From 2014 to 2017 ‘Wrecked on the Intertidal Zone’ saw YoHa and others busy noodling along The north bank of the Thames Estuary and its salt-marsh. The is the last dwindling wilderness zone close to London. An internationally important biodiverse habitat for sea molluscs, wild fowl and a vital fish nursery. Yet the 5 million visitors that come to Southend-on-sea each year know very little about the cultures, species, genealogy that inhabit the Thames estuary. Nor do they notice the hundreds of thousands of containers moving up the flood tide bringing exotic items from China to Tilbury or the London Gateway. Goods increasing in value by the distance they travel from source, burning cheap bunker fuel and creating asthma all the way. The estuary is also a historic space of sea foods, landfill sites, early dynamite factories, industrial exploitation and toxicity created by the Thames being used as the plumbing, and larder of London.
By fostering a critical creativity, through a series of public artworks including, eating and smoking, salvage operations,boat building fishing. Wrecked in the Intertidal Zone offerd visitors to Southend-on-sea the chance to engage with a lens from the sea and for local people explore our environment differently. A big part of the Wrecked discussion was about waste. Rubbish dumps have become successful spaces where wildlife has flourished such as Canvey tip, Two Tree island, Mucking flats in Essex and Deadman’s and Burntwick Island in Kent. Such spaces are also haunted by the toxicity that lays just beneath the surface. Before 1994 and the introduction of the Waste Management Licensing Regulations by the UK government no records were kept of what was dumped. The only people who know what went into the ground or out to sea and under what conditions were the delivery drivers, barge masters and others who delivered, buried and dumped the waste. Most of the people who worked on the sites before 1994 are now in their 70’s 80’s. YoHa thought is was vital that these witnesses be listened to before the knowledge they have obtained is lost forever.
We wanted to make a project that would hold a series of witness seminars with elders who ganing vital and situated knowledge of waste and the flows of the river from them. The seminars we thought could be used to help create audio tracks for videos that would be the records of the voyages made by boat to waste sites and or to replicate the journeys that the waste travelled down the estuary. In the end we produced three videos in which the witness recollections are used to problematise waste. This project ended up as Wasted Bird Hide as part of the covid delayed Estuary Festival at Wat Tyler Park in Basildon.