Devon, South England.

All images are from the project’s website.

The Bells of Aberdovey

A common theme in Northern European flood myths are the church bells of submerged cities. This motive can be found all along the ccoasts of Brittany, Wales, England, Germany and Poland. The popular folk song “Bells of Aberdovey” relates to the legend of the sunken kingdom Gwydneu (more commonly known as Cantr’er Gwaelod) off the coast of Wales. The song is most likely not an original folksong at all but a composition from 1785 for an English Opera with lyrics in English not Welsh. The today popular Welsh version was first printed in 1905.

About the motif of submerged bells see also the art installation by Marcus Vergette in this post.

“The sea has covered the plain of Gwydneu”

A Welsh legend tells the story of the sunken land Gwydneu (also known as “Gwydno” and later Cantre’r Gwaelod, “antref Gwaelod”, “Cantref y Gwaelod” and in English “: “The Lowland Hundred”) off the coast of Wales, UK.

It first appears in the Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, considered to be the oldest book written in Welsh and dating from the middle of the 13. Century. Several later and differing versions of the legend exist. But as the BBC here writes:

“Whichever version of the legend you choose, it is said that if you listen closely you can hear the bells of the lost city ringing out from under the sea, especially on quiet Sunday mornings, and particularly if you’re in Aberdyfi [also known as Aberdovy], which is famous in Welsh folk legend as being the nearest place on dry land to Cantre’r Gwaelod.”

Here is the poem from the “Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin” in a modern English translation. The name “Seithenin” in the first line refers to one of two sons of the legendary ruler of Gwydneu, Gwyddno Garanhir. It was the princes’ duty to guard the floodgates that protected the low lying land:

Seithenhin, stand thou forth,
And behold hte billowy rows;
The sea has covered the plain of Gwydneu.

Accursed be the damsel,
Who, after the wailing,
Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.

Accursed be the maiden,
Who, after the conflict, let loose
The fountain of Venus, the desolating sea.

A great cry from the roaring sea arises above the summit of the rampart,
To-day even to God does the supplication come!
Common after excess there ensues restraint.

A cry from the roaring sea overpowers me this night,
And it is not easy to relieve me;
Common after excess succeeds adversity.

A cry from the roaring sea comes upon the winds;
The mighty and beneficent God has caused it!
Common after excess is want.

A cry from the roaring sea
Impels me from my resting-place this night;
Common after excess is far-extending destruction.

The grave of Seithenhin the weak-minded
Between Caer Cenedir and the shore
Of the great sea and Cinran.

This is the online source. For the full book go here.

See also the posts on Marcus Vergette‘s art installation and the song The Bells of Aberdovey.

Similar legends from Northern Europe are the kingdom Ys in Brittany, the sunken palace Llys Helig in Wales or the land Lyoness in Cornwall.

FloodZone – an ongoing visual research of life in the tidal zone

FloodZone is an ongoing photographic series by Anastasia Samoylova, responding to the environmental changes in coastal cities of South Florida. The project began in Miami in 2016, when Samoylova moved to the area and experience living in a tropical environment for the first time.
The works display in an impressive way the ambivalences and the fluid frontiers between city and sea in a community exposed to frequent floodings. I am particularly impressed who artist Samoylova expands the topic and visual themes onto popular imagery and the everyday in the urban scenerie.

All images are from the artist’s website. Some works are currently on display at Stuio Hanniball in Berlin (until April 14. 2023).

Thanks to Ulrike Heine for the lead!

The Mermaids of Weeki Wachee

In a theme park near Tampa, FL, you can see mermaids perform for you live since 1947.

The producers write on their website: “What do you get when you combine underwater fantasy with SCUBA technology? Why, you get mermaids, gliding and twirling to the soundtrack of children’s fairy tales or popular music. […] In the shows the mermaids (and mermen — called princes) discreetly take mouthfuls of air from the slender breathing tubes while they perform. Even with the air tubes, though, it’s clear that part of being a mermaid is being able to hold your breath for quite a while.”

Interestingly, the audience is seated in a giant glass tank, turning the concept of aquarium inside-out: “The mermaids are swimming in a natural spring; the 500-seat theater is embedded in the side of the spring 16 feet below the surface.”

The park is a business venture by the famous performer and sports swimmer Newt Perry, a former Navy soldier who became a celebrity by appearing in over 100 of filmmaker Grantland Rice‘s “Sportlight” short films over a period of three decades. Newt Perry, once dubbed “The Human Fish”, went on to became a much sought-after film advisor for Hollywood.

New Perry and mermaid Nancy Tribble in Tampa, FL. Click on the pic for the online source and additional info!

Thanks to Bernd Mand for the lead!

“For now, perhaps more than ever before, the past is relevant to the future.”

In the introduction to his book “Worlds in Shadow” from 2022 Australian Geographer Patrick Nunn writes:

“The stories from Haida Gwaii and Aboriginal Australia neatly illustrate the three main sources of information from which we can today discover details about once-inhabited, now-underwater lands: science, memory and myth. Each can be complementary, meaning that when they are read correctly they may yield information that is unique. But, of course, if we are biased, even subconsciously, and demean or dismiss things like memory and myth because we do not know how to interrogate them, then we are likely to end up with an incomplete picture of the past. The purpose of this book is to try to rectify the situation, to demonstrate that each of these three information sources is potentially valid, something that gives a roundness to the past, a multidimensionality to history that personalises it and makes it more relevant to us today.

For now, perhaps more than ever before, the past is relevant to the future. In a world where we are confronted by global change that is as contemptuous of human endeavour and individual aspiration as it is dismissive of political borders and agendas, understanding how our ancestors were affected by comparable changes and how they overcame these is at once a lesson in coping as well as a beacon of hope.”

The woman in the fur coat who brought the flood

Australian Geographer Patrick Nunn opens a book of his with the following story told by a Chief of the Haida people of Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands).

“Young recalled, his people lived in northwest Haida Gwaii in a large village across from Frederick Island. One day, a group of children playing on the beach noticed a stranger some distance away, wearing a fur cape of a kind never before seen in Haida lands. Running up to her, one cheeky boy lifted the cape to expose the stranger’s back, the sight of which made the children laugh and jeer.

After the adults called their children away, the woman went to sit alone on the sand near the ocean’s edge. The water rose to her feet, so she got up and moved a little distance up the beach. The water again reached her feet and so it went on until the ocean had climbed higher than ever before. It became clear to the Haida that their homes would shortly be flooded, so in panic they tied logs together to make rafts and, taking to the ocean, were able to save themselves.

Young explained that because these crude rafts could not be steered, each drifted to a different place, a story that could be a distant memory of the time — thousands of years ago — when the first Haida peoples are known to have been dispersed by the rising of the ocean level here.”

Patrick Nunn goes on to conclude: “Young’s story can be read as myth, especially the detail about the stranger and the unfamiliar fur cape she wore. […] But ist is also science, a distant echo of ancient people’s explanations of what happenend to them […] 12.700 years ago.”

Patrick Nunn stresses the point that stories llike these must have been passed on orally for around 500 generations, an astonishing cultural achievement that defys the notion of oral culture as short-lived or deficiant. See also this article by Nunn for aeon.co magazine here.

Man made flooding in “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks”

The Belgian animation movie and comic book from 1972 and 1973 is set around an artificial lake in a fictious mountain state in the Balkans. We do not learn much about the history of the lake but Tintin explains during the landing flight that a whole town had to be evacuated in order to create the lake. We also learn that the locals think of the lake as a bad place or as cursed, implying that the flooding was not at all desirable, possibly it was experienced as an act of cruelty and arrogance towards the local population.

As Tintin finds out eventually the buildings of this submerged town now serve as hideaway for the story’s villain.

Later in the story, there is a submarine chase in the town’s streets. The movie makes much humorous use of the strange intactness of the architecture of the submerged city, for example when Capt. Haddock in his submarine ponders over a “Do not enter”-street sign whether to ignore it or not. In the comic book, Haddock cusses at the other submarine just like a typical driver in any city traffic:

This illustrates quite well the peculiar condition and uncanny of submerged cities.

At the climax of the plot, the submerged town is once again destroyed, this time by explosives set within the villain’s hideaway. In an interesting revearsal of the function of a flood meter above water, the explosives are triggered by a flood meter, measuring the rise of the water entering into the building that is below the lake’s surface. When the room become fully flooded, the buildings of the submerged town explode, sending a massive tsunami-like wave across the lake’s surface.

This probably mirrors and repeats the situation the town got submerged in originally. And it signals the second and presumably final destruction of the town.

The full comic book in english is available here.

See also my other post on the various covers here.