Living with Waste – On Humans & Pests in the City

At the Rotterdam Crosscomix Festival, we presented the project Pets or Pests?, which is a collaboration between Drawing the Times and comics artists Mark Schalken, Merel Barends, Tânia A. Cardoso, and author and historian Guido van Hengel. In this blog-post, Guido explains what the project entails, why we started it, how we carried it out, and what the results aim to tell.

From left to right: Tânia A. Cardoso, Merel Barends, Mark Schalken.

Initially, the project was called ‘Ongedierte’ (Vermin), a title we used as a working title. From the start, we shared a fascination with animals that don’t fit into the urban order, yet are, at the same time, quintessentially urban creatures. We were thinking of small rodents like mice and rats, but especially all the welcome and unwelcome fluttering (and droppings!) in the air: city pigeons and ring-necked parakeets.

The intention wasn’t simply to create some fun comics about animals. This was a project in graphic journalism: a genre that invites us to think, observe, and reflect on multiple levels.

The ‘pests’ or ‘pest animals’ (some say ‘trash animals’) we decided to investigate invite people in the city to ask questions about nature, urban planning, climate change, and the associated migration in both the human and non-human worlds.

Take the ring-necked parakeets. In many Dutch cities, you see them everywhere, especially now (in September), when all the young birds have left their nests. Their squawking fills the air, and you see them flying by in massive, colorful flocks.

Some people hate them, others like them and feed them. During a walk through The Hague, Tânia A. Cardoso and I investigated where the birds are and how they move through the city. We took a small newspaper article as the starting point for the final story, as it turned out. Ring-necked parakeets sabotaged the renovation of the Binnenhof – Tweede Kamer (the Dutch Parliament, hence, the  center of power). Could it have been any more symbolic? We didn’t want to make this allegorical element too obvious, so we created a story that highlighted the very concrete problems with ring-necked parakeets from the perspective of housing, architecture, and urban planning. In other words, we presented it as a policy problem.

It helped that Tânia has a background in architecture, allowing her to use her own research and knowledge to analyze the issue of ring-necked parakeets in The Hague as a case study for a larger problem.

A larger problem? Hence, we arrived at the initial ambition of the project. This certainly has to do with public perception, not only the perception of animals, but also of cities as spaces governed by certain codes and norms. We conducted this analysis of public perception with Merel Barends, using urban pigeons as a case study.

Many pigeons in the city are former domestic pigeons that flew away somewhere along the way and ended up in the urban jungle.

We specifically wanted to analyze these public perceptions. In doing so, you also tap into the potential of graphic journalism, that has obviously an emphasis on the visual. Which images of pigeons stick with us? And what is the background of those images? And where do those images come from? As a historian, I delved into the history of pigeon imagery, and together with Merel, we analyzed the history of humans and pigeons, which dates all the way back to the Neolithic Revolution when humans settled down to grow grain. And the pigeons fitted into the niche that emerged – and got a piece of the action.

For means of field research, Merel entered the world of the those who go around to save pigeons from stringfoot, and did workshops with, among others, SOS Duif.

The research (both in the field and in the historical sources) resulted in an ‘archeology of imagery’ in which we also drew on media representation and history.

The fact that pigeons have been called ‘rats with legs’ or ‘flying rats’ since the 1960s made us realize that we also needed to focus on the lowest, most hated urban animal, one that usually dominates the news in a negative light.

The rat.

The research on rats was initially primarily visual. Mark Schalken lives in Amsterdam and saw dead rats lying everywhere. Most are poisoned, but some are also run over. Many rats also fight each other. In any case, Mark saw those dead rats lying around, then photographed them, and drew them.

These ‘close-ups’ of rats also meant that he gained a much more intimate view of the (dead) animals. One detail that struck him was the rats’ beautiful little paws, very delicate and fragile. By observing the rats attentively and focusing intently on what the animals actually look like, in detail, his perception of them shifted.

And I’m talking about the media-shaped image here. For the comic about the rats, we also considered playing with the perception of rats on a meta-level. Rats are often discussed in terms of ‘war,’ ‘invasion,’ and ‘plague’ – and just as with the pigeon, there’s a long history behind that. You can see that reflected in the final design of the comic as well. We put in there a certain sense of chaos and loss of control.

For our research, Mark and I also took part in the charming and interesting rat-safari organized by the artists Maarten Bel and Niek Hilkmann in Rotterdam. With this tour through ‘Ratterdam,’ they aim to draw attention to the lives of rats in the city, their lifestyles and habitats, and to separate the clichés from the truths. The tour was interesting not only for the rat-spotting, but also for observing of how people view rats (since we were joined by a very diverse group of Rotterdam citizens).

Through a conversation with the Netherlands’ most renowned rat expert, Maite van Gerwen, I also learned about various studies (including research from the universities of Utrecht and Wageningen) showing that many people don’t necessarily view rats as a problem, but that there are differences in their behaviour towards rats, depending on time and place. In short: a rat in the park is less of a problem than one in the kitchen. This nuance speaks for itself, but it raises once again the question of how the city’s private and public spaces are shared with other creatures. Isn’t it more interesting to think about a city where not only humans but also other animals can feel at home? And how can you respond to that in urban planning and architecture?

Our graphic, artistic, historical, and media research ultimately led us to the most important insights, which concerned waste. The working title ‘Ongedierte’ (Vermin) had by then given way to ‘Pets or pests?’, but in Dutch we ultimately opted for ‘Afval op pootjes’ – which translates as ‘Trash on Legs’.

After all, don’t pigeons and rats – but also ring-necked parakeets – hold up a mirror to us? By pointing out the waste we leave behind everywhere? A conversation with philosopher Lisa Doeland added some depth to this. She recently successfully defended her PhD thesis at Radboud University on the theme of waste and advocates for thinking about waste in a different way. Trash doesn’t disappear; it stays with us.

In a sense, ‘Afval op Pootjes’ (‘Trash on Legs’) refers to two insights. First, the horrible tendency in human societies (especially as it is reflected in politics and the media) to label living beings – usually outsiders or marginalized groups – as ‘trash,’ and thereby eliminate them. This is a theme we’ve explored in particular in the comic about the pigeons, with a reference to the work of the British-Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (author of, among other works, Wasted Lives and Liquid Modernity). But secondly, ‘Trash on Legs’ also refers to the ecological implications of our waste. What is thrown away is not gone. It comes back to us. And this is demonstrated by the ‘pest animals’ that have accompanied and inspired us in our research over the past few months.

The result consists of three stories: ‘Rare Birds’, ‘What Do We See in Pigeons?’, and ‘Reading the City with Rats’ (soon to be published). Together, they form a triptych. Hopefully, they will inspire readers to look at the city, the street, and society in a different light.

The plan is to further develop this project. If you’re interested in collaborating, please get in touch!