[ABGESAGT] The landscape of reservoir margins beyond infrastructural residue: A ground-level analysis of Lake Sihl, Switzerland

Abstract

Short description

In hydroelectric infrastructures, reservoir margins are typical residual landscapes. The study explores their spatial qualities and aesthetic potentials through an analysis of photographs. It thus proposes a revised understanding of these sites, to spark new imaginations for future practices.

Key words

Hydropower, energy infrastructure, landscape aesthetics, reservoir, photography.

Abstract

Hydroelectric infrastructures are typical examples of extractivist practices that enable life in metropolitan areas at the expense of hinterlands, where ecologies and land are consumed and residual landscapes produced in return. A prime example of such residual landscapes are reservoir margins, which are the shoreline that is exposed at low water levels. Often left to dry over months and revealing a mineral ground devoid of plant life, these naked shorelines do not fit the landscape aesthetics of natural lakes that are expected from reservoirs. They have thus remained undesirable by-products of a modern extractivist legacy. Unable to solve the issue, engineers and planners have resigned to mitigating the issue when possible in various ways. The present research considers a different route, by considering this condition not as a problem, but as a potential. It seeks to go beyond the aesthetics of reservoirs inherited from the early 20th century and question the actual space of these margins, by studying them qualitatively, at ground level, beyond idealised maps and images. As a starting point, it takes the explorations of reservoir margins of photographer Martin Linsi on the shores of Lake Sihl, the largest reservoir in Switzerland by surface. His photographs depict an unexpected life on these sites, from teenagers using the ephemeral shoreline for beach volley, to a former path emerging from the water and forming a temporary link through space and time, and to mussels settled on a sunken tree stump from pre-reservoir times. Taking this work as a case study, the study proceeds in three steps. (1) It analyses the life and spaces depicted in these images, to single out key aspects of reservoir margins and to develop a literacy for them. (2) It takes stock from the way the images are framed and composed, to draw out the potential aesthetics of their scenes. (3) It questions these outcomes in other cases, to test their transferability. Through this work, the research seeks to understand what reservoir margins are beyond the mask of non-places and to bring up their potentials, to spark new imaginations for the future of hydroelectric landscapes.