Urban ecology + Storytelling = Feral Walking Tour
Feral Malmö, in collaboration with Meadow Lab, will be hosting a walk through the neighborhood of Västra Hamnen to discover multispecies worlds forming and breaking there. Looking to plant life, planned or otherwise, the walk among feral spaces will provide insight into how to be better collaborators with other species and question the roles they’re expected to play in the city.
Malmö is feral. Like many cities, the coastal city of Malmö is a space of constant transition and growth. Development and infrastructures of people, corporations, and governments remake the living landscape of the city daily. Entangled in this unstable space are a multitude of different species; their worlds forming and collapsing in concert with the frenetic metabolism of the city. As we walk through some of the city’s corridors, participants will have the opportunity to look closely and see the many species we live with in close proximity. More than just identifying the species that are constantly navigating (and often subverting) the infrastructures we build to make their own worlds, this feral tour will help to imagine how we might work more closely with the many species that we share these spaces with.
To become feral, is to live beyond the strictures of capitalism. On this tour, we will be considering how the act of foraging can provide some insight into our relationship with other species. It may also provoke questions about our alienation from the species that make possible the food we enjoy and expect in the city.For people living in the post-industrial urban environment, biodiversity loss and impact of the climate crisis can often be intangible, as most people don’t often think of the city as a habitat for things other than people. Walking through the city, foraging, and finding the creatures we may not often notice, we can begin to become a member of the vast biotic community living there and to begin to detach ourselves from its exploitation.
