How To Make Friends with a Body of Water

In this interview, Anja Wegner, the instructor of the upcoming course “Liquid Kinship”, reflects on human-fish relationships, and on inviting people to create stronger relationships with their local bodies of water, and the life within.

Anja is a transdisciplinary researcher and marine science educator. She is currently working on her Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, studying fish architects and their social behavior.

This spring, she is teaching the Liquid Kinship course, exploring how to create relationships with other species in our local environments. This online class offers a basis and a guided invitation to spend time with and in local environments, which can be urban or rural, lakes, seas, fountains or ponds.

“Sometimes I like to just be in one spot and not move and just stare at the bottom. Then you see suddenly so much happening, everybody comes out! You really have to spend time to see it sometimes, but you can see that anywhere, because life is everywhere.”

-Anja Wegner

As the teaching assistant for this course, I was very excited to sit down with Anja and talk with her about her practice, and this upcoming course, which invites people looking for an opportunity to include more ecology and various aspects of local environments into their lives.

Kit: You work with fish a lot while underwater, during SCUBA dives. When did you start diving?

Anja: Since 2019. So, really not that long, but since then, I have spent a lot of time in the water. For me, I love it so much. It gives you such a different feeling of what it means to move in a different environment. I also do freediving, but I'm not so good. It's less invasive; I feel everybody underwater knows there's a SCUBA diver, everybody in the water knows that you're coming, it's so loud. Freediving is a very different experience where normally every fish, and everybody else, just stays closer, though, for a limited time.

I love it when I have like 20 meters of water above me. There's all the “alien ocean”; it’s so funny, we call it that, but it's the most earthly thing, the ocean. 

Diving is definitely the most important thing I do for my work. I collect data like that, and take my diving experiences and observations as anecdotes, and reflect on the fish-human interactions. It’s something we [researchers] are really privileged to do, to go to beautiful places. But  a lot of the diving is exhausting. If you do it for weeks and hours, everything hurts. You're not really functional on land anymore. It's a trade off.

Kit: In the study of the fish-human interaction, from your own experience, what's been like a recent revelation for you?

Anja: I worked with fish and other animals, so at some point, I had the question of consciousness. What is their agency? What is their version of consciousness? Are they conscious?

There is this paper, “What is it like to be a bat.” It's this idea of, how can we experience another animal’s perspective? Basically, we can't, because we are animals trapped in our own experience of the world. So I was reading all this consciousness research about humans and other animals, the standard tests that we do to see if somebody is self aware, like the mirror test. You get a mark on your head, somebody puts it there secretively, and then it’s, “Oh, do you recognise yourself?” And if you recognise yourself, you can just remove the mark. We do this with so many different animals, from roosters to chimpanzees. But it's such a weird test! We are very clean animals, we wash everything off, but there is no need to get rid of something that's on your forehead. Why should you do that? So it's just thinking about all  that, and how I interact with the fish. I put architecture in the water, but I call it an architectural conversation, because through their behavior they tell us if they accept it or not.

Kit: How do you know if they do accept the structure?

Anja:  Because the ocean or the sea is vast, they can just decide not to ignore it! I was chatting with people about “fishy-ness,” and I read about “bat-ness”, how they connect in a weird way to being a bat, but you cannot really put words into it. I thought with the fish, it's the same: of course there’s a certain fishy-ness. 

It's been years that I go there for a month or longer and dive there and spend hours with those fish. When I put up the structures, I decide where to put them. The last time we were with a huge group [of humans], but I was the only one who had to really spend time with the fish. Others were telling me what to do, but I said, “just put the structures here.” Through my own “fishy-ness,” suddenly I knew this was going to be a good place. 

“Fish architecture, and interacting with them, making them co-architects of human-initiated architectures, it's only possible because of particular behaviors and ecology. Not every fish can or would engage.” -Anja Wegner

I think it was the unconscious part of me, probably way more than the conscious part. We completely over emphasize how conscious we are. Other animals probably have a different version of consciousness just because of their different senses: if you feel the world in a different way, I'm sure that shapes your perception of it. Why do we put so much emphasis on our conscious experience? The unconscious experience probably brings it much closer to other animals, because some things cannot be described. I cannot describe why I wanted to put the architecture there, but I see the fish and see how they behave.

I'm especially looking at two species of fish. Even just saying “fish” is already not accurate. It's like saying mammal, right? It's also kind of funny, if you ask people just to draw fish, you'd get a very stereotypical thing! Actually if you look at the diversity in the fish world, taking all those aquatic creatures, there's so many versions that most people can't even imagine!

I work with two damselfish, (Pomacentridae). Just to understand this one family of fish, with already 400 species - to say, “oh, I understand fish so much”- is not really accurate. I'm just friends with those particular damselfish, and I can tell a bit of their story. There are a lot of fish that actually wouldn't care about the structures. Fish architecture, and interacting with them, making them co-architects of human-initiated architectures, it's only possible because of their behaviors and ecology. Not every fish can or would engage.

I normally call them structures, and once the fish decide and recognise the space as their nesting site, then it becomes architecture. They decide when the male group comes and sits on the structure, they decide ‘this is the space for us’. Before the fish decide so, it's just like some structure floating in the sea. 

Architecture is not just the walls in the room, it's the feeling you have in a space. That is an important part of architecture. Of course, it's a human concept, but I think the fish do recognise the space, so I think they are the architects of their space.

Kit: is the purpose of your particular architecture work somehow farming related?

Anja: No, not at all. I'd like to know a bit more about fish farming, because it's such a huge industry and, and gets so little attention. Bjork and Rosalia did a song about fish farming in Iceland and its horrible consequences. There's also good fish farming! Fish farming is one of the biggest industries when it comes to food production. We think it’s cattle, but actually it's fish!

Kit: In the class, you are also drawing from artistic interventions and environmental philosophy, in addition to being in the field, which is the central thing. How are these more abstract concepts coming into your work, and how would you like to share them with others?

Anja: To have the opportunity and time to relate to a space that is inhabited by other animals- I think, for anyone, that's an incredible exercise. Diving in the same spots over and over again; or when you go for a walk in a forest you know well. It's the relationships you create, through your time in this space. You know your neighbors and they recognise you. It’s like being with humans, you try to keep up the relationships, and you have to go somewhere to do that. You cannot just do that through wonderful theories and the wonderful concepts that exist. 

Sometimes it's good to have certain frameworks that allow you to contextualize those experiences. I think that's the beauty of bringing something more practical, and something theoretical together.

It depends on the space which theories you engage with. The ocean is such a particular space! It’s difficult to say, “Oh, this is what guides my thinking.” It’s hand-in-hand: experiences, observing things, reading about how other people have thought about it, seeing how I can maybe create something that builds on that, sharing some of those things. All of that helps to create relationships to spaces.

Kit: Why is it important for you to teach this class?

Anja: A lot of my work is about the relationship to other animals, and especially to fish. When I talk with people about fish and the ocean, it's very obvious that we don't know much about them, and we don't really realize how much we impact their lives and how much we rely on them. 

Somebody once told me, “Oh, you're the best human friend of those fish, and your job is to make us also become friends with them.” That's basically my job.

Kit: For the field trips that might be done by the participants in this course: I live in the city. How do you imagine someone accessing the core of this course, the field-trip, living in the city?

Anja: It's also just a useful exercise to spend time in a body of water, just that in itself, without the other multi species entanglements, just to become aware of the water that surrounds us all the time. Everywhere, there are rivers and ponds. 

Almost everybody has a place where you also go because there's some water, because it does something to us. Everybody knows some body of water, and they might already have a relationship with that, just being there. 

Sometimes I just like to be there, even snorkeling, just to be in one spot and not move and just stare at the bottom. Then you see suddenly so much happening, everybody comes out! You really have to spend time to see it sometimes, but you can see that anywhere, because life is everywhere.

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To learn more about Anja’s work, find her on instagram here.

For more information and to sign-up for Liquid Kinship, her 5-week online class, which begins 18. June at School of Machines, click here.

This interview was conducted by Kit Kuksenok.